Movies Seen Recently: Trench 11, Tombstone, Freddy vs. Jason

Trench 11 (2017) – I don’t know if anyone expected “bunker horror” to be a full-on horror subgenre, but here we are.  At least this one moves a little from the peak of the bell curve by having it set in World War I rather than II.  (So the German bad guys are not Nazis! Although at least one was apparently just waiting for the party to come along.)

With the Allies having pushed the Germans back past the Arbonne in the latter days of the Great War, British intelligence wants to explore an odd German underground construction.  Two British officers and their Canadian tunneler (who’s more or less the protagonist), accompanied by three American soldiers because the area’s under American control, make their way into the plank-walled tunnels beneath the German trenches and find…

Okay, who said “zombies”? No cheating!

Oh, they’re not technically zombies in the undead sense.  The crazy German wunderkind was experimenting with a heartworm-like parasite which would invade the frontal lobes among other organs, rendering the victim animalistic and violent (more of a 28 Days Later pseudo-zombie), and when the Germans withdrew, they sealed many of their experimental subjects into their secret facility. Now, not only have the Allies ventured in and unsealed the place, but the Germans are on a mission back to try to detonate the self-destruct explosives that malfunctioned when they left… exept the crazy wunderkind wants to rescue his experiment, not destroy it.

A fair little entry in the subgenre, and the practical effects are good enough that the uncommon appearance of CGI is disappointing.  Fun fact: The tunneler protagonist is played by Rossif Sutherland, son of Donald and half-brother to Kiefer (why yes, it is Canadian-made).

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Tombstone (1993) – It had been so long since I saw this, all I could remember was Kurt Russell screaming, “You tell ’em I’m comin’, and Hell’s comin’ with me!”  As befits a Western epic, this movie is as much Wyatt Earp’s self-aggrandizing legend creation as it is documented history, further massaged into a cohesive narrative. And given its troubled production (the original director was fired after a month, the replacement director had two days of prep time, and Kurt Russell ended up doing a lot of the directorial duties behind the scenes), it’s truly surprising that it’s as good as it is. Just yesterday I saw a car with an “I’m Your Huckleberry” window decal.

Fun fact: Wyatt Earp was 29 at the gunfight at the O.K. Corral.  Kurt Russell was 42 when they shot this. But I guess if the 49-year-old Jonathan Roumie can play the early-30s Jesus…

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Freddy vs. Jason (2003) – This came out a full nine years after Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, and also long after I had burned out on the whole Elm Street franchise, which is why I never bothered watching it until right now, as I’m plowing through the whole shebang. (As an interesting side note, when Wes Craven was toying with making New Nightmare, one of New Line Cinema’s carrots/sticks was, “Well, if you’re not going to make your Elm Street movie, we’re gonna go ahead and make a Freddy vs. Jason movie.” And then they still made it.)

The premise steals part of its concept from the Candyman franchise as well, in that Freddy Krueger has been purposely forgotten by the good people of Springwood (who bear no resemblance to the Springwood of Freddy’s Dead), and if there’s no fear of him, he’s got no power. So since Freddy somehow knows Jason (they usually get together on Friday nights with Michael Myers for pizza, maybe?), Freddy impersonates Jason’s mother, calls him back to life (because that’s what Jason does), and sends him to start carving teens on Elm Street, because Freddy knows that any slasher murders that take place there are going to be blamed on Freddy, not Jason. (Funny that Elm Street is literally within walking distance of Crystal Lake.)

So really, it’s a Friday the 13th movie for large parts of its running time, which means that our cast of teenage fodder is even less likeable than they would be in an average Elm Street movie. And let’s not ignore the twenty-minute segment in the middle which takes place at a rave in a cornfield, because throwing a little bit of Children of the Corn couldn’t hurt, right?

The one word that encompassed the whole feature for me is “unnecessary.” They took two beloved but played-out franchises and squeezed just enough out of the husk of each to cobble together one more weak-sauce feature. I would rather have seen Freddy with Abbott and Costello than this.

(And since I always remark on the Freddy make-up… At least there was more texture to it this time, as opposed to the smooth-as-wax look it was getting in Freddy’s Dead. But it’s still a far cry from the glory days of Elm Street 2-4.)

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Abandoned movies:

Stryker (1983) – Even by the standards of Cirio Santiago, Roger Corman’s go-to Philippines-based crank-’em-out director, this is a notably bad movie. The script is from the “and then, and then, and then” school, the cinematography screams “Couldn’t be arsed!”, and the editing supports a diagnosis of crippling ADHD. Halfway through, I said to myself, “You know, you don’t HAVE to finish…”