Drag Me to "Drag Me to Hell"

I love reading Wm. Berger’s blogposts about horror movies. They all sound so awesome, although I don’t know if that’s because they really are great films or if it’s just that Wm. B’s fine, fine aesthetic sensibilities make everything he presents sound better than it is. I can’t watch them to decide for myself, since I can’t get foreign films where I live upstate. When I want to see a horror movie, I have to go see whatever’s playing at the Regal E-Walk 13 over by the Port Authority Bus Terminal.

A couple of weeks ago that was Drag Me to Hell, the new Sam Raimi movie starring the guy who plays the Mac in those Mac/PC TV commercials. I dragged Dr. Colby along to see it with me because I thought, “Well, it’s Sam Raimi, how bad can it be?” Pretty bad, as it turns out. Really bad, actually. In fact, the more I think about it, the more bad I think it was. It was like if Disney made horror movies. It was like watching a 99-minute-long commercial for a new coat. After we saw it, Dr. Colby told me that Rom people are unhappy with the portrayal of Gypsy stereotypes in the move, and I’m not surprised. Heck, I was offended by the portrayal of the Plucky Iowa Farm Girl stereotype. Not to mention the Mysterious Hindu stereotype and the Mexicans in the Back of a Pick-Up stereotype and the Rich Wasp Parents stereotype and, I dunno, the Sacrificial White Goat stereotype. On a scale of zero to $12.50 (the cost of a movie ticket here), I’d give it maybe $2.50. Bad.

On the other hand, I went to see The Toxic Avenger Musical, and really liked it. And usually I hate musicals. I never understand those radio commercials for big Broadway shows, where they give you a sample of someone screeching (“Ah could be his lahf's com-pan-yun … anywheh but wheh we a-h-h-h”) and then expect you to pay $110 to go hear more. But we sort of got enmeshed into going to the TAM, which was $50 and fun. The play follows the movie pretty faithfully, and the music was written by a guy who plays keyboards with Bon Jovi (okay, but it’s an improvement over Andrew Fucking Lloyd Webber), and the wee little cast of 5 or 6 people can all sing and dance and act—incredible!—and they work SO hard to entertain the audience that eventually they even won over Sluggo. There were plenty of tasteless blind jokes, and various drag characters, and the sets were great … it was all good. So if you have the dough and you like plays and musicals and what-not, I definitely recommend The Toxic Avenger Musical.

Finally, a friend lent us the DVD of the movie Black Sheep, a rather comical “horror movie” about genetically altered flesh-eating zombie sheep in New Zealand, written and directed by Jonathan King. Who? Yeah, I never heard of him. And they didn’t have the money for all sorts of computer CGI stuff, so they used the most genius puppets and models and all, done by Weta Workshops (who did the Lord of the Rings movies). Lots of sheep farting and blood and explosions. It was quite jolly, and Sluggo and I enjoyed it, and it didn’t cost any bloody $12.50 either. Jonathan King wins, and Sam Raimi loses, and that’s all there is to it.

Thanks for reading my blogpost this time, and don’t forget to make up your Summer Fun List before it’s too late.

Comments

[jojo]

"Sam Raimi". not "Sam Ramie". I didn't think the movie was that bad. Sure, it didn't accurately portray social types, but the simple set-up allowed me to care for the main character. Damn it!

[WmMBerger]

Bronwyn, you're right, there was enough about this movie I liked that I probably could make it sound great in print. Honestly, give me a pair of black, hairy goat legs outside the door and I'm basically ready to go. I'm a sucker for horror motifs if done fairly well. I did lean over to my friend Mike during the Rom funeral scene and say, "Wow. This is a little offensive." Then I thought, how different are the depictions of Gypsy life in Emir Kusturica films, really?

[lane]

$12.50 for a movie!!!!!! 95% of the movies in theatres these days aren't worth $3.50. . . like you said heh.

[Bronwyn C.]

Hi, Listener JoJo--
Thanks for the spellcheck. That was because I wrote the first half of the post elsewhere and copied and pasted it in, and didn't notice when my fine, fine, superfine spelling corrector made Raimi (director) into Ramie (an Asian perennial plant of the nettle family). If you noticed, it was spelled correctly in the last half of the post, which was written directly on Typepad. Consarned modern software!
I didn't care for the main character at all--I couldn't WAIT for her to get hers. Plus, that whole envelope business wasn't even a surprise, although maybe that was good because it let me know that my fondest hopes would eventually be realized.

[Mike H]

fully disagree with you about drag me to hell. but that's ok!

check it out everyone...it's a HECK of a lot of fun. totally silly...as a sam 'spiderman 3' raimi movie called 'drag me to hell' should be!

black sheep, as stated above...is also quite a laugh!

[23 Wolves]

"A Lamia - Only summoned by Gypsies for their Dirtiest Deeds!"