Creepysearch

Boredom and Cracked.com have driven me to do this. In the name of shits and giggles, I’m going to enter ten ordinary, innocuous words or phrases into Google Image Search. Each time, I will scroll through the first few pages of results and pick the creepiest and/or most random picture I find. Because this is a review blog, I promise to include some pop culture in this amusing exercise. Also, although I search with all content filters turned off, I promise not to post anything gory, pornographic, or so disturbing that it’s not funny any more.

Let’s see what weirdness lurks on the internet...

Search #1: “Lemon Drop”

Why? Because lemon drops are among the most boring candy out there. I mean, seriously. They’re tasty and everything if you like lemon, but they’re also so predictable. Lemon drops are old lady candy. They’re what sits in a crystal dish on your grandma’s coffee table, slowly collecting dust. If you tried picking one up, you’d find them fused into a single wad. How could lemon drops ever be creepy?

The Result:



Well, that’s horrifying. It appears to be a 1951 comedy starring Bob Hope, but it looks more like how Psycho would look if Norman Bates and his mom were both played by Richard Simmons. And instead of murdering lovely women, he gives them enemas while old men look on in disapproval. His victims can be seen on the right, assuming the humiliating position.

I looked up the plot summary of this movie: Bob Hope plays a two-bit criminal named the Lemon Drop Kid who gets involved in wacky hijinks. There is apparently one scene where he dresses in drag as an old lady. One scene. Talk about blowing something out of proportion. Literally, in this case.

Search #2: “Postage Stamp”

Why? Because postage stamps surely can’t be scary, can they? I mean, yeah, any image can potentially appear on a stamp, but keep in mind that a letter bearing a stamp could be sent to anyone, including toddlers, the elderly, Mormons, etc. Stamps have to be G-rated. People would complain if they got birthday greetings from Aunt Mafalda and saw, say, Carrie White gaping bloodily up at them from the envelope. Nope, stamps are easy on the eyes...

The Result:



Leave it to the Russians.

Next time you have to mail thank-yous to your relatives for sending you argyle socks and books about knitting for Christmas, enact subtle revenge with this handy stamp. Won’t they chortle to see a maddened, psychotic pirate with a Salvador Dali mustache, clearly in the late stages of scurvy, about to murder two bound captives by the Pyramids of Giza, which are being engulfed in a tidal wave of blood! I found this on Wikipedia; apparently this pleasant gentleman is “bloodthirsty Barmalei,” a character created by Korney Chukovsky, who is one of the most famous Russian children’s poets. With Russian kids being raised on stuff like this, It’s no wonder they ride armored bears and shit.


Search #3: “Gullah Gullah Island”

Why? ’Cause I want to ruin my childhood. I vaguely remember watching this show on Nickelodeon as a kid. This was during the political correctness blitzkrieg of the 1990s when everything marketed for kids had to teach moral lessons and educate us about other cultures. (The Gullah are a subculture of Southern black Americans known for their rich African traditions, in case you weren’t aware, you ignorant WASP.) From what little I recall, the show was all about songs, dancing, and learning good manners.

The Result:



BEHIND YOU! Stop singing about the joy of sharing and LOOK BEHIND YOU!! IT’S GETTING CLOSER!!!

Wow, I’d totally forgotten that Gullah Gullah Island included a costumed mascot named Binyah Binyah Pollywog. If you see see Binyah Binyah, nightmares nightmares follow follow. Now, this little guy wasn’t as scary as some costumed kids’ characters, but still. You’d be enjoying a perfectly ordinary episode with a group of friendly Gullah folks, and suddenly BBP would come lurching into the frame, and you’d wonder what traditional African medicinal plants they’d been smoking. Also, the fact that BBP is so small (by costumed mascot standards) makes him creepier. You can’t trust little guys. They’re sneaky. I went with this picture because that poor lady seems unaware that the stunted yellow frog-thing is behind her, leering at her butt.


Search #4: “Flush”

Why? Well, “flush” can mean the flush of a toilet, or a flush in a card game, or to “flush out” from hiding. Lot of meanings. Plenty of potential for weirdness. Still, there are worse verbs I could have gone with.

The Result:



This is creepy because of its persistence alone. When I Googled “flush,” variations on this device appeared over...and over...and over. It is exactly what it looks like: a toilet that contains an aquarium. Because pooping is more fun when a bunch of guppies are ogling your backne and tramp stamp with their big, unforgiving guppy eyes. Fish voyeurism aside, the hygienic issues of this are appalling. I mean, presumably the aquarium part doesn’t connect to the toilet part, but all you have to do is accidentally hook up some tubes the wrong way, and suddenly your fish are discovering what fish hell is like (it’s like a game of Asteroids where you have no weapon and the asteroids are turds and you’re a fucking fish). Finally, this is the piscine equivalent of the house in Poltergeist that was built atop a graveyard. Sweet dreams, fish!


Search #5: “Dakota Fanning”

Why? Believe it or not, I’m not trying to dig up creepy pedophile photos. That would be too easy. I wanted to do a search on a celebrity name and Dakota Fanning popped into my head for some reason. Can a pretty blonde child actress creep me out? Maybe; after all, Shirley Temple was pretty eerie without even trying. Frighten me, Ms. Fanning!

The Result:

Having a wall of Dakota Fannings smiling at you gets a tad unsettling after a couple minutes, but most of the pics just show her looking happy, maybe wearing a pretty dress or posing on the red carpet. And then there’s this.



“She’s cute and talented...how should we do her photoshoot? I know, let’s make her look like post-fatal-overdose Marilyn Monroe and give her the creepiest old doll we can dig out of the Hammer Horror Studio’s prop warehouse! Also, mustaches!”

These pics tell a little story, don’t they? She starts out looking cute enough, despite that horrifying fucking doll. Then suddenly she gets weirdly quiet...just sitting there in her underwear, regarding you like she’s guessed how you’ll die someday. And then those doll’s eyes lock onto you like malevolent lasers and Dakota opens her mouth, and what comes out isn’t her voice any more.....

PS: Nice use of the Blade Runner font. This must be what Pris looked like before she grew up to be Daryl Hannah!


Search #6: “Play-Doh”

Why? Because, given enough time and enough Play-Doh, a roomful of monkeys could build a scale model of Saint Basil’s Cathedral. Or something; I dunno. My point is that I’m interested to see if Play-Doh was ever used to build anything creepy. Google?

The Result:



Boom! Creepy-ass advertising! Have you noticed how many ads feature tiny objects flying out of people’s sliced-open heads? We’ve almost become desensitized...until they go and do it to pallid little Aryan children. Little Aryan children with the knowing faces of the elderly.

This might have worked if they hadn’t gone with the ever-popular Village of the Damned aesthetic. As it is, little kids may look at this and become convinced that one’s innards are a bunch of brightly colored rainbows and animals and cookies and whatnot, and if you’re not careful, it’ll all fly out through your skull and you’ll become a walking dough-faced corpse. Better stock up on innards by eating as much Play-Doh as you can, kids!


Search #7: “Goo Goo Gah Gah”

Why? I’m continuing on the theme of small children, and now going even smaller. This is archetypal baby talk, the accepted onomatopoeia for what those little womb-gnomes sound like before they learn how to talk like Mommy and Daddy. It’s really cute; therefore it can totally be twisted around into creepy land.

The Result:



Here we see the Care Bear Hive Queen, surrounded by her newborn offspring. If you look closely, you can spot the Hive Queen’s latest meal vanishing down her craw, its pleading eyes reflecting the horror of still being conscious while your lower body turns to sludge in the corrosive acid of an unholy gullet.

“That’s not creepy!” you will say. “That’s cute!” And you’re absolutely right, it’s cute...on the surface. But look deeper. Experience suggests that when you’re a baby, one toy is much like another. This baby would have been just as happy playing with a bunch of empty Kleenex boxes. It was the parents who decided that their baby had to have every single Care Bear plus a big bloated Care Bear costume with great white shark eyes. That says to me that this baby’s parents have issues. I’m sure they’re already looking for a back-alley tattooist who’ll imprint a little rainbow on a four-month-old’s abdomen.


Search #8: “Guinea Pig”

Why? ’Cause I want to include an animal, and guinea pigs are about the most hapless creature I can think of. We experiment on guinea pigs. In some places, we eat them. Even when kept as beloved pets, they just sit there quivering and pooping. Of all the pets I’ve tried having, they were the lamest and (accordingly) the least long-term. I cannot picture a scary guinea pig. Can you? Don’t answer that question.

The Result:



Oh, come on! Seriously, what the fuck. There is no reason ANY WOMAN would want to stick this in their hair. Is there? Don’t answer that question.

I mean, I suppose you could make something pretty out of guinea pig fur, but only if you leave off any recognizable limbs or gnashing mandibles. This is freaking Resident Evil shit. This is the moment when the boss splits in half and the second stage of the boss battle begins, the part where it can climb around on walls and spit acid. And you’re all out of green herbs.

PS: Judging by its expression and pose, do you think the poor little bastard was still alive when they turned half of it into a comb? DON’T ANSWER THAT QUESTION.


Search #9: “Montana”

Why? Because Montana’s one of those states I know jack-all about. Dude, I’m from New England; anyplace west of the Mississippi and east of LA barely registers. Montana is, um...big....and has hills and air and stuff. Right? Time to educate myself, I guess.

The Result:

Wow, this search netted more pics of Hannah Montana than of the actual state. That’s depressing. Pretty lame pickings overall: just that Cyrus whore and some lovely vistas. But I did find this picture of a creepy plant!



I guess it’s one of those bug-eating plants, but with its dense tangle of bloodstained gooey tendrils, it could totally be an H.P. Lovecraft monstrosity at which you go insane just by looking. For full effect, imagine a screaming little man in a pith helmet at the bottom of the image. Now I can go to Montana and ask, “So, where do I find the flesh-melting crimson madnessflowers?”


Search #10: “Shrivel Egg Pie”

Why? Because it’s three random words that don’t make much sense when combined. I want to see if Google can give me anything at all from these three words in that particular order. Maybe shrivel egg pie is a delicacy in some parts of the world! I can’t wait to find out!

The Result:



Dear viewer, I proudly present a cabbage carved to resemble a skull. Why? I don’t have a fucking clue, and it’s wonderful. This comes from a blog apparently devoted to things shaped like skulls (Link). Not only that, but you can view multiple images of this horror as it slowly wilts and decomposes, its gaping eyeholes peering deeper and deeper into the part of your soul where the dark putrid secrets lie waiting. Fear the gaze. And give thanks for the internet, a place where I can type the words “shrivel egg pie” into a search engine and discover a blog for people who love surrounding themselves with subliminal reminders of their mortality. And nightmare fuel.

Speaking of which, it’s late and I should get to bed. And not sleep, ever. Thanks, Creepysearch!

The Fall

Tarsem Singh’s The Fall is a movie made by an ego, the ego of a man who knows exactly what movie he wants to make, is willing to pay for it out of his own pocket, and isn’t all that concerned with what people think of it. It is absolutely and completely a vanity project. You may hear it billed as a “period piece” or a “fantasy film” but it doesn’t really have a genre beyond...well, maybe “Tarsem film” should count as a genre. There certainly aren’t any films quite like the few made by Tarsem Singh, for better or for worse. If you can set aside your preconceptions of what a film should be about, if you can ignore everything that conventional films have infused in your mind, perhaps you can enjoy The Fall, or at least appreciate its artistry. For me, well, it was a rare film that I was happy to be irritated by.

If you know Tarsem Singh, it’s likely from Nike and Coke ads or music videos (he made the vid for “Losing My Religion”). Otherwise, perhaps you’ve seen 2000’s The Cell, a thriller in which Jennifer Lopez ventured into the brain of a serial killer. The Cell was trashed by most critics, partly because the plot blatantly copies Silence of the Lambs and partly because there’s a list somewhere of actors who must be ridiculed, and Jennifer Lopez is on it. But the backlash had a backlash; The Cell has plenty of fans (myself included) who appreciate it for its amazing special effects, which beautifully evoke the dreamlike realm inside a mind. It teased us with sumptuous images, and now we have The Fall, which takes the dream to a new, deeper level (cue the musical chord from Inception: BWWWWAAMMMMPPH.) This is a film that combines fable and myth, tall tales and silent filmmaking and the context of World War I; it’s a story about stories and those who make them. Anyone can tell a story, with words or their voice or just their imagination. The Fall is about that, and, just as importantly, about the reasons why we tell stories in the first place.

There are two storytellers portrayed in the film. One, played by Lee Pace, is a silent movie stuntman named Roy. The other, played by Catinca Untaru, is a six-year-old Romanian immigrant named Alexandria. Both are in a hospital in 1920s Los Angeles. Both were injured by falling, for very different reasons. Alexandria is friendly, chipper, and curious, wandering the hospital with her arm in an awkward cast. Roy has a charm and easygoing nature that masks deep and bitter wounds; he wants to kill himself with a drug overdose, and enlists the little girl as an unwitting accomplice. To ensure her cooperation, be begins to tell her a story -- a story about a deadly bandit (played significantly by Pace again), an Indian, an escaped slave, an Italian explosives expert, an aboriginal mystic, and Charles Darwin, all of whom unite to conquer an vile ruler named Governor Odious. There’s also a princess in distress who looks an awful lot like Roy’s unfaithful girlfriend. Roy weaves the story from threads of his own bitterness, but Alexandria is not the type to get bogged down by angst, and so the story, as we see it, also receives input from her own, innocent mind. Roy in his anger doesn’t stand a chance against cute little Alexandria and her clear vision.



As Roy talespins and both of them envision, we see the heroes of the tale pass through amazing, surreal landscapes, buildings, and dream-spaces. During filming, Tarsem took his production all over the world, looking for real locations that invoke the logic of the subconscious. He also claims that this film was made with no computer-assisted special effects at all. Instead, he turns back time and uses the classic special effects of the early days of cinema, and by God, they still work. The Fall is best when it’s simply lingering on its images. We see the wild-eyed mystic crawl from a burning tree, and later, a map magically appears on his body like a tattoo. We watch as the adventurers descend into a barren, rocky crevasse that unfolds like a magic puzzlebox into a lush, fertile Eden. There is an incredible shot in which a close-up of a man’s face dissolves into an identical landscape in which distant figures and mountains recreate his features. When a corpse is wrapped in a vast hanging shroud, its blood slowly and impossibly stains the entire cloth. These sequences move with a sedate pace, accompanied by echoing orchestral music. Even the action scenes crawl along, taking their sweet time as the heroes do battle with Odious’s guards, whose hideous black armor is inspired by a leather-clad X-ray technician glimpsed by Alexandria in the hospital. This is the work of someone who loves the very act of filmmaking and is not content to compromise his visions as per the demands of some Hollywood studio that can’t see beyond box office gross.

In other words, this is not an easy film to watch and it’s a perfectly easy film to hate. I’m not so pretentious that I’m going to arrogantly dismiss criticism of The Fall for being “lowbrow” or missing the point. The only real point is that Tarsem made a movie that will appeal to a small audience and will likely turn off the majority of the moviegoing public. And that’s okay. I freely admit that I got annoyed by the film’s molasses-like pacing and arch tone after awhile. The storytelling sequences ultimately grow dreary and repetitive. What remains alive is the relationship between the two storytellers and the vitality of their characters. Roy doesn’t think he wants to live, but his self-pity can’t hide his goodness, and Lee Pace plays him as an easily likable man who we’re eager to slap some sense into. Little Catinca Untaru doesn’t “act” in the traditional sense but plays exactly what she is in real life: a smart, no-nonsense little girl who doesn’t know much English but is ready to learn. It’s charming and utterly believable when she gets tangled up in her own sentences; I’ll take her heavily-accented mumbling over any blue-eyed, pearly-toothed child star delivering snappy dialogue like a pro. Both of them convince us that they’re real people, which proves the perfect antidote to the heavily stylized majesty of Roy’s story. By the end, both of them are engaged in a battle of imagination and will, and we pray that the story will end the way Alexandria wants it to, because someone needs to pull Roy out of his funk, dammit!



So, there we have it. The Fall is a vain movie, a highbrow movie, often a tiresome movie. But Tarsem wanted to make it his own way, and he did. It refuses to compromise or pander, it avoids cliché, and the ending sidesteps “they lived happily ever after” in favor of, simply... “they lived.” If you can make it to the end, the closing scenes are well worth it, bringing the movie’s themes together beautifully. Even if you can’t bear the thought of seeing The Fall more than once, do see it that once, just so you can see the work of a true maker of movies. Not a director, a maker of movies. Like Terence Malick or Quentin Tarantino or Stanley Kubrick, Tarsem Singh wants you to check your expectations at the ticket booth and just sit there and look. Look at what it’s possible to put on film. Look at how a story can be told to those for whom stories still matter.

Favorite Games of 2010

2010 was the “Indie Year” for me. A few rather crucial things happened for me in 2010: I got a fancy new computer, my rural home finally got internet access beyond fucking dial-up, and (perhaps most crucial to this list) Steam became Mac-compatible. Yeah, I’m a Mac user, and I enjoy the type of games you’d expect a Mac user to enjoy; namely, indie arthouse games. In fact, none of the games on this list are console-exclusive. Deal with it. What’s important to me is that new avenues of gaming have opened up, and I couldn’t be happier. Sooooo, here are my favorite games of the year!

DANG-BLASTED’S TOP GAMES OF 2010!


Braid (PC/Mac/Xbox/PS3)
I know I’m a little late jumping on the Braid bandwagon, but better late than never! God, this game is good. Pretentious, but good. If you can put up with the somewhat high-minded aesthetic and overly open-ended story, you get an incredible puzzle-platformer, devious and evil in its very simplicity. This is a game that takes the skeleton, the basic architecture, of platforming and subverts it in one innovative way after another, first by giving you the power to rewind your own death, then by handing you a series of time-manipulation powers that turn the puzzles into intricate little ballets of patience and precision. What’s so wonderfully sadistic about Braid is that most of the puzzles are quite easy to complete; it’s figuring the damned things out that keeps you up all night. Playing Braid makes you feel smarter. Factor in the gorgeous, moving-watercolor graphics, the haunting music, and the hilarious/brilliant shout-outs to genre classics (is that...Donkey Kong?!), and you have a game that celebrates the old while ushering in the new. To translate that to non-pretentious-artfag-speak, OMG THIS GAME FUCKIN ROCKS DUDE.


The Dig (PC/Mac)
Speaking of old-school gaming, I have a bit of a boner for point-and-click adventure games, some of which can be found on Steam. I was blown over backwards by The Dig, a 1995 sci-fi extravaganza from LucasArts, back when LucasArts was all about making fun games and less about kneeling to suck George Lucas’s pruney pink lightsaber. I love pre-rendered environments and this game delivers an orgasmic eyeful when three human astronauts are mysteriously transported to a bizarre, dreamlike alien world covered in ornate crystal structures, trippy geometry, and marvelous alien technology that naturally still works. The world portrayed in The Dig is genuinely beautiful, and the designers put real effort into envisioning an alien environment, and aliens, that aren’t like anything you’ve seen before. Few games can capture the wonder of simple exploration, but this is one of them. Now, it’s far from perfect -- the crude animated cutscenes are pretty pitiful and it does occasionally enter the dreaded “madly-click-on-everything-until-something-works” territory. But if you’re playing it in the first place, you can deal with the shittier aspects of point-and-click gaming and simply bask in the glory of its atmosphere.


Ice Breaker (Free Online)
I hate this damn game. I hate it because I love it and it’s the most addictive thing I played all year. I may have tried it once or twice in the past, but this was the year I actually paid serious attention, and before I knew it, I was up all night saving those damn little vikings. If you don’t know, this is a simple physics puzzler, available for free online, in which you have to rescue vikings by making strategic cuts in the ice that imprisons them. Now, all physics puzzlers are pure evil, and this one takes addictive, hair-tearing mania to new heights. In addition to breaking ice, you have to cut ropes, kill trolls, manipulate birds and ramps and boulders, deflate fat ladies (don’t ask), and generally try everything before you find the solution, and the game’s physics are so finicky that even the “correct” method may take multiple attempts before it works right. It’s torture, and yet you can’t....fucking....stop. Because, damn and fuck it all to hell, it is so much fun to rescue those little vikings with their cute little beards. You hold your breath and bite your nails, hoping they’ll land in their little boat, and when they do......bliss. Until the next puzzle, and the next, and the next. Ice Breaker is the gaming equivalent of crack. Beware.


Machinarium (PC/Mac)
Point-and-click odyssey number two! This one is not retro, but brand spanking new, and also amazing. Machinarium is set in a world inhabited entirely by robots, a quirky and vivid metropolis of metal, oil, and rust whose residents communicate their problems in adorable little thought bubbles. It is here that our charismatic robot protagonist must save his girlfriend and foil a terrorist plot by -- what else? -- exploring, interacting with the environment, and picking up random items, each of which has Exactly One Use. So, standard adventure game, but presented in such an innovative and lovable way! Again, the art design and music make the game quite gorgeous, and the puzzles are usually pretty brilliant in how they fit together. There’s a handy hint system, but (in a stroke of genius) you must play an annoying little arcade game to access it. Oh, yeah, Machinarium makes you work your brainbox no matter what, and you learn to pay close attention to detail -- which is good, because this strange, monochromatic junkyard universe never loses its fascination or appeal. I am SO ready for whatever the makers, Amanita Design, create next.


Plants vs. Zombies (PC/Mac/Xbox)
And thus we come to Plants vs. Zombies, which I began playing at the start of 2010 and have been playing on and off ever since. Tower defense games have never interested me that much, but this one is an all-time winner on every front. The zombie hordes are coming and you must defend your cozy little suburban home by choosing from a massive collection of flora, each of which helps defeat the undead in its own way. You’ve got your offensive plants (peashooters, spore-spewing mushrooms, cabbagepults...), your defensive plants (wall-nuts, spikeweed, potato mines...), your explosive plants (cherry bombs, chili peppers...) and so forth. It’s a race against time, and you’d best be using your brains because they’re what’s on the zombie menu. This game is colorful, cartoony, cheerful, and utterly hilarious at every turn, especially when the zombie dolphins pop up and the watermelons start flying thick and fast. Not only is the campaign mode great, but you gradually unlock a wealth of mini-games, puzzles, easter eggs, and a “zen garden” where you can grow and raise your own plants, stress-free. Plants vs. Zombies has so much replay value that you basically get your money back for buying it, and it is just wonderful....so, so wonderful. I’m sick of the zombie fad, but I’ll never be sick of zombies as long as I can drop giant squash on them.

Lost: The New Man in Charge

The New Man in Charge

Well, hallelujah and slap me sideways. It must be a good day if I get to recap and review Lost one more time! I just got the DVD of Season Six, and it includes a nice little tidbit: a short film entitled “The New Man in Charge” that acts as a sort of coda to the show. It’s only about twelve minutes long, but they’re pretty awesome minutes. No, it’s not terribly helpful in terms of answering any of the questions that the show left us with. But for a Lost fanboy, it’s one more morsel to happily devour and digest.

“New Man” was apparently cobbled together from scenes that were intended to be in the finale, but dropped because they took up too much time and didn’t fit into the narrative flow of things. It takes place off the Island and focuses on Ben, running errands for the titular new man in charge, who is, of course, Hurley. Ben’s first stop is a massive warehouse in Guam where two rubes -- a somewhat twiggy one and a somewhat hairy one -- have been dutifully loading Dharma-brand food onto pallets for twenty years, without knowing or caring where it goes. Helloooooo, mythology! Now, of all the unsolved mysteries in this show, I was perhaps most annoyed by the Season Two pallet drop, which was never mentioned again after it happened. Where’d that huge mound of people chow come from? If it was dropped from an aircraft, how come nobody saw or heard said craft? Well, now we know part of where it came from, and I guess that’ll have to do. We still don’t know HOW the pallet drops occur, but I’m guessing that zapping Dharma grub to the Island is similar to zapping people and polar bears into the Tunisian desert. Mysterious metaphysical forces and all that. Oh, those naughty metaphysical forces!

So, Ben arrived and promptly sacked the bewildered Dharma workers, who were clearly pretty dim. It takes a distinct lack of brain power to work a drudge of a job for twenty freakin’ years, apparently never leaving the warehouse, and not wonder why. But Dharma clearly loves the dimwits and their lack of questions. I loved that Ben is still as shifty and cryptic as ever, even now that he’s a good guy. As is his wont, he dangled vague information like carrots for the poor pallet-pushers to grab at, then showed them the Hydra Station orientation video. Or should I say, showed us the video, as it was clearly paying lip service to the fans. Sadly, the video told us little we didn’t already know. Yes, they were tinkering with the genes of live polar bears. Now can you please stop asking about them??!! Nice touches, though. I liked Pierre Chang’s reference to using aliases, and loved the cameo from the infamous Hurley Bird, hidden inside a cage (and revealed by Chang to be some kind of hybrid species. Nerdgasm!). Also, it was intriguing to learn that Room 23 with its trippy video was used on captive Others whose memories were then wiped. Wow, good thing Alpert and the Widmore siblings never found out about that, or the Purge would’ve happened waaaaaayyyyyyy sooner.


By the way, hats off to actor François Chau for playing Pierre Chang with such wit and gusto over the course of the show! Yeah, I know, the character was never all that complex, but Chau gave such a wonderfully deadpan, tongue-in-cheek performance that made all the orientation vids as entertaining as they were mysterious. Bravo!

So, with that loose end more or less tied up, Ben moved on to the good old Santa Rosa clinic, there to meet with another legendary Lost entity. Let’s all say it together, one more time:

WAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLTTTTTT!!!!

I totally called it in advance, and was so damn happy to see I was right. Poor haunted, psychic Walt, unable to be happy or normal in a post-Island life. His appearance underlined the strange power the Island has over the people it deems important. Walt was suspicious of Ben, of course (it’s hard to be buddies with sketchy weasel-men who do experiments on you in rusty old labs), but so deep was his longing that he accepted Ben’s invitation. Now, we kinda have to suspend disbelief here. How likely is it that a random man can walk into a mental health clinic and be admitted to see an underage patient he’s not related to, and then just up and LEAVE with him? I mean, doesn’t Walt have a legal guardian? Well, maybe Hurley did some Island magic from the back of Ben’s van, where he was waiting to welcome Walt...and offer him a job. Hell, yeah! It’s so appropriate that Walt becomes part of the New Island Order. What could his job title be? Astral Projection Coordinator? Bird Control Officer? Official Dead Person Liaison? Whatever he does, it will be where he belongs.


I loved how Hurley was dressed all in black. Rather different from Jacob, no? Lest we forget, Jacob’s ill-fated brother was always meant to be in charge. If this little epilogue told us anything, it was that things are balanced now, on track. Not perfect, but then, the world ain’t. And neither is Lost. But it’s still damn good, and it’s still damn wonderful to see one last hurrah from these characters. Personally, I feel quite confident knowing that the new man in charge is so laid-back about things, and that he has such interesting sidekicks!

Namaste.

Top 10 Movie Monsters

This particular list doesn’t need much of an introduction, except to say that I love monsters. If I had TV, I’d probably spend way too much time watching certain movies on the Sci-Fi (uh, sorry...SyFy) channel, in which somebody like Casper van Dien goes mano a mano with giant crayfish. I like the classic, plus-size critters. I like werewolves and mummies and demons and such, though I’m kinda sick of vampires and zombies. I’m not sure why these Things That Go Bump in the Night hold such appeal, but monsters have been prowling through the human imagination since we wore mammoth-fur undies, and they’re fun. Especially when conjured up by a special effects crew. Here are my favorite beasties ever to grace the big screen!

DANG-BLASTED’S TOP TEN FAVORITE MOVIE MONSTERS
(Okay, one’s a TV monster. So sue me.)


The Beast of Gévaudan (Brotherhood of the Wolf)
Some of the best monsters are based on half-truth and local legend. Such is the case with the Beast of Gévaudan, the bizarre and tragic predator at the heart of one of my favorite films, Brotherhood of the Wolf. Based on a real-life series of killings that took place in rural France during the 17th century, this monster is one of the most unique creatures I’ve ever seen on film, which earns it tons of points. For much of the movie, it remains unseen, suggested. When we do see it, it elicits a “Whoa!” A hulking quadruped bound in leather and daggers, razor-sharp and vicious and enraged....yet strangely pitiable. This monster was made by man, you see, and serves as a hapless tool for human evil. There’s more to the Beast’s story that I won’t give away (Brotherhood of the Wolf is an absolutely nutso movie, bless its heart), but its death scene is really good. Kind of beautiful, really, with a neat revelation thrown in. Watch it and see! There’s nothing else quite like the Beast of Gévaudan out there.


Demon Boars (Princess Mononoke)
I dunno if these monsters have some basis in Japanese legend or if they sprang purely from the boundless imagination of Hayao Miyazaki, but they’re scary as hell and they rock. Using the power of classic animation, Miyazaki creates a truly nightmarish foe for the besieged humans in Princess Mononoke: giant boars, once noble gods of the forest, now warped and infected. Their flesh transforms into a new form of unholy life, a skin of writhing tendrils than can attack, infect, and absorb, leaving blight in its wake. Cursing all they touch, the demon boars are the opposite of growth and nature, so vile and unnatural that the feuding humans must put aside their differences to defeat this distilled embodiment of evil. These monsters aren’t only scary and unique, but so much is invested in their defeat. Godzilla must be toppled to save Tokyo, but if the demon boars are allowed to run wild, the balance of nature itself will be thrown off kilter, and the consequences could be too devastating to imagine. The scariest monsters are good things turned foul.


Elemental (Hellboy II: The Golden Army)
The Hellboy movies are bursting with cool monsters; Guillermo del Toro has a major fetish for them, and we love him for it. I think my favorite is the Elemental, a pissed-off forest deity that sprouts from a magic bean inside a clockwork egg (isn’t that freaking cool?!) to wreak havoc on the city streets in the faerie-centric second film. This beastie is like the world’s most terrifying chia pet, covered in leaves and tendrils with a head that opens like a flower; it’s beautiful and terrible, and gives Hellboy ample opportunities to be a badass while battling it. Ah, but behind the smackdown is sadness, for the Elemental is the last of its kind, and its extinction is inevitable in the midst of the cold, harsh urban hellscape. Here’s another really poignant monster who gets a really good death scene, which I won’t spoil, except to say that it’s lovely and poetic. Yes, monsters can sometimes be poetic, and they’re sad more often than you’d think. The Elemental fits perfectly in with the themes of alienation and loneliness that form the backbone of the Hellboy adventures, while still being one awesome, car-flinging, concrete-crushing behemoth.


The Han River Monster (The Host)
How does a monster flick get rave reviews from highbrow critics? By redefining monster-hood! The slithery, acrobatic critter that somersaults through this Korean horror/comedy like a hellish Cirque du Soleil performer is everything you don’t except a movie monster to be, and boy is it refreshing! Movie monsters are huge; this one is no bigger than a rhino. Movie monsters lurk in the shadows; this one prances about in broad daylight, charging through crowds of screaming picnickers like it’s having the time of its froggy life. And, in a delightfully pointed twist, this (relatively) pint-sized pest throws Korea into a panic and leads to lockdowns, quarantines, paranoia, and human rights violations that make the humans into the real monsters. The Han River Monster is quite the metaphor for the straw that breaks society’s back, and a sobering sign of our times. But it’s also gross, freaky, and funny. Funnier than you’d think, especially when it’s treating a bridge like its own personal Gold’s Gym. Rarely has toxic waste produced a more interesting specimen.


Judas Breed (Mimic)
Entry number two from Guillermo del Toro, because no monster list is complete without giant bugs. And these are no ordinary giant bug. The Judas Breed is a hybrid insect intended to infiltrate and kill cockroach populations, in order to stop a roach-spread epidemic. Created with good intentions, the “sterile” bugs evolve like crazy, growing to human size and...human shape. We become their prey and they learn to mimic us by folding their wings and standing on their asses, and if that sounds goofy, it’s actually fucking horrifying. That tall, shadowy “person” in the subway tunnel? It’s a bug, and it’s about to eat your face. When an autistic kid starts talking to the bugs by mimicking their own clicking sounds, it’s like a psychotic symbiosis that blurs the line between man and monster. Meanwhile, the bugs are spreading out, their population growing. Soon we really will be prey. Out of all the cautionary parables about playing God, this one makes my skin crawl more than most. Because we have met the enemy and he is us...just with wings, mandibles, and extra limbs.


Mbwun (The Relic)
This one’s kinda goofy, but belongs on this list for the sheer nostalgia factor. The Relic was the first true, bloody, rip-roaring monster flick I saw, at the tender age of thirteen (my parents were a tad film-prudish). What could be better to an adolescent than watching a big, hulking reptile/bear/kangaroo/beetle rip people’s heads off to feast on their brains? NOTHING. I couldn’t care less about the bad ’90s special effects or the silly premise that the thing was some sort of hyper-evolving mutant brought about by a type of fungus, or a South American curse, or something. What mattered was that hapless extras were running around the Chicago Museum of Natural History like corn dogs with legs, tasty SWAT team guys were rappelling through the skylights, and the monster was having a gory ball. Mbwun (also known as Kothoga) wins bonus points for originally hailing from a cool horror/thriller novel (Relic, by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child), and being done great justice in the cinematic version for once! I guess you could say this monster ate my brain too, ’cause I’ve been into film monsters ever since.


Scottish Werewolves (Dog Soldiers)
I can’t quite overstate how much I love werewolves. I’d even consider watching Twilight just for the werewolf scenes. Sadly, movie werewolves tend to be generic hairy lumps that look like neither wolves nor men. Not so in Dog Soldiers! Leave it to an indie Euro flick with a teeny-weeny budget to produce the gnarliest, most badass furry lycanthropes I’ve seen onscreen. These werewolves are literally just muscular guys with fancy wolf masks on, but damn if they don’t look like the real deal, and when they besiege a squad of equally macho soldiers deep within the Scottish woodland, all kinds of red plasma and beastly hijinks go down. It’s not just that they look legit, it’s that they’re actually scary and intense as they prowl through the trees and break down doors. These critters aren’t mindless animals; they’re people under an unspeakable curse who will do anything to satisfy their bloodlust. That makes them formidable foes indeed. Also, kinda sexy. But don’t tell them I said that, because werewolf rape isn’t as fun as the furries want you to believe.


Smoke Monster (Lost)
So, it’s bad enough being stranded on a desert island with a lot of whiny, dysfunctional hotties. There’s also something large and unseen crashing through the trees, making sounds like a New York taxicab, and occasionally turning some hapless victim into person jerky. It looks like a black, sentient mass of smoke, lives in old Egyptian temples, and can peer into your soul to determine if you are a good person. Oh, Lost, why do I love you so much? Maybe because you gave us (among many other things) a very distinct and intriguing monster with which to torment your whiny hotties. For most of the show’s run, the Smoke Monster remained a thing of mystery, a shape-shifting antagonist that could be onscreen at any time, when you least expected it. Is that really your dead brother, or is Smokey about to bash you to death? Who can say? Late in the series, the Monster got an identity and backstory, but everyone liked it better when it was that faceless, formless nightmare beyond the torchlight, implacable and inscrutable. The Unknown we all fear. Jaws would be proud.


The Thing
I’m usually more scared by ghosts and psycho killers than monsters, but The Thing terrified the everlasting fuck out of me and kept me up at night. It’s not that the premise is plausible -- shape-shifting alien lifeform in an Antarctic base, riiiight -- it’s that John Carpenter uses every trick of suspense and anticipation to milk his monster for all it’s worth. Because the Thing can be anyone, the characters and the viewers are sent into a maelstrom of paranoia, waiting for the next gooey, icky, fucked-up manifestation. The severed head with legs. The flesh like melting wax. And the dog...Jesus, that fucking dog! The big, quiet husky that the alien initially impersonates is seriously the scariest dog I’ve ever seen, especially when accompanied by Ennio Morricone’s flesh-crawling double bass chord on the soundtrack. When the dog turns into a snarling, greasy mound of meat and starts murdering the other dogs with barbed-wire tentacles, I may have whimpered and clutched someone. Maybe. The Thing is everything scary, wrong, and unnatural rolled into one horribly adaptable package, and the terror continues up to the very end, when the last two survivors ponder if they’re both still human -- and whether freezing to death might be the preferable option. The Thing put me through the wringer and invaded my fucking dreams. THAT is what I call a horror movie monster.


Xenomorphs (Alien series)
You may have noticed that my favorite monsters tend to be liminal in nature, things that change shape or have no obvious shape at all. So is it really a surprise that I love the ultimate adaptable movie monster, the Xenomorph? These predatory extraterrestrials are so hardcore that geekdom and moviedom alike can’t get enough of them. Are they reptilian? Insectoid? Or just a deadly mass of teeth, acid, and muscle driven by pure hunger? You decide. But over the course of six films, not to mention countless comics, video games, and trashy novels, they have racked up an unbeatable human body count and cemented their place on the altar of monstrosity. Whether it’s one alien duking it out with an undie-clad Sigourney Weaver, a hive of aliens chewing up space marines, or an army of aliens going tooth-to-mandible with the equally hardcore Predators, you just know that the shit is going to hit the fan. Lest we forget, the Xenomorphs procreate by literally raping your face. And then popping out of your ribcage like a hideous second phallus. Maybe they’re a twisted sexual metaphor, maybe not, but what matters is that Xenomorphs freak us out, gross us out, and make us squirm in the best of ways. And yet....when it’s them vs. dumb humans with guns, I root for the aliens! Everyone does! A good movie monster knows how to entertain, and these greasy, gristly guys just love the spotlight. And we love them for it. Hats off to the king...or should I say, the Queen.

The Box

So, a husband and wife are given a box by a stranger. On the box is a button. They are told that if they press the button, they will receive a large sum of money, and someone they don’t know will die. After much skepticism, debate, and nervous pontification, they agree not to push the button.....but the next day, the wife pushes it anyway. Moments later, she receives a call informing her that her husband has died in a tragic workplace accident and she is being offered a widow’s comp identical to the amount promised by the stranger. Anguished, she calls him up and accuses him of lying. He tells her: “How well did you really know your husband?”

It’s like a weird joke with a ghoulish punchline, and it’s the plot of Richard Matheson’s short story, “Button, Button.” Good story. But I’m here to talk about The Box, Richard Kelly’s film adaptation of said story, which starts out the same but then takes a gleeful sideways serve into utter weirdness. Lest we forget, Richard Kelly made Donnie Darko, a film in which a giant demon bunny tells Jake Gyllenhaal to travel back in time and cause his own death, or something like that; a film that sits upon its own golden throne in Dante’s ninth sphere of Cult Movie Paradise. Richard Kelly makes weird, open-ended movies that force you to think, which means they have unforgiving niche appeal. I really liked Donnie Darko and I really like The Box, which got generally bad reviews and was scoffed at for being utterly preposterous. Well, of course it sodding is, people. But at the risk of sounding like a film-student douchebag (I’m not, by the way; my BA is in anthropology), I think y’all are just scared of a film you can’t explain.

Make that a film with multiple explanations and some sobering insights into human nature. The Box heavily references Sartre, who famously wrote that Hell is other people. By golly, he may have been on to something! The victimized couple are played by Cameron Diaz and James Marsden, two very attractive actors who are really good at playing nice. Boy, are they nice. You want to be their neighbors and get invited over for Thanksgiving. And since the film is set in the 1970s, our protagonists come equipped with awesome retro wardrobes, hair, and interior decorating that renders them sitcom-perfect -- except for her mutilated foot, and the fact that he’s a NASA employee who designed the camera for the Viking spacecraft. How intriguing. Into this sort-of-pristine household comes Arlington Steward, a charming and sinister man with grotesque burn scars, played by Frank Langella, who must be engaged in some sort of “charming and sinister” contest with Ben Kingsley. Steward gives the nice couple a box with a button, tells them that if they push it, they’ll get money and someone dies and blah blah. They debate, they’re skeptical, then the wife pushes the button, blah blah mcblah. Then they start getting stalked by zombie-people and uncover elements of a vast conspiracy involving NASA and the NSA and mind control and floating boxes made of water and BBBWWWWWUUUHHH?

I’d better not get into the plot because it contains many trippy surprises and is impossible to briefly summarize anyway. It has a great deal of ambiguity, which may explain the movie’s poor reception. When you sit down to watch a mind-bending thriller, the last thing you want is to be told, “Eh, figure it out for yourself.” The thing is, The Box doesn’t really withhold information. It gives us what we need to know. It just refuses to draw definite conclusions. There are two possible explanations for all the weird shit that goes down. The movie characters, being people of science and rationality, automatically go with the option that makes the most sense to them. But I wonder. Yes, it’s Faith vs. Reason, that ancient debate that fuels so many sci-fi plots these days, including Lost and the Matrix movies, both of which arguably fell victim to the “Figure it out for yourself” virus I mentioned. I was also reminded of The Taking, a sci-fi/horror/thriller novel by Dean Koontz (don’t laugh; he doesn’t always suck), which seems to be about an alien invasion but may actually be about....well, call it the alternative to an alien invasion. I am carefully circling the revelations that The Box has in store, because anyone who hasn’t seen the movie should have the chance to draw their own conclusions. It’s...more fulfilling that way.

So, it’s a well-made movie that, I feel, rises above its preposterousness. But besides that, I’m fascinated by the moral dilemma presented to the viewer, the one Matheson originally gave us in his story. I mean, what would you do if you could push a button and kill a stranger for money? How badly do you need that money? What exactly defines a “stranger”? If you never know who you just killed, how can you know whether to feel guilty, satisfied, paranoid, or anything? The original story implies that we build walls around ourselves, effectively rendering us a stranger to all, including perhaps ourselves. The movie isn’t quite that pessimistic, but it does carry a message about the responsibilites that come with free will. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should, especially when talking about the human race as a whole. But the “human race” is a faceless, generic entity to most people. Even good human beings have an inherent selfishness, a personal bubble to which they assign greater importance than all those strangers out there. It takes real courage to think and act.....outside the box.

You’d push that button, wouldn’t you. I think I would.

I almost wish that Kelly’s Box was more about the ethical struggle and less about sci-fi conspiracies and trippy special effects. Not that I didn’t enjoy the conspiracies and special effects; I totally dig that kind of stuff. But if the movie had devoted more time to the unspoken ramifications, the ethical paradox of the box and its deadly promise, then maybe it would have gotten better reviews, at the very least. It’s not quite ballsy enough to really explore its own themes. But, hey, just touching upon such profound brouhaha is better than nothing. I think if just one viewer is inspired to be a better person by the tale of the box, then that proves this movie has more merit than people seem willing to give it.

Or maybe I’m just talking out of my ass. I do that a lot. What I’m saying is, you should watch this movie. Watch it for the sci-fi, watch it for the groovy ’70s fashions, watch it for James Marsden’s gorgeous cheekbones, watch it because you’re a Hot Topic Goth who masturbates to Donnie Darko every Wednesday night. Watch it for whatever reason you see fit. And then, even if you hated the movie....just think about it a little. Just think about it.

Dahl Goes Hollywood

Roald Dahl is awesome. Can we all agree on this? No matter what he may have been like as a person, one cannot argue with the fact that A) he was a badass pilot and spy during WWII, and B) he wrote wonderfully grotesque children’s books that were free of cloying, sentimental bullshit. Roald Dahl knew that kids are smart enough to enjoy a story with dark themes, loathsome villains, and just desserts. Hollywood, on the other hand, has difficulty grasping this concept, and so the film adaptations of Dahl’s books are a mixed bag. Let’s take a look!

By the way, this idea came from a magazine I read once as a kid...Muse, I believe it was called. Credit where it’s due!


Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971)
Plot of the Book:
Charlie Bucket is desperately poor and lives with his parents and grandparents in a tiny shack. Nearby is a huge chocolate factory, owned by the eccentric and reclusive Willy Wonka, whom no one has seen in years. When Wonka announces that he’s hidden five Golden Tickets inside chocolate bars, and that the recipients of these tickets will win a tour of his factory, there’s a worldwide rush to find them. The first four are claimed by bratty little shitheads; Charlie finds the fifth. Together with his Grandpa Joe, he enters the factory and meets Wonka. The inside of the factory is a limitless place filled with wonders and staffed by a society of jungle pygmies called Oompa-Loompas. During the tour, the other four kids meet amusing and appropriate fates: fat Augustus Gloop falls in a chocolate river and is sucked up a pipe, gum-addicted Violet Beauregard turns into a giant blueberry, spoiled Veruca Salt is tossed down a garbage chute by squirrels, and entertainment junkie Mike Teavee is shrunk in a teleporter. Charlie then learns that, as the one non-awful child, he gets to inherit the factory from Willy Wonka. No more abject poverty!
What the Movie Does:
Well, for starters, the action is moved to America (this happens a lot). Charlie’s father is dead in the film, apparently to generate more pathos. Gene Wilder memorably portrays Wonka as a quiet psychopath as opposed to the hyper, jolly little guy he is in the book. The four brats are about the same, though Veruca Salt’s squirrels are replaced by geese (easier to render with ’70s special effects), and we never see the kids emerge from the factory at the end, so I guess they all died?
A couple “dynamic” plot twists are stuck in: the fifth Golden Ticket is allegedly found by someone else, then turns out to be a hoax. Also, all five kids are approached by Wonka’s rival, Slugworth, who asks them to steal one of Wonka’s new everlasting gobstoppers. At the end, Wonka angrily dismisses Charlie at first (because he and Grandpa Joe drank Fizzy Lifting Drinks without permission earlier), but changes his mind when Charlie returns the gobstopper. Turns out “Slugworth” is working for Wonka and it was all a big test of character.
Oh, and the movie’s a musical. Yep. Plenty of lame songs are inserted, the most infamous of which is the Oompa-Loompa Song, performed by midgets with orange skin and green hair. True, they also sing in the book, but it’s not nearly as insipid. I’m guessing that the song is stuck in your head now that I’ve mentioned it. You’re welcome!
Is It Any Good?
Yeah, I suppose. I mean, it’s become a cult classic. It’s incredibly campy and often slips into cheese-and-syrup territory, which Roald Dahl would not have approved of. Apart from Gene Wilder’s bug-eyed performance, the movie’s missing a lot of the menace that’s prevalent in Dahl’s books; I find it a tad too cute, colorful, and non-threatening. Still, it has its charms and is a good product of its era, for better or for worse. But, seriously, what is UP with that fucking creepy tunnel scene?


The Witches (1990)
Plot of the Book:
A young British boy (whose name we never learn) narrates. After his parents are killed in a crash, he goes to live with his awesome Norwegian grandmother, who teaches him about witches. A real witch, it turns out, is a loathsome creature who disguises herself as a lady in order to kill children. When the boy and his grandmother vacation at a seaside resort, he accidentally eavesdrops on a meeting of all the witches in England, led by the dreaded Grand High Witch. She outlines a plan to snuff all the kids in England by turning them into mice with a magic potion. Our hero is discovered by the witches and turned into a mouse, along with a fat brat named Bruno Jenkins. They escape, and then the boy-turned-mouse and his grandmother plot to steal the potion and sneak it into the witches’ food, turning them into mice as well. The plan works, and all the witches are presumably killed by hotel staff. The narrator is stuck as a mouse, but as the book ends, he and his grandmother are excitedly planning to infiltrate the Grand High Witch’s castle, make more mouse-juice, and get rid of all the witches in the world. Sorry, there’s no sequel.
What the Movie Does:
The movie does some really weird shit. The hero is turned American and given a name (Luke), which makes sense in a cinematic context. The plot’s about the same, with minor changes and a lot of odd editing to hide how bad most of the special effects are. The Grand High Witch is played by Anjelica Huston (an odd choice, since in the book, she’s very tiny), and the Jim Henson folks provide witchy make-up and freaky human/mouse puppets.
Back to the editing. It’s....weird. Off somehow, like a bunch of stuff got left on the cutting room floor. There is, for instance, a bizarre sequence where Luke gets chased around the hotel by witches, and then saves a baby in a carriage after the Grand High Witch tries to push it off a cliff, which makes NO sense as witches are supposedly really careful not to give themselves away. Also, wouldn’t the hotel guests wonder why a kid was being chased by a bunch of women? Just saying. This and other scenes often end abruptly or with an awkward transition. It’s weird.
And then there’s the ending. Don’t fucking get me started on how lame, saccharine, and condescending it is. In the book, the two boys are stuck as mice forever (it’s even implied that Bruno is done in by his unloving parents), and the protagonist realizes he won’t live very long -- but that’s okay with him and his grandmother, because neither wants to outlive the other. They agree to die together. It’s very sad and touching.....and way too downbeat for Hollywood. So in the movie, one of the witches survives, TURNS GOOD (after it’s been established that witches are evil by nature), and changes Luke and Bruno back into boys. I’m usually too busy puking to watch the end credits.
Is It Any Good?
Nope. It has some nice squirmy moments, but for the most part it’s ruined by lousy effects and choppy editing. They got the grotesqueries in there, more or less, but that doesn’t help if the story is dumbed down, which it seriously is. And I despise the ending...did I mention that? I hate it when Hollywood insists on tacking an awkward happy ending onto a story that works much better without it. Dahl was brave to avoid a textbook Happily Ever After, but some studio head was too moronic to honor his decision. Fail.


James and the Giant Peach (1996)
Plot of the Book:
When James’s parents are eaten by a rhino (???), he’s sent to live with his two cruel aunts, who treat him like a slave. One day, a weird old man gives James a bag of magical crocodile tongues, which will totally bring him fame and fortune. He promptly spills them. Then a peach the size of a house sprouts from the aunts’ tree. James ventures through a hole in the peach and finds a group of human-sized talking insects, who are fortunately friendly types. They cut the peach loose and it rolls away (squishing the two aunts to death in the process) and lands in the ocean. When sharks attack, James and the bugs use spider and silkworm silk to lasso a bunch of seagulls and lift the peach into the sky. After drifting a bit and encountering manlike creatures who live in the clouds and make the weather, they wind up over NYC. An airplane cuts the seagulls’ tethers and the peach falls onto the spire of the Empire State Building. James and the bugs become instant celebrities; the giant peach is eaten by children and its pit is installed in Central Park as James’s home.
What the Movie Does:
Actually, the movie is surprisingly faithful; it mostly just adds stuff to the story, and the stuff is mostly cool. The bugs are rendered in stop-motion animation, as is James after he enters the peach. The script gives the bugs more varied personalities (the spider is a femme fatale, the centipede is a brash Yankee, etc.) and eliminates one bug, the silkworm, who wasn’t really necessary anyway. New sequences include an attack from a robot shark (???), a visit to a sunken, skeleton-infested pirate ship to retrieve a compass, and a showdown with a giant rhino made of thunderclouds, which symbolizes James having to face his childhood fears and so forth. Also, the two aunts don’t die, but show up in NYC at the end, having apparently driven across the Atlantic Ocean. They try to get the peach back and even attack James with fire axes (!!!), but are wrapped up by the bugs and hauled off to jail.
Again, it’s a musical, but there are only like three songs and they aren’t too hard on the ears. In fact, the peach-eating song (in which the bugs sing about all the weird foods they’ve eaten and how the peach trumps all for deliciousness) is copied verbatim from the book, with Dahl’s original lyrics put to music. How cool is that?
Is It Any Good?
Yes! It was conceived and directed by the folks behind The Nightmare Before Christmas, and the stop-motion works great with such a bizarre fable. More importantly, it stays true to Roald Dahl and captures his offbeat sense of humor and dark, sometimes nightmarish images. The acting and voices are top-notch (featuring Susan Sarandon, Richard Dreyfuss, and Pete Postlethwaite, among others), and the kid who plays James is just too adorable. I totally recommend this for families with bright children!


Matilda (1996)
Plot of the Book:
Matilda Wormwood is a brilliant, well-read little girl whose loutish parents neglect and ridicule her. She also has a streak of mischief, and “punishes” her folks by playing pranks on them. They eventually send her to Crunchem Hall Academy, ruled over by a vile and sadistic headmistress named Agatha Trunchbull. Matilda makes new friends there, including her sweet but impoverished teacher, Miss Honey. Along the way, Matilda discovers she can move objects with her mind. That’s telekinesis, Kyle! She learns that Trunchbull is Miss Honey’s aunt and has stolen her inheritance -- and, quite possibly, murdered her father. To set things right, Matilda uses her strange power to convince Trunchbull that her murdered brother has returned from the grave. Trunchbull flees forever, as do Matilda’s parents (her dad is a crooked car salesman and the cops finally catch up with him). Miss Honey adopts Matilda and they live happily in a beautiful old mansion.
What the Movie Does:
The book is quite low on action, so the movie “corrects” that by twisting Matilda’s story into a lively “Kid Power” romp. It’s set in America, and Matilda is turned from a quiet introvert to an overly precocious and perky moppet. Her parents are way nastier (in the book, they display occasional affection), but the hilarious/monstrous Trunchbull remains much the same....nothing extra needed for such a pitch-perfect villain.
Overall, the film ups the action and slapstick and dials down the pathos. In the book, Matilda could barely master her psychic power and only used it a couple times, in fairly small ways. In the movie...hoo boy. She flings people and furniture around. She causes playing cards and poker chips to swarm in the air. She singlehandedly reenacts Poltergeist just to fuck with Trunchbull’s head. It is, quite literally, Home Alone meets Carrie. There’s also a random scene where Matilda and Miss Honey sneak around Trunchbull’s mansion, and a pointless subplot in which FBI agents spy on Matilda’s dad. Thanks, Hollywood!
In the midst of all this nonsense, most of the major scenes from the book remain intact. What’s missing is the tragedy. I mean, Matilda is an abused child in a broken home! The book understands that this is a sad thing for a small girl; the movie plays her parents’ awfulness purely for yuks. The book also places Miss Honey in a dire situation: she lives in a bare shack, cooks food on a camp stove, and is basically starving. In the movie she has a picture-perfect cottage that looks way cozier than the creaky mansion she’s supposed to inherit. Anything that might disturb or sadden is carefully stripped away.
Is It Any Good?
Meh. It’s definitely aimed at young viewers who love to watch smart kids triumph over dumb adults. It’s sometimes funny, often exciting, always upbeat. But it’s dumb, really dumb, and it utterly misses the point of the book, which is that A) children have more to say than you think, and B) there are bad people in the world and it’s up to good people to keep each other safe from them. The movie is ultimately condescending and too precocious for its own good. So I can’t endorse it much.


Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005)
Plot of the Book:
See above.
What the Movie Does:
Hear me out before you crucify Tim Burton’s version. This movie strives to avoid being a “remake” of the 1971 film, and in terms of faithfulness to the source, actually comes out on top. The location of Wonka’s factory is unspecified, but Charlie and his family are British and his dad is alive and well and working in a toothpaste factory, just like in the book. His parents and grandparents are better defined, and the other four ticket winners are wonderfully unpleasant (the kid actors are having a ball, you can tell). Even the brats’ parents are pretty funny.
Again, we get a unique spin on Willy Wonka; Johnny Depp plays him as a deeply neurotic and socially incompetent weirdo who has no idea how to interact with human beings and is literally paralyzed by daddy issues. The factory is all CGI fireworks and the Oompa-Loompas are played by one single guy, digitally copypasted a million times. Oooookay. They perform quirky musical numbers that probably made Danny Elfman jerk off as he was writing the music, but the lyrics are once again taken straight from the book. Everything proceeds along faithful routes, the squirrels are in there, and there are even hints of Dahl’s original undercurrent of menace. But just hints.
Is stuff added? Of course! Again, the fifth ticket is found and then debunked as a hoax (why would both films add this? Dunno), and Wonka himself gets lots of flashbacks; we see the origins of his factory, the chocolate palace he builds for an Indian ruler (also from the book), his first jungle encounter with the Oompa-Loompas, and -- most prominent -- his troubled childhood under an overbearing dentist father. There’s another false crisis at the end, only this time it’s Charlie who turns down factory ownership after learning that his family isn’t invited along. Wonka sulks for a bit, then manages to reconcile with his own dad and all is well. The movie has a tidy ending with the Bucket family moving into the factory, whereas the book ended with all of them flying around in Wonka’s glass elevator, thereby setting up the sequel that Dahl eventually wrote, in which they go to outer space and fight evil aliens. Seriously. Look it up.
Is It Any Good?
I think it’s okay, though some will disagree. People seem affronted that this movie exists at all, as if the cult appeal of the 1971 film is being spat upon. But, dammit, Burton’s movie is not based on the 1971 film. It’s based on the book, and it does a fine job of adapting it. Burton’s signature goth/quirky/candy-coated aesthetic does get a little tiresome, but I found his Chocolate Factory to be entertaining, with a streak of cynicism that Dahl might have liked. So there!


Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)
Plot of the Book:
Mr. Fox lives in a cozy hole with his wife and four children. Every night, he steals from three loathsome local farmers: Boggis, Bunce, and Bean. When the farmers discover the Foxes’ home, they first try to shoot Mr. Fox (he escapes, but loses his tail), then attempt to dig the hole up (the Foxes outdig them), then put all the local animals under siege. Starvation seems imminent, but the clever Mr. Fox enlists his kids and his friend, Badger, and they dig a tunnel system all the way to the three farms, stealing food from under the farmers’ noses. All the animals have a huge feast and plan to dig a whole underground township and use the tunnels to steal all the food they can eat. Meanwhile, Boggis, Bunce, and Bean are sitting stupidly around on the surface, waiting.....
What the Movie Does:
I don’t even think this is a film for kids. It’s directed by another master of quirk, Wes Anderson, and he pretty much tosses out everything but the bones of the plot. In his world, the animals are the middle-class bourgeoisie: Badger runs a law firm and Mr. Fox is a frustrated newspaper columnist in a tie and slacks. The animals have a comfy middle-class world that’s far removed from the rustic humans, who are clodpoles and buffoons to a man. All this is depicted in Autumn-tinted, old-fashioned stop-motion animation that looks crude but is oddly endearing and gives our furry heroes an impressive level of expressiveness.
The book was very short and the movie has to add a ton of material. Mr. Fox rouses the ire of the farmers after returning to his old, thieving ways; Mrs. Fox deeply disapproves; they lock horns affectionately; etc. There’s only one Fox kid, Ash, who’s going through a massive crisis of adolescent angst and is jealous of his overachiever cousin, Kristofferson. The movie continues the plot past the book’s ending, with the animals’ victory feast being interrupted as the farmers flood the tunnels with hard cider and wash everyone into the sewers. Kristofferson gets captured and the critters mount a surreal, Ocean’s 11-style caper to get him back. In the end, the animals are living in the sewer system, Mr. Fox has found his way into a supermarket, and everyone is embracing cozy, materialist, middle-class bliss, just like you and me. Only, you know, with talking animals. I honestly can’t tell if Anderson and co. are trying to make some kind of statement, or if they’re just faffing about. There’s also music by Burl Ives.
Is It Any Good?
I confess to loving this movie, though I can’t defend it as a faithful Roald Dahl adaptation. It basically has nothing to do with the book other than the basic concept (humans dumb, woodland creatures rock), and is more an experiment in subversive social and cinematic satire. Or something. Like I said, I have no idea what goes through Wes Anderson’s little mind. But the animation is way too cool, the voice cast includes George Clooney, Meryl Streep, and Michael Gambon, and the overall visual aesthetic makes me very happy. If you’re a scholar of Dahl (or would that be a “Roald’s Scholar,” ba-dum tish!), you’ll be pissed. If you hate Wes Anderson, sorry. Everyone else, watch this movie because it rocks.

Bonus Feature: Make This Dahl Movie!
Not all of Dahl’s books have made it to the big screen. As long as Hollywood insists on adapting everything in sight, they really should take advantage of the author’s oeuvre. I would totally support the following film adaptations, assuming they don’t fuck them up.
The BFG: A little girl is kidnapped by a Big Friendly Giant and they team up to stop all the other, nastier giants from snacking on people. They do this by enlisting Queen Elizabeth and sending out the Royal Air Force. Seriously. Doesn’t that sound cool? This was actually made into an animated TV movie, but fuck that noise; give it an epic, big-screen treatment! Get somebody like Andy Serkis to play the BFG and have Helen Mirren play Her Majesty again. Helen Mirren would be all over this; you know she would.
Danny the Champion of the World: A boy lives with his awesome dad in an old gypsy caravan. He discovers that his dad is a poacher, and they hatch a plan to steal all the pheasants from a nasty, arrogant local lord. This one’s free of the fantastical but still pretty neat and would work as an indie production. Find a perky British newcomer to play Danny, and for his kindly and mischievous dad....a cool and somewhat strapping character actor. David Thewlis? Viggo Mortensen? Ewan MacGregor if he were a little taller? Hell, even Gerard Butler has dabbled in kiddie films. The director should be whoever made Waking Ned Devine.
The Twits: Monkeys vs. evil old people. That alone should be an awesome selling point. I can think of plenty Actors of a Certain Age who’d totally don makeup and prosthetics to play the ghastly Mr. and Mrs. Twit (Meryl Streep again?), or you could make this one an animated film. Dreamworks would do it....though I’m not sure we should let them, since they’d cast fucking Jack Black as the monkey. Ugh.
Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator: Make the sequel, Tim Burton! Blast Willy Wonka and the Bucket family into outer space! You can do a little rewriting to get around your tacked-on happy ending in the first film (maybe Wonka and the Buckets test-drive a brand-new glass elevator and it goes awry?), and just think of who you could get to sign on as the goofy U.S. President and his cabinet, who freak out when the elevator docks at the world’s first space hotel. Clooney? Penn? De Niro? Walken? The mind boggles! How can you go wrong? Quick, before Freddie Highmore gets any older!
The Witches: Remake it, and fucking get it right. Spend more than five minutes on the special effects. Restore the proper, bittersweet ending. Judi Dench as the grandmother. Are you writing this down, Hollywood?