Notes from the Last Drive-In: S3E3 – Bride of Re-Animator and Next of Kin
Welcome to Notes from the Last Drive-In. Normally these go up on Mondays, but some real-life engagements delayed my chance to view the films and write the review. This week we cover two 1980s films with 1989’s Bride of Re-Animator and 1982’s Next of Kin. Two wildly divergent films paired up, splattery pulp and an artsy slow burn, but welcome nonetheless. It’s another movie night on Shudder with the world’s greatest host. Let’s dive in, shall we?
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Bride of Re-Animator (1989)
Opening: The character reversal of the City and the Town
With Bride of Re-Animator the luster of the original film shines brighter, but it’s not as though Bride is a dull film. It’s effective, technically sound, and features many things to love. But it is the first of what would be many lesser sequels – still fun, but incapable of quite capturing what worked so well with the 1985 original. Most of the pieces are there, and the film largely succeeds in its ambition to follow up on Herbert West and Dan Cain’s exploits. Yet something is missing. The film fell under the direction of Brian Yuzna and a script cobbled together quickly by Yuzna, Rick Fry, and Woody Keith. As a whole it is serviceable, but there is a distinct lack of the late Stewart Gordon. one wonders how things might have turned out if production wasn’t rushed to get a sequel made for a tax credit.
Despite the quibbles one may have with the fairly obvious Frankenstein-riff of a plot and the lesser writing and direction compared to the first, much of the film largely works and works well. The performances are excellent, with Jeffrey Combs and Bruce Abbott returning as West and Cain, respectively, the comical and ridiculous return of David Gale, and the fantastic performance of Kathleen Kinmont as the titular “bride.” The film is also technically strong, with some interesting tricks behind the camera at Yuzna’s direction and masterful effects by Screaming Mad George. Yet… the compromises are one too many for the film to truly live up to the original. No Gordon, a rushed script, and a planned finale that would never be filmed. It’s frustrating, really.
Most of my enjoyment of the first half of the night came from seeing what Jeffrey Combs is up to, as he was beamed onto the set with the socially-distance mannequin. We really should see if the mannequin has a name, honestly. The interviews do feel a little flat as a whole due to social distancing – they certainly lack a certain spontaneity that we’ve enjoyed in prior seasons, but they’re still quite fun. It helps that Jeffrey Combs is a perfect Drive-In guest: a living legend with some surprises, such as his slipping in and out of his redneck roots. We also received a number of fun anecdotes about the shoot, Combs’ continued friendship with Bruce Abbott, and hints about where the series could have headed. Of course, Combs is still game to do another Re-Animator film. Who else could play Herbert West, really?
Joe Bob Briggs generously gave Bride of Re-Animator the four-star treatment. I think Joe Bob has been a bit generous as of late, perhaps slowly losing his mind from cabin fever. It’s a good movie, but is it a four-star film by Drive-In standards? I am not so sure – the original Re-Animator? Undoubtedly. Bride, not really. As for me, I’d give Bride of Re-Animator four out of five Cthulhus.
(4 / 5)
Best Line: “He’s a wife-beater, Dan, use the gun!” – Herbert West being helpful
Next of Kin (1982)
Opening: The Dyson Airblade
Next of Kin is an obscure, slow-burn Australian horror film, and yes, despite the wishes of the director, it is horror. As Joe Bob said last week, we know horror when we see it. It is probably the slowest burn on The Last Drive-In, but as someone who enjoys when horror takes its time, I found myself enjoying it a great deal. It is not without problems, however, perhaps grasping too ferociously at prestige, the film ultimately offers short bursts of mood between needlessly labored plot revelations. It’s fine, a good effort for first-time horror director/writer Tony Williams. He wasn’t long for the movie industry, ultimately turning to the advertising industry, but Next of Kin is like a tantalizing peek at what could have been an impressive film career.
The film follows a woman, Linda, who inherits an old folk home who sees a series of deaths of the elderly residents that evokes something from her past. It is a film of family secrets and the threat of madness that muddies the waters of what is real and what isn’t, yet the film doesn’t really commit to the supernatural vs. reality angle much at all. It is a haunted house story where the haunting is all in the mind and the threat is a strange, not necessarily satisfying reveal. The performances are solid, with Jackie Kerlin selling her tormented character with much skill – only to leave the film industry altogether. A strange turn on what could have been a promising career, but one mustn’t begrudge her choices.
Ultimately, much like how Jackie Kerlin left the film industry and Tony Williams transitioned to the ad industry, the film itself feels like a strong start with a sudden stop. So much potential lays within the bones of the story, but it gets traded for plodding pace, a non-sensical revelation, and an out-of-place explosive finale. So much potential and style just sort of squandered. Joe Bob discusses this film in the context of a rediscovered gem, a limited release that was given a new lease on life after a name drop from Quentin Tarantino. Yet, I can’t help but think the value of Next of Kin is in some admittedly stylish directorial choices and the sheer curiosity of it all. It isn’t quite Ozspoitation, nor is it totally inscrutable for the art-house crowd. It’s an odd film from Australia, albeit one that causes me to ponder the question of “what if?”
Joe Bob’s assessment of the film puts it in the four-star territory. I find myself disagreeing, heavily. What works in the film works, in spite of the issues with the plot and what feels like a desperate bid for cultural excellence. I can’t see myself giving this film more than three out of five Cthulhus.
(3 / 5)
Best Line: “Sex it up, baby!” – Joe Bob Briggs on making films, the AMERICAN way.
Haunted MTL Drive-In Totals
As always, we have our own Drive-In totals to share!
- 8 months later and 10,000 miles away
- “30 Fucking Iguanas”
- 4 Effects Companies
- 2 Heads in a Bucket
- 20 Appliances on Kathleen Kinmont
- Dead Dog
- Nudie Pen
- Hitchcockery
- Spontaneous Carpentry
- Gratuitous G’Days
- Cat Calling
- Michigan J. Froggery
- One-Act Frankensteinery
- Lizard Stuffing
- Gratuitous Calculation
- Heartwarming Letter Reading
- Super Bingo Hall Freakout
- Superman Joking
- Disney Joking
- Yuki Count: 3
- Season 4-Star Count: 5
- Silver Bolo Award: The Losers Club
- Darcy Cosplay: The Bride
Episode Score
Ultimately, not the finest night at the Drive-In, but still very fun. Who doesn’t love movie night? That being said, Herbert West carries the night, thanks to a game Jeffery Combs, who is as delightful now as he seems to have always been.
(3.5 / 5)
See you all next week for more Drive-In fun. I’ll be live-Tweeting the show from Haunted MTL’s Twitter account again (thanks for filling in this week, Payne), so be sure to give us a follow there.
We’ve now reached the end of Fallout, season one. As I mentioned during the last review, I was heartily concerned that this show, like so many others, was going to drop the ball at the finale and ruin an entire season.
Thankfully, that wasn’t the case. This episode was everything it needed to be and more.
Let’s discuss.
The story
We begin our story with Maximus returning to the Brotherhood of Steel compound. He has a head, which he is claiming is the real head of Wilzig.
I don’t know why he thought that was going to work.
Of course, it doesn’t. The elder cleric is about to kill Maximus until Dane says that they hurt their foot.
Because of this, the Brotherhood is sent out to get the head. Or rather, what’s inside of it. They head to the city run by Moldaver. This happens to be the same place Lucy and The Ghoul are headed.
There, Lucy does manage to find her father. What she ends up finding is so much more than she wanted to find.
What worked
The first thing I have to discuss is how seamlessly the storylines of the series combined.
Each of our four main characters has been on their own journey. Lucy is trying to save her father. Maximus wants to become a knight. The Ghoul wants to find his family. Norm wants to know what’s going on in Vault 31.
I sure wasn’t expecting all of these stories to come together in the way that they did. And to preserve the ending, I don’t dare say more. I will only say that yes, all four stories tie in perfectly with one another. By the end, two characters end up having the very same goal.
As I hinted before, I did not see the twist ending coming.
Yes, we might have guessed some things from the last episode. We of course guessed that Lucy’s dad was involved in some nefarious and probably sci-fi way. But the way this story twists at the end is nothing short of serpent-like. Which is why I cannot go into too much detail here. If you haven’t seen it yet, you need to experience it blind.
Finally, I can give the Fallout season finale the most important praise I can ever give a finale. It did its number one job, getting us excited for season two. We have answers, but now we have new and more exciting questions. And even better, we have a desire to see vengeance done.
What didn’t work
Now that the season is done, though, I can bring up something that bothered me through all eight episodes.
I don’t buy Lucy and Maximus’s relationship.
Maybe because it’s rushed. Maybe because the two actors don’t have a lot of chemistry. Maybe it’s because I’m not sure even now either character could tell you a single thing about the other. There is just no spark between the two. So their love story feels tacked on. I honestly feel like their love story could have been removed from the show entirely and it would have no negative impact.
I also didn’t buy Dane’s confession. This is a minor spoiler, but it comes up early in the episode. Dane confesses that they hurt their foot so that they wouldn’t have to go into the wastelands.
And at first, I kept expecting Maximus to thank them later. I honestly thought that they were just lying to save Maximus’s life. But no, as it turns out, they were not.
But it just doesn’t make sense. The motivations don’t jive. I honestly think it would have been better for the story if they had lied to save Maximus’s life.
At least then there’d be one other Brother of Steel who had some nobility.
In the end, this first season of Fallout was everything I could ask for. So far as I can tell, it was everything fans of the Fallout franchise could ask for. There wasn’t a bad episode in the bunch. Honestly, the only real complaint I had was that the season was so short.
I’ll be counting down the days to season two, and I hope you’ll be joining me then. Because war, war never changes.
(5 / 5)
If you like my work, you can check out my latest science fiction/horror novel, Nova, launching on May 17th. Pre-orders are available now on Amazon.
Episode seven of Amazon’s Fallout is the penultimate episode. This is often when a series goes off the rails and starts to mess things up. After being burned so often recently, I was apprehensive when this episode began.
Thankfully, this was a fear that did not come to pass. And so far, Fallout’s finale is doing just fine.
The story
A lot happened in this episode, so we’re just going to skim over some of the more important storylines. We’ll start with Lucy and Maximus, in Vault 4. Lucy has discovered what she believes is a secret collection of monsters. But of course, it turns out that it’s simply people that the vault dwellers discovered and are trying to help heal. But her meddling around was enough for them to kick her out of the vault. With two weeks’ worth of food and water, of course.
But Maximus assumes they’re going to do something much worse. And so he steals their power coil to fight through the perfectly innocent people and save Lucy.
Meanwhile, we dive further into The Ghoul’s past, when he was still Western star Cooper.
After attending a Communist meeting, he’s approached by Lee Moldaver. She suggests that Vault Tech is hiding something, something terrible. And she tells Cooper that his wife Barbara knows more about this than she’s letting on. Moldaver gets Cooper to bug Barbara’s Pip Boy, and listen in on an important meeting.
Poor Cooper hears far more than he wants to.
War, war never changes.
What worked
I would like to first point out that this was one of the funniest episodes so far. I mean, it got incredibly tragic and sad by the end. But it also had some great laugh-out-loud moments. This should be a surprise to no one, with such an array of comedians guest starring. Chris Parnell was in the last episode as well but is now joined by the incredibly funny Fred Armisen as DJ Carl. This is of course not his first foray into the funny and spooky world, as he also played Uncle Fester in Wednesday.
Most of what makes this episode funny is the character’s understated and deadpan responses to wild situations. When Maximus returns the energy coil and is greeted by a simple thank you. When Thaddeus gets an arrow through his neck, and slowly realizes that hey, he might be a ghoul. These were hilarious because they could have been truly dark moments. But because this world is so dark, and the characters have already been through so much, they’re simply done. They take all of this in stride because of course that’s what’s happening. It’s par for the course for them.
On the other hand, we’ve finally seen the full extent of The Ghoul/Cooper’s past. And it’s so much worse than we could have imagined. I assumed that he’d lost his beloved wife and daughter in the atomic blasts two hundred years ago, somehow not dying with them and instead turning into a literal and figurative monster. The truth is so much worse. I’ll do my best not to spoil the ending. But I will say this. There is nothing more painful than mourning someone and hating them at the same time. And it’s easy to see how Cooper turned into The Ghoul. That sort of pain could drive anyone mad.
This balance between comedy and tragedy is one of the reasons why this episode worked so well. It’s one of the reasons why the series is working so well. It manages to combine the core tenets of theater in a way that never compromises the strengths of either. The eventual downfall of Thaddeus is a great example of this because it’s both tragic and funny. We’ve seen what happens to ghouls, and it’s a horrible end. But as he’s hardly been a sympathetic character, we can all get a good laugh at his predicament as well.
The sheer amount of good old-fashioned gore doesn’t hurt either, of course.
What didn’t work
All that being said, there was one thing that bothered me about this episode. And it was the reveal of Vault 4’s big secret.
Honestly, I was expecting the Vault 4 storyline to go way darker. I wanted it to go way darker. While I’ve never played these games myself, I know enough about the story to say that these vaults are not the bastions of safety and morality that they have so far been portrayed as. And while that has certainly been alluded to, we haven’t seen it.
We haven’t seen the depravity in these vaults. And it’s there. But maybe we just haven’t gotten to it yet.
In the end, The Radio did exactly what it needed to do. It set us up to have most of our questions answered in the season finale. And I can’t wait to see how it all ends.
(4 / 5)
If you like my work, you can check out my latest science fiction/horror novel, Nova, launching on May 17th. Pre-orders are available now on Amazon.
Amazon Prime’s Fallout has continued to be a suspenseful delight. And with the last episode’s dramatic cliffhanger, I was certainly looking forward to this one.
Thankfully, it did not disappoint.
The story
We start our story with Lucy and Maximus waking up in a decontamination room in Vault 4. They’re welcomed guests, once they’re done with decontamination.
Vault 4 at first seems very much like Vault 33 to Lucy. She’s surprised, however, to find that a lot of people who live there are actually from the surface. And the people who live in this vault are, well, a bit mutated. Their overseer, named Benjamin and played by the hilarious Chris Parnell, has just one eye in the middle of his face. Some people have extra limbs or missing ones. And yet it’s clear that everyone’s living together in peace and companionship.
At least, that’s what it’s supposed to look like. There is, after all, the matter of the weird cult the surface dwellers seem to have formed. And, the small matter of the vault level no one is supposed to go to. It should come as no surprise that, of course, that’s exactly where Lucy finds herself before the episode is over.
Of course, this episode wouldn’t be complete without checking in with the Ghoul. And his part of the story is, honestly, more compelling.
We see him apprehended by people referring to themselves as The Government. And while he appears to be a prisoner, it’s clear soon enough that he’s the one in charge.
Far more compelling are his flashbacks to his past. While his wife, Barb, is starting to be more secretive, he learns more than he wants to about Vault Tec. He also learns that the Communist party in Hollywood might know more about what Barb does for a living than he does. And it’s clear soon that she never wanted him to know.
For good reason.
What worked
I first want to draw attention to the excellent way we are learning about the Ghoul. As we learn more and more about his past, we can see how he’s become the monster he is today. It’s clear that once upon a time he had everything he could want. A lovely home, a family he lived for, and a successful career. And he lost all of that, even his dog. And with those losses, he lost his humanity in more ways than one.
But I also think we’re seeing signs that his humanity at least isn’t as lost as he thought it was.
On a lighter note, I loved Maximus’s response to the vault. While he’s apprehensive at first, he is swept away by the welcome basket. He’s lived his whole life hungry, barely surviving, and suddenly he has food. Good food. Caviar and oysters. He has a warm robe and TV and a safe place to exist. It must have been like stepping into a fairy tale for him. And while it wasn’t exactly helpful for Lucy, it’s completely relatable that he decided to sink into a chair and have a snack in front of the TV for a while.
What didn’t work
While this episode was mostly good, I do have one complaint. When Lucy is first meeting with Overseer Benjamin, we see him accidentally drinking a cup of coffee that has gotten moldy.
Now, this makes perfect sense in our world to convey someone too busy and forgetful to clean up old mugs. But it’s hard to fathom someone living in a Vault in which every resource is carefully monitored, letting something like coffee go bad. It’s a small detail, and it was funny. Also more relatable than I’d like to admit. But in this instance, in this world, it was jarring.
So far this season has been intense. There’s a lot of intrigue and mystery. There’s a lot of high emotions. And there’s a lot on the line for everyone. Maybe, for one character, more than we’ve ever realized before.
Good thing we still have two episodes to discover what’s happening.
(4 / 5)
If you like my work, you can check out my latest science fiction/horror novel, Nova, launching on May 17th. Pre-orders are available now on Amazon.
