More Human than Human

I have accepted the fact that I am a flake and, as such, my dedication to any of my given resolutions is subject to rampant and destructive waffling.

Or, I... flake. On things.

It is because of this realization that I no longer feel so bad about, over the course of the summer, not only not watching many films but also no writing a single review for any that I have watched so far, and instead have been content to simply view and appreciate, which has its own quiet dignity to it. Sometimes you don't need to dissect the butterfly to appreciate its beauty.

However, I have also accepted the fact that I am something of a linguiphile, and I find immense satisfaction and, indeed, pleasure in the creative use of language. My cat is named Potato. She's been acting like the mother kitty to our two new baby kitties, so I have been calling her Mama Papa. I find this immensely amusing, probably to an irrational extent. I like listening to rap (mostly my brother and his friends) for the same reason, they just say things sometimes that are beautiful in the simple, elegant, and often horrendously offensive way they're said. t

Finally, I have realized that it would take something like the latter to shock me out of the stupor of the former, and in coming to said realization I have decided to go ahead and get back into the swing of things with writing reviews (also convenient since classes will begin again the 29th), all inspired by coming up with a word last night that I can't wait to use.

Make of that what you will.

So yes, sometimes we shouldn't bother intrusively inspecting these works of art, sometimes the appreciation and witnessing is enough, and these things of beauty should not be scrutinized and, in doing so, destroyed...

But if you're going to gut something, it may as well be something ugly.

The Devil's Rejects

With his inaugural effort House of 1,000 Corpses, Rob Zombie (musician, icon, director, and living-dead guy) convinced pretty much everyone who hadn't been paying attention that he likes dead people. A lot.

And he really didn't spend any time convincing anyone of really anything else. We all left understanding that he really enjoys dead people, and the various states that they find themselves in, and the various ways in which they find their way to those various states. He spent no time telling us about life, love, democracy... just that sometimes people die, and sometimes people kill, and sometimes those things happen in ways that make your eyes scream into the back of your skull with horror (born of disgust, not fear) until the images stop.

Basically, the boy loves those old campy slasher films, for which Texas Chainsaw Sequel serves as the grizzly and circulated crown jewel. Underneath the dazzling carnage of Chainsaw lays an entire lexicon of films for which it serves as only the people-friendly pubic face of what is, in fact, a wholly disturbing genre. Alternately humorous and ghastly, these films are appreciated by the cinematic illiterati for their violence, on-screen brutality, and richter-status cringe factor. Go see pretty much any zombie film made by an Italian. Go see some of the early George Romero. Go see I, Zombie, for God's sake. Texas Chainsaw, while no doubt canonical in its notoriety, is not so through virtue of being the worst of the bunch. If nothing else, the fact that Rob Zombie's tribute to it and its kind outdoes the genre in almost every aspect (outdo, here, being of a separate quantitative value than any other usage may be) shows House of 1,000 Corpses to be the penultimate homage that it is.

This does not, however, mean it's good.

The genre of slasher flicks is peppered with good and bad titles. The quality of films often offset by the publics lack of a stomach for such fare is varied and not easily measured. It is a scattered and inconsistent denomination in terms of artistic vaildity, but it's clear that the quality inherent in this work, when quality is even available to be found, is not the major draw of these works, regardless of its frequency in wandering in and out of these efforts.

The draw is the morbid, grizzly, nihilistic execution of not only plot but very nearly every single character not possessed of a horrendous physical deformity of sneering maniacal grin. The draw, ladies and gentlemen, is the slaughter, and that is obviously the attraction these films held for our Mr. Zombie.

This is the film he created. He made a slasher flick. Probably something that, in the eye of history, will be seen with some degree of quintessentiality, but a slasher flick nonetheless. He did exactly what he set out to do, did a fine job doing it, and made the exact movie that he wanted to make with no concessions, no pretense, just a love of the content and the form.

He made the exact movie he wanted to make. He just wasn't trying to make a good movie.

Indeed, almost by definition (but not quite) a concentrated consolidation of all things slasher-esque is going to come out seemingly void of artistic expression (outside of affected "disturbing" imagery) and completely lacking in any plot structure worth speaking of. Sure, Rob got to have his little homage, and a fine little goregasm it was, but at the end of the day it was a shitty movie, and he can't get around that.

The Devil's Rejects, on the other hand, is Rob's poorly-thought-out Silence of the Lambs meets Deliverance meets Identity-to-a-certain-extent; complete with gory devices that were invented to make you cringe.

In... all those other movies... which Rob loved.

The problem is that this film isn't a tribute. It isn't a consolidation of any kind. Rob legitimately tried to make an actual film, complete with real characters and an actual plot and an arc that can be followed from start to finish as the continuation of his previous film and the inevitable end of these characters we've spent so much time with.

And therein lies his downfall.

Rob doesn't know how to make a movie, guys. Rob barely knows how to breathe anymore, if his stage performances are any indication. Rob knows how to mimic, which he showed he could do quite well when reflecting the likes of Romero and Hooper, but he has no idea how to put anything on the screen other than recycled sprints of brutality which, to be honest with ourselves and our jaded generation, in a world of Museums of Death and live streaming video of beheadings, isn't that brutal.

Am I freaked out by Tiny? No. I saw him in Big Fish, and he was delightful. Am I frightened of the ex-albino who decides to cut off a man's face and wear it? No. Lecter did it better, and for a reason. Hell... I lived through that sweet little atrocity in a comic book, and even that was more graphic than this weak excuse for a Halloween mask. Am I supposed to care that everyone's name after a Groucho Marx character? Because I'm never given a reason to.

And, finally, am I supposed to appreciate the use of the phrase "Tutti-Fuckin'-Fruity" eighteen motherfucking times in a row?

Because I just don't, Rob. You can not make films. Not everyone can. Let me qualify that, most people can, but most people shouldn't. You are among these. Stick with metal, quit smoking while there's still time, give Spyder a call before he completely burns out of your memory, and quit saddling me with strangely foreboding glimpses of your wife's ass. No one cares.

Better yet, I don't care. And I'm the one that matters.

...

This update was so long in the making. No time at all. New job, end of summer, will fill in the appropriate details just as soon as oh who am I kidding no one reads this thing who gives a shit.


I wrote this entire thing just to use the term "goregasm," which I invented. Judge me as you must.