http://badmovieplanet.com/duckspeaks/index.php Reviews by Zack Handlen. Thu, 15 May 2008 00:29:49 GMT http://backend.userland.com/rss092 chris@stomptokyo.com chris@stomptokyo.com en SOURCE: Buy This The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson SCREEN: Buy This Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, directed by John S. Robertson COMPARE/CONTRAST: Alan Moore once wrote that the world needs new heroes. The old ones, he argued, were no long relevant; too much of their exploits have been exposed by time, now seen in the light of modern psychoanalysis and cultural empathy to be at best obsolete and at worst, actively harmful. What, then, of villains? If the newly recognized complexity of the human mind defeats the standard square-jawed protagonist of old, what becomes of the antagonist, that mustache twirling ... http://badmovieplanet.com/duckspeaks/reviews/2007/dr-jekyll-and-mr-hyde/ SOURCE: Buy This The Shining, by Stephen King No parent is perfect; no child escapes. We try so hard to be good. Most of us, anyway. We struggle to be kind, to be decent, to never let our anger get the best of us. But the danger is always there—it's impossible to live a life of complete serenity. One of the painful ironies of our common humanity is that the ones we come the closest to, the ones whose good opinion of us matters the most, are the ones who render us most vulnerable to our worst impulses. The closer you get to a ... http://badmovieplanet.com/duckspeaks/reviews/2007/the-shining/ NOTE: Due to a tech glitch that I still don't understand, sometimes this page (and all the review pages) doesn't load correctly. If you have any problems, trying refreshing the page, as that seems to work. SOURCE: Buy This "From Beyond," by H.P. Lovecraft SCREEN: Buy This From Beyond, directed by Stuart Gordon Look I'm standing naked before you Don't you want more than my sex I can scream as loud as your last one But I can't claim innocence... -Tori Amos "Leather" COMPARE/CONTRAST: If we're honest with ourselves, most of us will admit to being at least a little uneasy about sex. We think about it a great deal, and there ... http://badmovieplanet.com/duckspeaks/reviews/2007/from-beyond/ SOURCE: Buy This "1408," by Stephen King SCREEN: Buy This! 1408, directed by Mikael Håfström COMPARE/CONTRAST: A few years ago, a friend of mine came into Portland with his new girlfriend. I drove down from Lewiston to meet them on a Saturday night; we went out to dinner and then did some barhopping. Eventually, we all got drunk enough that I wasn't going to be able to drive home. So we found a Motel 8 just off the turnpike and rented two rooms—one for them and one for me. There was more drinking, a bit of talk, and sometime after one, I made my way next door ... http://badmovieplanet.com/duckspeaks/reviews/2007/1408/ SOURCE: Buy This! "The Call of Cthulhu," by H.P. Lovecraft SCREEN: Buy This! The Call of Cthulhu, directed by Andrew Leman "That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons even death may die." COMPARE/CONTRAST: Context can be a terrifying thing. Imagine—a room. Just a regular old room. Which isn't scary, until you realize the room is full of people. Of course, that's not all that scary either; except most of the people don't look quite right. There's the guy with the hockey mask and the machete. The woman with the severe facial burns and finger knives. The pale man with fangs and a yellowed tuxedo ... http://badmovieplanet.com/duckspeaks/reviews/2007/the-call-of-cthulhu/ Guest review by Tim “Anarquistador” O’Brien When one is about to delve into the works of Clive Barker, one must keep certain things in mind. There are things you’re going to find and there are things you’re not going to find. You’re not going to find super-eloquent prose or particularly likeable characters. What you ARE going find, however, is sex and violence in sick and twisted forms. You’re going to see disfigurements of body and mind that are as imaginative as they are frightening. You’re going to see sexual desire inextricably linked with sublime agony. You’re going to see slavering ... http://badmovieplanet.com/duckspeaks/reviews/2006/hellraiser/ B-FEST 2006 The recappening B-movie fandom is one of the more modest-sized fan subcultures; we rank somewhere above Star Trek slash fiction writers, somewhere below the Goth bloggers, and frankly, that's just how we like it. Nobody blames us for anything, nobody expects anything of us, so we're free to wile away our lives watching hour upon hour of poorly edited garbage, never entirely sure why we do what we do (individuals have reasons, but on the group level, things get fuzzy), but never worried we'll be called upon to explain anything. Oh sure, we're part of the general geek climate ... http://badmovieplanet.com/duckspeaks/reviews/2006/b-fest-2006/ SOURCE: Christine, by Stephen King Buy This! I didn't own a car till I was in my twenties, but my two closest friends in high school had their own wheels by junior year. Both cars were clunkers, but Dave's was the worst, I think--apart from the toxic waste in the back seat (you had to be very, very careful about where you put your feet, especially if you wanted your sneakers back), part of the bumper was held together with duct tape and there was something wrong with the engine. Whenever he started it up, the car screeched like a dying mule. I ... http://badmovieplanet.com/duckspeaks/reviews/2006/christine/ SOURCE: Buy This! A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens In case you haven’t noticed, it’s Christmas time again. All the signs are in the air; every commercial for the past four weeks has been barking out special offers and “holiday savings,” those of us in northern climes are shoveling our way through the first big snows of the season, and, if you’re old enough to be buying presents for others with your own money, that nervous guilt peculiar to the first three weeks of December is gripping your chest and forcing you to spend more time in the mall than any reasonable person ... http://badmovieplanet.com/duckspeaks/reviews/2005/a-christmas-carol/ A guest review from the elegant Jessica "Juniper" Ritchey. Enjoy! Of the more piquant flora of the crime literature family is the South Florida crime novel. An average example will depict trained alligator assassins, stolen diamonds from an irate Cuban drug cartel, and an ex New York cop trying to enjoy retirement in his houseboat just as a corpse of a beautiful Miami Dolphins cheerleader washes up on his front step. And this is just the first page. The two acknowledged masters of this genre are Elmore Leonard and Carl Hiaasen, with Hiaasen making it his sole specialty. And while both ... http://badmovieplanet.com/duckspeaks/reviews/2005/striptease/