Sorry, this movie sucks

Better Late Then Never

Am i the only one who thinks........Average?

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

I blame it on my mother: she recited poetry by Edgar Allan Poe to me when I was a kid and told me scary stories when I went to bed each night; I came to treasure the chills that a good Horror story, well told, could invoke. Then came George Romero and NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. It was a game changer, an uncompromising, brutal depiction of Life in these so-called "united" $tate$. Fright Films had suddenly EVOLVED into something Other than what they had been- and at the helm was Romero, co-writing and directing it all. NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, with its documentary look and feel, ventured into uncharted territory (and, ironically considering the number of rip-offs it has inspired, no one else saw Fright Films as an opportunity to comment on The State of Affairs in this country) (not until John Carpenter came along, anyway). Romero became my Hero, and when it was announced that he would be producing a Horror series for television, I began submitting scripts as fast as I could write them. (In my arrogant ignorance, I'd already submitted a script for a sequel to DAWN OF THE DEAD... Two movies made me want to MAKE movies: John Carpenter's HALLOWEEN and George Romero's DAWN OF THE DEAD.) While none of my scripts for TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE were ever used, I WAS lucky enough to get a kindly rejection from Romero himself. I'd sent him three issues of a self-published prose magazine I'd written and illustrated and he wrote back: "Some of the pieces are really fine." Coming from the man who gave us NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD and DAWN OF THE DEAD, this was Praise, indeed! My nieces and nephews were weaned on Romero's movies. Just a few hours ago, I read that Romero died yesterday. The shock hit me first, followed by the pain that can only come when a knife has pierced the heart and entered the Soul. I tried to tell my wife, but talking was all but impossible; I went and sat in the car, numb and sick to my stomach, and cried off and on. Romero was a Hero of mine, one of only a handful of people in this life who've inspired me to try harder, to try to do something other than just sit and watch the World pass by; but his passing has taken the wind out of my sails. I'd hoped to finally meet him face to face at a Horror convention later this year. It's hard to believe that I now live in a world WITHOUT George Romero. I'll never get to shake his hand and joke with him. And I'll never again hear my Mother lulling me to sleep with a softly-whispered Tale of Terror.Damn, what a day.

"Two Evil Eyes" is a compilation of two horror shorts that take different approaches to two familiar ideas, without the greatest of results.The first segment, directed by George A. Romero, is the old "evil people kill guy, dead guy comes back for revenge, the end" story he did in one of the Creepshow movies. It also featured in a "Tales From the Crypt" episode about a black mortician.I always found these types of stories annoyingly underdone and unfinished. It's like a start and an end, but no middle. There is never an attempt to explain the hows and whys of the spectral appearance. Not that everything needs an explanation, but these stories just need something more. I find them really lazy.This time, Romero (after "Creepshow") does try for more, but in a weirdly noncommittal manner that doesn't come to anything. When the guy is supposed to be dead, frozen in an ice chest by his gold digging wife and doctor, he apparently speaks to them from beyond the grave about ghosts he has met on the other side. His mouth doesn't move, we just hear the voice. The gold-diggers make sure he's dead with a more forthright execution, and THEN he comes back, muttering something about how the ghosts on the other side are trying to take over his body. I believe he gets put down for a third time, but then spectral shapes circle around the doctor's bed, and it's time for the next short movie.The whole concept of the dead man encountering resistance on the other side, and they are the ones who precipitate his zombification, had promise to create something markedly different than the bog-standard story outline I described above. Romero's heart didn't seem to be in it, though, or perhaps he just wasn't the man for the job. His horrors, whatever they are, are of THIS world, with generally a real world evil either at fault, or as a backdrop. He isn't interested in the world beyond the veil. The dead man communicating to his killers needed to be handled in a much more engaging way than him merely talking without talking. A particularly shocking dream sequence, for example, could have been a better way of communicating the terrifying unreality of someone being dead, but not quite dead enough.The second segment was better, though not by much. The handling wasn't quite as pedestrian, but nevertheless was fairly confusing. Argento's raison d'etre is the giallo genre; ultra-violent murder whodunits with red herrings, multiple suspects, heroes caught on the wrong side of the law. You generally lose track of the finer details of the plot, but this can work as it conveys the depths of the mystery the hero is stuck in. If you're having a hard time with the details, how must they be getting on?For a more straightforward horror story like "The Black Cat", however, it's more of an annoyance that the story doesn't seem anchored to anything; even Keitel's performance is a bit all over the place. The tale of a man apparently driven insane by an unkillable black cat, Keitel's typical gory, POV-shot murder of his wife (this is Argento, after all) didn't feel necessary to the story, of explicable based on what came before. After that we descend into the usual clichés of a man trying to cover up murder while neighbours and students call his house. He didn't seem crazy enough. The detail of the cat having a patch of fur in the shape of a gallows is the kind of literary point that only works on paper - like the dead guy talking without moving his mouth in the first story. The filmmakers needed to find better cinematic ways of showing these things, and showing how these things affected the characters.Without the stories on hand, the effect was really any one's guess, but I can only assume we would've got it if we'd read, rather than watched them.

"Two Evil Eyes" is something of an anthology, consisting of a mere two parts based loosely on Edgar Allan Poe tales (although my understanding is that the film was intended to have more notable directors attached). In the first film, a couple deals with a frozen man who refuses to stop talking to them. In the second, a man and his girlfriend have a rocky relationship and his intent to end it is thwarted by a black cat.George A. Romero's half is rather bland, nothing amazing to speak of and almost made me fall asleep (though I was heavily intoxicated on Scoresby Scotch by this point, so sleep was immanent). Adrienne Barbeau appears, which was a treat for horror fans who enjoyed her in other films ("The Fog", for example). Romero is a nice guy and a talented guy, but his genius is overstated and this film just further stresses that point. While he may be remembered for zombies (his original trilogy of "Dead" films is awesome), he has just as many flops and failures. This can join that list.Luckily, the other (second) half was directed by Dario Argento and starring Harvey Keitel ("Reservoir Dogs") in a beret. While I should have been more sleepy at this point, I perked right up with Argento's well-paced story and Keitel's erratic behavior (which never seems to get old no matter how many films he comes across the same). This part is based on Poe's "Black Cat", although the connection is only very minor for the bulk of the story. Compare this to other incarnations, and you've still got a solid movie. I thoroughly enjoyed Stuart Gordon's interpretation of "Black Cat" (and may say it is the best), but this did nothing to take away from Argento's vision.I would have to be sober in order to more properly analyze this film. But, I can say this: the Romero part was boring and the Argento part was not, just as I could have predicted. Since the two halves have nothing connecting them, at least as far as I could tell, I would still say this is a movie worth owning. You could skip to the second half and be in the presence of a great work of art. Of course, you should watch the first part, too, but I don't believe it will get a lot of repeated viewings. (Also appearing: Julie Benz, in her first acting role, and Tom Savini.)

This two-part film was a project initiated by Argento, who invited Romero to make an anthology together in which each would direct his favorite story from the celebrated horror author's work. Incidentally, the fact that both these stories had already been incorporated into Roger Corman's own Poe compendium, TALES OF TERROR (1962), renders this a semi-remake of that film! The resulting mélange is tolerable but rather unsatisfying as a whole – it must be said, however, that both directors' careers had already started slacking by this point. Romero's decision to adapt "The Facts In The Case Of Mr. Valdemar" reveals perhaps why he feels such a strong affinity with the zombie subgenre; still, the results here are pedestrian and curiously uninvolving – though the zombie moans are decidedly creepy. The cast includes Adrienne Barbeau (ex-wife of John Carpenter, a contemporaneous genre exponent) and E.G. Marshall (who, memorably, had played an insect-hating businessman in a previous anthology Romero had directed by himself – CREEPSHOW [1982]).Even if it's an image of the undead Mr. Valdemar which made this film's poster, Argento's segment – yet another adaptation of "The Black Cat" – is actually more highly regarded; still, despite boasting some of the director's trademark visual flair, the segment is generally heavy-handed and overlong. Harvey Keitel brings his method training to the characteristically expressionist Poe landscape; this clash of styles lends the proceedings a welcome air of black comedy – especially in the star's openly hostile relationship with the ill-fated titular creature. It also provides irrelevant inserts of gory detail since Keitel is a crime-scene photographer named Rod Usher (Argento must have had his Poe stories mixed-up at this point!) where the murder victims, appropriately enough, have expired in the sadistic fashion typical of the author's work – including an unlikely and cumbersome pendulum device. There's a nightmare sequence, too, in which Keitel finds himself in medieval times and suffers an excruciating death lifted from the notorious CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST (1979) – and, needless to say, we're treated here to the usual cat-meowing-revealing-a-body-hidden-behind-the-wall ending! Martin Balsam appears as an elderly nosy neighbor of Keitel's, but his contribution doesn't amount to much.Pino Donaggio's score is most effective during the closing credits sequence; responsible for the gruesome effects in both segments is Tom Savini, a Romero regular (with the half-putrefied kitten at the end being a particularly inspired creation).