90's American Horror Part Eight

BRAIN DEAD
(1990)
Dir - Adam Simon
Overall: GOOD

The Bills Paxton and Pullman together at last.  Genre screenwriter/director Adam Simon does not have the most impressive of resumes, (the infamous Carnosaur and the screenplay for The Haunting in Connecticut are among his lackluster credits), but his work here is solid.  Taken from an initial script by frequent Twilight Zone writer Charles Beaumont that was original commissioned for Roger Corman some two plus decades earlier, Brain Dead does indeed act as a classic, topsy turvy, reality-morphing bit of psychological horror that is toyed with enough to not take itself that seriously.  It is impressive how the film leisurely moves along up until a point where it relentlessly begins to mess with the heads of both Pullman's main character and the audience.  The cliches of lobotomies, identity confusion, nightmares, and threatening loony bin doctors and orderlies are given free reign here, but it is a fun ride watching reality persistently get morphed in both funny and freaky ways.  For his role as the corporate sleazeball to Pullman's victimized doctor, Paxton is ideal as he wisely never comes close to going over the top as he is wont to do.

H.P. LOVECRAFT'S: NECRONOMICON
(1993)
Dir - Brian Yuzna/Christophe Gans/Shusuke Kaneko
Overall: MEH

A combined effort from Brian Yuzna, (Society), Christophe Gans, (Silent Hill), and Shusuke Kaneko, (several in the Gamera franchise), with the great Tom Savini on board for practical effects and make-up and boasting no shortage of recognizable faces such as Jeffery Combs and David Warner, H.P. Lovecraft's: Necronomion wildly attempts to be sort of a be all end all film adaptation from the much cherished author.  Unfortunately, it comes off far too hokey to properly do this.  Many horror films around the late 1980s and early 90s particularly had an unmistakable "direct to video" quality and the B-movie-ness here is oozing from every frame.  The effects are practical which is nice, but they are also way over the top and anyone who thought what Lovecraft's stories were severally lacking in was oozy globs of gore and goo, this is the movie for you.  With a few exceptions, the cast predominately plays it cool, but the incessant musical score and big, bold effect shots kill any possible potential to create a properly eerie mood.  The scripts for each story are pedestrian, with plot holes, flashbacks within flashbacks, and time travel thrown in, apparently since the framing story takes place in the 1940s and the last segment is set in modern day.  So regrettably, more dumb than fun.

EMBRACE OF THE VAMPIRE
(1995)
Dir - Anne Goursaud
Overall: WOOF

Leaning hard into the fluffy and melodramatic aspects of blood-sucking undead cliches, editor Anne Goursaud's directorial debut Embrace of the Vampire doubles as that direct-to-video movie where Alyssa Milano takes her clothes off.  On that note, it is arguably the most direct-to-video movie that the 1990s ever produced, laughably cornball in its every nuance.  Three different screenwriters are credited and judging by the results, it appears that not a one of them has ever gotten laid, been to a bar, been to a college party, had friends, or talked to real people.  Spandau Ballet's bass player Martin Kemp, (who is a dead ringer for The Karate Kid Part III's Thomas Ian Griffith), licks a door at one point, shoots lightning from his hand inexplicably, and chews the scenery as the nameless, hopelessly romantic head vampire who narrates a never-ending series of platitudes that seem as if they were plucked from a twelve year-old goth's diary.  The plot is as horrendously schlocky as the presentation which is saturated in syrupy keyboard music as Milano plays a virgin who gives into her wild side, lots of people seem horny, and nobody at any instance behaves like an actual human being.  It is as D-rent as sleazy B-movies get, with so many hackneyed components that any viewer would die of alcohol poising while playing a drinking game centered around spotting them.