Dinner and a Movie with Moxie

 Heavy Metal 2000 (aka Heavy Metal: F.A.A.K.2) (2000) When I was a kid, I remember the first time I watched the classic animated film Heavy Metal, and it just blew me away, and to this day it is one of my all-time favourite animated films, and maybe the film that truly made me appreciate animated films, it was everything that Disney wasn't and I loved it.   It was lewd, crued, and loud, everything I wanted in a film.   When I was 18 I discovered Heavy Metal magazine, and would buy every issues as soon as it came out, and then in 1999 I read that Kevin Eastman (co-creator of the Teenage Ninja Turtles, who grew up in Sanford Maine), Simon Bisley, and Eric Talbot (names I all knew from my love of Heavy Metal magazine) were working on a new Heavy Metal film.  I was so excited, and as soon as it was released I found a copy at my local music/media store in the mall, and I bought a copy on VHS, and watched it over and over and over again.  The film had great music, some great daring anima

  Carnival Of Souls (1962) The 1960s were the age of independent filmmakers, anyone one who could scrape together a bit of money and have some working knowledge of film making could make films, and some of those films were the most exciting, groundbreaking, and experimental.  My favourite film from that era was a 1962 independent film called Carnival Of Souls.  This film has an interesting story behind it, Herk Harvey who worked for a company in Kansas making educational and industrial films, was on a trip in California and passed by the Saltair Pavilion near Salt Lake City UT, and came up with the idea of a horror film.  He contacted his friend/coworker John Clifford to come up with a screenplay based on his idea.  They got local Lawrence Kansas business owners to donate money to make the film, and Harvey had met actress Candace Hilligoss in New York, and asked her to star in the film (paid her a little over $2000 to be in the film.  So with a budget of merely $33,000 they set out to

  Night Tide (1961) The 1960's was an interesting time in science fiction and horror as low budget filmmakers were taking chances and making more unique and interesting films, without the huge budget of the major motion picture companies, with directors and producers like Roger Corman showing that anyone with a dream of making a film, and just a basic working idea of how to direct and a dream, a new crop of directors and filmmakers were creating strange and new films.   One of these films distributed by Roger Corman's Filmgroup was a bizarre fantasy/horror called Night Tide, starring a young Dennis Hopper in his first lead role (he'd only done supporting roles up to this point), about a sailor who falls in love with a mermaid(?), while on shore leave at Santa Monica California.  The film is part horror, part murder mystery, part fantasy, and part romantic drama.  The film takes place mostly at the amusement park on the pier in Santa Monica, where he meets and falls for a gi

 The Invasion (2007) 2007 saw the fourth and most recent remake of Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, inspired by Jack Finney's novel The Body Snatchers from 1954.   This new version isn't so much a remake of the previous versions that had come before it, but more so a reimagining, that is more applicable to the modern world.  In the film, the alien spores come to earth attached to a space shuttle that crashes, spreading the debris and the spores.   The spores spread like a virus, from the special features, it looks like the SARS virus that was a huge deal in the media around the time of the film's making was an inspiration for making the Invasion spread more like a virus pandemic.   Now watching this in 2021 for the first time, the whole pandemic concept seems a lot more real and terrifying than it was in 2007 when it was released.  I don't remember this film coming out, and that makes sense since it was a box office flop, and received generally negative reviews from the

Body Snatchers (1993) The first two Invasion Of The Body Snatchers films, have become well loved classics of the sci-fi horror genre and nearly forty years after the novel The Body Snatchers was written by Jack Finney we see a third film adaptation of this classic influential story, Body Snatchers, released in 1993.  Up to this point the film adaptations had at least somewhat closely followed Finney's original novel, being set in California towns, with characters at least somewhat similar to those of the novel.  The book and the first two films take a critical look at American lives, and the fear of conformity, and the importance of the self.  With Body Snatchers from 1993, instead the setting is moved to an army base in Alabama, and a rebellious teenage girl is the main character.  This film is a critique of the conformity culture of the military, and how it destroys the self, and individuality, and thus making it weak and a easy target for the Body Snatchers.  It almost feels laz

  Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (1978) Jack Finney's amazing science-fiction horror novel about an alien lifeform from outer space coming to clone humans and change them into emotionless hive minds, which was also a social commentary about conformity was the basis for the amazing 1956 film.  That 1956 film directed by Don Siegel would go on to be the inspiration for a 1978 remake, that has been hailed as one of the best remakes ever made.   Invasion Of The Body Snatchers from 1978 is a remake done right, that actually take steps to improve upon the original, and update it to the modern world.  The setting of the film was moved to San Francisco, moving it from a quaint small town to a major city, which creates a larger impact, and an increased sense and scope of the terror created in the story.   The ending of the film is more inline with what Siegel wanted to do in his film, but wasn't able to because of the studio execs forcing him to change it to a more optimistic ending.  T

 Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (1956) In 1954 author Jack Finney published one of my favourite science-fiction/horror novels, The Body Snatchers.  The Body Snatchers was a truly terrifying novel, and a fast paced read, that was really hard to put down, if you haven't read it, I highly recommend it.  I had grown up on the two popular film adaptations of the film, so when I finally read that book, it delved so much deeper, and told the story much better.  However this isn't a book review, this is a review of the 1956 film adaptation of Jack Finney's novel entitled Invasion of The Body Snatchers, a film that captivated and terrified audiences for generations to come.  This story isn't just about an invasion from aliens from another world, but is about the most terrifying thing on earth, mindless conformity, and the loss of individuality.  The concept of conformity and the loss of the individual has been explored many times in cinema, for example it was a central theme of

Wolfen (1981) Werewolves have been a big part of the horror film genre since Universal's 1935 classic Werewolf In London.  Most of the werewolf films, are based on a European mythology of werewolves, and many pulling their "rules" from Universal's 1941 classic Wolf Man starring Lon Chaney Jr..   Wolfen from 1981 however is a uniquely American werewolf film, rooted in Native American mythology, where the idea isn't so much rooted in lycanthropy, but instead the idea that a person can swap spirits with a wolf, so rather than actual "werewolves", Wolfen is about wolf spirits, making it a unique entry in the werewolf film genre.    Wolfen was directed by Michael Wadleigh, with a screenplay by David M. Eyre Jr, Michael Wadleigh, and Eric Roth (uncredited).  The film is based on Whitley Strieber's 1978 novel The Wolfen.   The film was produced by Orion Pictures, and distributed by Warner Brothers Pictures in 1981.  The film received positive reviews from t

Bad Moon (1996) There are a lot of bad werewolf films out there, from bad wolf costumes, bad transitions from human to wolf, bad scripts, and just overall bad acting.  One great example of a film having all of those unfortunate traits to make it a bad werewolf films, is 1996's Bad Moon.  The film doesn't even succeed in being campy, it is just forgettable and objectively bad in every way. Bad Moon was written and directed by Eric Red. The film was based on the Wayne Smith's 1992 novel Thor.  Bad Moon was produced by Morgan Creek, and distributed by Warner Brothers in 1996.  The film was a box office disaster grossing only $1.1 million with a budget of $7 million.  The film also received negative reviews from the critics.  Writer/director Eric Red's real life story is more interesting than this terrible film, in 2000 Eric Red allegedly lost consciousness while driving and crashed his truck into a busy bar, killing two men.  He then got out of and tried to slit his own th

  Coma (1978) In 1978 two great minds in the genre of science fiction came together to create an amazing science fiction horror film, by the name of Coma.  The film was written and directed by Michael Crichton, and was based on a 1977 novel by his friend, science fiction legend Robin Cook.  The film starts off as being a slow going medical drama, about two young doctors, but when one of the doctor's friend who is a healthy young adult in great health goes into a coma during her abortion, Dr Susan Wheeler, wants to know why, and what her investigating into the issue, shifts the film from a slow paced medical drama, into a suspense film, that quickly starts descending into a terrifying horror film with a plot about greed, medical malpractice, and organ harvesting and sales.  I think what makes this and Michael Crichton's other films and books so effective is the believability of the works, because they have their roots in science facts.   Coma was written and directed by Michael

  Dystopian Future Double Feature: Logan's Run & Dark City Often when we think of dystopian future science-fiction we picture films like Mad Max, but another style of dystopian futures, are a future that looks perfect on the surface, until you realize just beneath the surface there is a dark truth behind it.  Logan's Run falls into that style of dystopian future science-fiction.   Then there is Dark City, a type of dystopian future where everything looks like the life we are familiar with, however just beneath the surface there is a dark truth behind the works of it all.   I feel like the style of dystopian future that Logan's Run creates, is quite similar to the future that HG Wells wrote about in The Time Machine, where on the surface is the peaceful Eloi live lives of leisure and pleasure, while just below the surface (literally in that novel) there lives the race of Morlocks, who do the labor, and the reality is that the Eloi are raised as cattle to feed the Morlock