Troma Tagged Articles at Cinematical
Bousman Wants to Troma-tize us with 'Mother's Day'
Filed under: Horror », Deals », Distribution »
Wow, what does Darren Lynn Bousman's mom get for her special day? News that her son is remaking Charles Kaufman's Mother's Day, a 1980 exploitation horror flick from Troma that follows the hilarious misadventures of two brothers whose mom likes to watch them rape and murder women. Wait, did I say hilarious? Sorry, I meant icky and effed up. (But that doesn't mean I'm not going to Netflix it.) And no, it's not an existential and tripped-out treatise on love and mortality a la Charlie Kaufman. Charles Kaufman wrote and directed Ferocious Female Freedom Fighters, directed and produced Sextasy, and wrote Squeeze Play. He also has uncredited roles in Mother's Day as a cocaine addict and Squeeze Play as "Man with Popcorn in his Nose."Brett Ratner Wants to Produce a 'Mother's Day' Remake? (Really?)
Filed under: Comedy », Horror », Remakes and Sequels »
Ah yes, Charles Kaufman's Mother's Day. A fine vintage of 1980 sleazoid cheese that was absolutely one of the "dare you to watch it" horror flicks from my childhood. (My friends had such an aversion to explicit gore. What kind of twelve-year-olds was I pals with?) The Drano scene. The TV smash. The filthy mess, the incessant slobbering, the omnipresent threat of grungy rape. Such fun. It was actually one of Troma's earlier efforts, back when they made bad flicks by accident instead of on purpose. But there's no denying that Mother's Day is a sick and twisted little puppy, and a flick that any serious horror fan should definitely check out...Especially because Brett Ratner wants to do a remake!! Whaaaaat? Yes. According to Shock, Ratner will produce and Saw-maker Darren Lynn Bousman is quite interested in the director's chair. And feel free to toss writer / producer Franck Khalfoun into this crazy mix. (He did that P2 flick with Alex Aja last year, and apparently has a remake of Silent Night Deadly Night in the works.) Details are slim at this early stage, but to be honest ... my opinion of Brett Ratner just raised a few points. Who knew he was a fan of such awesome crap?
Jeffrey M. Anderson's 400 Screens, 400 Blows - Poultrygeist
Filed under: Columns », 400 Screens, 400 Blows »
I noticed that Lloyd Kaufman's Poultrygeist (subtitled Night of the Chicken Dead) has finally emerged in theaters (currently playing on 1 screen). Kaufman is the president of Troma, a production company and distributor that has survived as an indie for over 30 years, mainly due to salesmanship. By any count, they have been responsible for at least 150 movies, and Kaufman himself has over 200 on his resume. Anyone who has ever frequented a video store has probably come across titles like Blondes Have More Guns (1995), Cannibal! The Musical (1996), Chopper Chicks in Zombietown (1991), Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger Part IV (2000) (and, indeed, the entire Toxic Avenger series), Class of Nuke 'Em High (1986), Femme Fontaine: Killer Babe for the C.I.A. (1994), Killer Condom (1996), A Nymphoid Barbarian in Dinosaur Hell (1991), Rabid Grannies (1988), Sgt. Kabukiman N.Y.P.D. (1991), Surf Nazis Must Die! (1987) and Tromeo and Juliet (1996). They have also distributed such nuggets as Brian De Palma's The Wedding Party (1969), Samuel Fuller's Shark! (1969) and Dario Argento's The Stendhal Syndrome (1996).
New On DVD - Harry Potter 4, Howl's Moving Castle, Jarhead
Filed under: New Releases », DVD Reviews », New on DVD », Home Entertainment »
- Breaking News - Hong Kong action director Johnny To delivers this watchable Woo-alike about a police force that loses the support of the public when a robbery goes bad and is covered by a local news program. The set pieces are pretty tight, even if the drama and the statement To tries to make about the power and responsibility of the media doesn't fully come through.
- Free Enterprise: Special Edition - A self-effacing turn akin to Marlon Brando's in The Freshman and Pauly Shore's in Pauly Shore Is Dead is William Shatner, sending up the cult of personality that has followed him since the original Star Trek series ended its five year mission two years early in 1969. When fanboys Rafer Wiegel and Eric McCormack meet their boyhood idol, he is far from the super-cool man for all seasons they have long worshiped. He's bent on staging a one-man musical version of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, a great running joke that culminates in the brilliant payoff that is the Shatner/The Rated R rap duet, "No Tears For Caesar". Writer-director Robert Meyer Burnett has created a love letter, not just to Trek, but to anyone who has ever loved anything with fanatical passion, and this long-overdue 2-disc treatment gives it the respect it was not afforded when it was first released in 1999. Check out the Pop-Up Video style trivia track, which annotates the geekery, new special effects, the making-of feature Where No Man Has Gone Before, and the unaired TV pilot, Café Fantastique, which features the real fans who inspired this smart, hardy-har-har trek. A sequel, My Big Fat Geek Wedding, has been listed on the IMDB for nearly 3 years now, and Mindfire Entertainment's website features a rudimentary mention of it, though no firm details are available as yet.
- Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: Special Edition - Death, and the gloomy heft that comes with it, visits Hogwarts in the fourth and most satisfying installment in the ongoing series so far. When an evil thought vanquished literally rears its ugly head again, Harry (Daniel Radcliffe), Ron (Rupert Grint) and Hermoine (Emma Watson) team up to expose it. Like the overwhelmingly dark Revenge Of The Sith, this is the first to bear the PG-13 rating (for "sequences of fantasy violence and frightening images"), though its decidedly down ending makes it feel more like The Empire Strikes Back. It is not unreasonable to expect studio Warner Brothers to keep their three leads on through Harry Potter and the As-Yet-Unwritten-and-Untitled Year 7 Story. This, of course, is despite the fact that they will be in their early 20's by then, but let us not forget that at least one of the 90210 kids was practically eligible for Social Security by the end of that run. Even at 157 minutes, the book has still been truncated, but it is doubly encouraging to know that kids will know what is missing and will sit still for that long in order to be able to go on smartly about it. The second disc is chock-full-o' extra goodies, and is available in full- and widescreen editions. A single disc version is also available.
Vintage Image of the Day: Native American Strathairn
Filed under: Comedy », Vintage Image of the Day », Oscar Watch »
Again, I owe Alamo Drafthouse big-time. The theater chain has been advertising its Oscar Night parties, which will include embarassing clips of Oscar-nominated actors from their early days. The clip they show in their ad is a spoof of the old Mazola commercials where a lovely Native American woman extols the virtues of maize. In the spoof, however, it's a Native American man ... played by David Strathairn. And when he says "maize," Willie Mays runs out of the nearby cornfield. It's a far cry from Strathairn's Oscar-nominated performance in Good Night and Good Luck.
Where in the world did Alamo dig up this clip? An in-depth look at Strathairn's filmography provided some clues, and I figured out the rest. Strathairn played an Indian guide named Weejun in the 1985 comedy When Nature Calls, made in the days when the Zucker brothers had a heavy influence on comedies. It's a Troma film, which should tell you all you need to know. The site David Strathairn Online has a summary of the movie along with many more photos. (The movie is in color but the only photo I could find, sadly, was black-and-white.)
Over the next week, I'll try to find more early, interesting photos from Oscar-nominated folks and share them on Vintage Image of the Day. But I am not sure I can top Strathairn as a member of the tribe Ka-O-Pec-Tate. He's definitely paid his dues.
Jeremy Renner Wants To Be An Avenger
Directors We Love: Jim Jarmusch
Indie Roundup: 'Sweetgrass,' 'Clarkworld,' 'Broken Embraces'
Shelf Life: Fight Club_thumbnail.jpg)
Watch: Famous 'Matrix' Scene Re-Created with LEGOs
_thumbnail.jpg)
