Rubber

Director: Quentin Dupieux
Writer: Quentin Dupieux
Released: 2010
Cast: Stephen Spinella, Roxane Mesquida, Wings Hauser, Jack Plotnick

[Caution: Spoilers ahead.]

Rubber is neither as good as it could have been, or as clever as it consistently reminds the viewer that it thinks it is. But it's definitely the best movie about a homicidal, psycho-kinetic tire I'm likely to see anytime soon, and by far the most interesting and engaging existential study I've seen since Dellamorte Dellamore.

Which makes it all the more frustrating that there's really no story.

Early in the piece, the film's Lieutenant Chad breaks the 4th wall to inform us that things in movies sometimes happen for no reason. "In Oliver Stone's JFK, why is the president suddenly assassinated by some stranger? No reason. In the excellent Chain Saw Massacre by Tobe Hooper, why don't we ever see the characters go to the bathroom, or wash their hands like people do in real life? Absolutely no reason."

He assures us that he could go on for hours with more examples, and that all great films, without exception, contain some element of No Reason. Because life itself is filled with No Reason. "Why can't we see the air around us? No reason. Why are we always thinking? No reason. Why do some people love sausages and other people hate sausages? No fuckin' reason."

This isn't a hard sell, coming as it does from a cop who's just climbed from the trunk of a car that drove slowly down a dirt road, purposely weaving back and forth, knocking over and destroying 14 kitchen chairs. And while his examples of No Reason are so simplistic that you can't help but feel he's missed the point entirely ("In The Pianist, by Polanski, how come this guy has to hide, and live like a bum, when he plays the piano so well?"), you also get a strong feeling that he doth protest too much, preparing the audience for a movie that has little regard for storytelling techniques, be they traditional or non-traditional.

Skip the fact that this tire suddenly and inexplicably comes to life, because we wouldn't have a movie, otherwise. But why is there a group of spectators watching the events of the movie unfold from a desert hilltop?

No reason.

Why is the tire's instinct to kill anything that comes across its path?

No reason.

Why does it seem to fall in love with Roxane Mesquida's character?

No reason.

Why are the spectators forced to watch all this, starved for days, then fed a poisoned turkey?

No reason.

Why should we care, other than the fact that it's completely out of the blue and totally unexpected?

No fuckin' reason.

Rubber was interesting enough at first. "Roger Corman by way of Samuel Beckett" is how one review put it, and that's honestly what made me want to see it. But I also wanted a story. And a bunch of things happening for no reason isn't a story. It's reality. But when reality suddenly consists of a tire making people's heads explode, you'd better believe I want a reason.

[Good]

Zombie Town

Director: Damon Lemay
Writer: Damon Lemay
Released: 2007
Cast: Adam Hose, Brynn Lucas, Dennis Lemoine, Phil Burke

Never have I seen a Zombie movie so mind-numbingly awful as Zombie Town. It may, in fact, be the worst Zombie movie I've ever seen. And I've seen both Zombie Lake and FleshEater. It's so bad, you can't even make fun of it, but can only sit, slack-jawed, tears welling in your eyes, praying for death as it plays out before you.

I know Zombie Town is a low-budget effort, and I'm taking that into consideration. The fact that it was shot on video bothered me for about five minutes, but I got over it. And for the money they had - or didn't have - the effects were surprisingly gory and effective. It's not these I had a problem with; It's the story.

Zombie Town opens on a lone redneck running through the woods. What's he running from? We never find out.

Seriously.

In his haste to get away from whatever it is, he trips over a body that he recognizes as "Brett". Who's Brett? Again, I can't help you.

Then he's attacked by a Zombie. Although we never actually see it. Is this what he was running from? Doubtful, as the attack comes from the opposite direction to that from which he was running.

That's a great number of unanswerable questions in the first 77 seconds of the movie.

But nevermind all that, because, meanwhile, in a nearby cabin, another lot of rednecks interrupt their monthly discussion of Proust to argue whether or not one of them still wets the bed. During which argument, they are attacked by the guy who we previously saw running through the woods.

The infection makes its way into town and the typical Zombie hijinx ensue: Zombie bites dog, dog bites old lady, old lady bites Bingo partner.

And so on. And on. And on.

Why does the Sheriff lock the bleeding, infected man with the broken leg in a jail cell, rather than take him to the hospital? Where did these slugs come from all of a sudden? Are they a side-effect of the Zombie virus, or the cause of it? Do they come from another planet, or are they the result of eco-terrorism? And who the hell was Brett?

The cast isn't even interesting enough to be a distraction. Adam Hose plays Jake LaFond, the hero of the piece. He has one less facial expression than Keanu Reeves and delivers his lines as though the script specified "monotone". Brynn Lucas is his recently-returned-to-town ex-girlfriend, Alex. She's a marine biologist who's apparently afraid of ducks. This never comes back around. And Dennis Lemoine is Randy, the alleged comic relief. He's what passes for suave in this town, if suave is a big, dumb, hillbilly Seth Rogan.

In some parts of the world, Zombie Town is known as Night of the Creeps 2. Don't be fooled. Apart from the murky plotline involving slugs, there is no connection to Fred Dekker's classic. Stay away from Zombie Town at all cost.

[Blah]

Night of the Comet

Director: Thom Eberhardt
Writer: Thom Eberhardt
Released: 1984
Cast: Catherine Mary Stewart, Kelli Maroney, Robert Beltran, Mary Woronov, Geoffrey Lewis

I remember not thinking very highly of Night of the Comet when I was a kid. The story of two teenage girls, free to shop to their hearts' content after the tail of a passing comet has obliterated every living thing on the planet that had not spent the night in a steel structure, didn't hold much in the way of excitement for a thirteen-year-old boy. Years later, and - one must hope - much, much wiser, I must concede that, while it didn't grab me at the time (I was an ardent devotee of the Slasher genre, so if it didn't feature a madman in a mask hacking up oversexed teens, it wasn't for me), it wasn't bad. But, I must stipulate, neither was it as good as it could have been.

Just before Christmas, a comet that hasn't been seen in 65 million years ("The last time this comet came, the dinosaurs disappeared" proclaims the poster, in the worst tagline since The Texas Chain Saw Massacre's "What happened is true... now the motion picture that is just as real") passes close enough to Earth to bathe the sky in a pinkish/orangish hue. Those who weren't out in the open when the comet passed, but also weren't fortunate enough to have spent the night in a garden shed, for example, or the back of a semi trailer, or making it with some guy in the steel-lined projection booth (!) of the local movie theater, these people slowly dehydrated, went mad, and - as would follow - turned to cannibalism.

Our Heroines, Regina (the always awesome Catherine Mary Stewart) and her annoyingly oblivious little sister, Sam (Kelly Maroney), aided by a friendly trucker named Hector (Eating Raoul's Robert Beltran), are left to fight off not only the Zombies but a team of scientists who, while safe in their underground desert bunker on the titular Night, are now slowly turning into Zombies themselves because - get this - someone left an air vent open. Eggheads! The scientists, led by ever-reliable Geoffrey Lewis, are rounding up non-zombified survivors and draining their blood in the hope of finding a cure.

Okay, there's some potential there, I grant you. Post-apocalyptic world, zombies, evil scientists: all earmarks of a great B-Movie. And Night of the Comet sticks close enough to its B-Movie roots not to take itself too seriously. The downside is, it sticks so close that it can't take itself seriously enough to transcend those roots and become something more, something relevant, and preferably, something scary.

What few scares the movie does offer are limited to John Carpenter-like music stings and shadows moving quickly in front of the camera. The Zombies are so few and far between as to barely be a worry, popping up only when the Laws of Screenplay Structure demand it, and once the girls get their hands on a couple of MAC-10 submachine guns, that worry becomes a distant memory. There's no real danger, here; no concern that Regina and Sam are ever in any serious peril, even once they meet up with the evil scientists. And without that conflict, you're just killing time, waiting it out until the inevitable happy ending.

Night of the Comet is the kind of movie best viewed with a heavy dose of nostalgia for the '80s. Because, even though it is a fun film - and I admit, I had a good time watching it this time around - without the big hair, the bad fashion, the neon lights, and the cover of Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, this '80s teen version of The Omega Man doesn't have much else going for it.

[Good]