Reviews: "Underworld: Awakening 3-D" and "Chillerama"
A little late, but Jerrid and I see the new "Underworld" movie.
Then, I check out the anthology horror comedy "Chillerama."
Then, I check out the anthology horror comedy "Chillerama."
Omg, I was in Wadzilla! I haven't seen it so I don't know if I can be seen on camera or anything but I'm in the scene where the leads find out the sperm-monster is destroying the city. lol
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Somebody else will mention it, but the wooden stake thing probably comes from the superstition that to keep a corpse from rising one way and another, you'd have to stake it into the ground. The idea might be a modern invention, though. It's the going theory.
I do like that you two can rib each other on camera pretty fearlessly... anyway, is it like Kate Beckinsale gets shot in the head and it doesn't even phase her or something? Because Vampire or not you'd think that would at least slow her down.
That's the trouble with these movies, everybody can heal from fucking everything so the action lacks a lot of punch.
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It phases her. It knocks her on the ground and she has to recover from it. Plus, later in the film she's slammed against a wall and knocked unconscious, so bullets and such do hurt them in it.
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The rules for vampires really vary from culture to culture. You're right that in a lot of folklore the stake was really just to nail the vampire to the ground or bottom of its coffin to keep it from getting up.
Also, since Jerrid was wondering, depending on which culture's folklore you go by the stake doesn't have to be wood. In some countries it had to be an iron stake to kill a vampire, and in others wood from a specific kind of tree considered holy or special in some way to that society. And according to some stories, the stake had to be driven in with a single hit, because a second blow would wake the vampire back up.
Why yes, yes I did waste way too much of my youth reading crappy vampire books. How ever did you guess?
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I was hoping you'd see Chillerama. I agree for the most part with you. I liked Zom-B-Movie, but primarily for Richard Riel. His monologue about how nobody wants to go to the movies for an experience anymore had me saying "fuck yeah." And it made me want to go to a drive in again.
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Ever thought about taking donations to buy that drive in? I would travel all the way from Arkansas to visit that place!
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Underworld: Awakenings is incredibly boring and forgettable tripe? *GASP* Say it's not so! No surprise they cribbed from Aliens for this. The whole series has been nothing original. So they may as well make their stealing even more obvious.
Agreed about every comment in regard to Kate Beckinsale's Selene character. I think they should do a crossover film with Twilight so that Selene and Bella can have a bland-off contest to determine the blandest female lead all time for these type of films.
I absolutely love how fans of this series of films bash Twilight. When this series is just as vapid and trite. At least the Twilight films is worth a couple laughs, especially with Rifftrax. And the big battle scene at the end of Eclipse was half-ways decent.
Don't get me wrong, both film series are downright awful. But Underworld takes the cake, given the first movie is just a ripoff of Romeo & Juliet except with Vampires and Werewolves... err, I mean "Lycans". *Rollseyes*
Surprised you guys didn't go into more detail on the cheesy looking giant CGI Werewolf in the film. You mentioned it... but it look so bad in the trailers. So I was hoping to hear more about the giant goofy looking creature.
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I'll let you have tour opinion on the film, but there's nothing wrong with the word Lycan, considering lycanthropy is the scientific term to refer to werewolf-ism.
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I'm mocking it for the same reason I would mock Twilight. For some reason being afraid of just using the word Werewolf. Especially when the Vampires don't use some other term for what they are. Makes me wonder what the deal is... are they afraid of the film not being taken seriously if it's "Vampires Vs. Werewolves"? Sorry to tell them that ship has already long since sailed.
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My local drive-in's the same, Brad. Which really is a shame considering Australia's film industry pretty much depended on it right up until the early 90s. A quadruple feature of Mad Max, Turkey Shoot, Razorback and Dead End Drive-in would make a Wadzilla in my pants. Place will probably be shut down before that ever happens
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Why a wooden stake...
Well think about how wood is made, the plant takes the energy directly from the sun and combines it with various chemicals in order to store it up in the wood itself and when you burn wood you release the stored energy in a form that produces light and heat with a given loss.
Of course, they kind of skimmed over the whole, every ounce of matter in the known universe came from the death of a star and therefore it would be impossible for vampires to exist... but fuck it, why not undermine the initial point.
It's fiction. >_>
Just go with it...
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I have to say it’s good to see the release of a horror anthology movie. It’s a format I really enjoy and it seems like something that filmmakers are becoming more and more reluctant to make (at least not many others spring to mind from recent years).
That being said I just can’t comprehend the reasoning behind the use of CGI blood in movies these days and what’s worse I always feel like some obnoxious broken record when I complain about it. Honestly though I think for every person who moans about bad CGI being used when it’s totally unnecessary there are more people who are apathetic and willing to accept it because it’s what they’ve come to expect from modern cinema, so it’s something that I feel people need to complain about as much as possible to get the message across. I’m not against CGI as a rule, I don’t think a film like Jurassic Park would have been half as effective as it was without the implementation of computer graphics but they obviously knew that the success of the film was riding on the believability of the dinosaurs and really put their all into it. That was almost two decades ago and I swear it looked better than most shitty CGI I see these days. I think filmmakers have gotten really lazy with it, even huge budget films like the Lord of the Rings franchise are full of dubious, tacky looking effects. The way I see it, if I’m noticing that it’s CGI while I’m watching it then it’s unsuccessful and it’s even worse when it’s used to produce an effect that could have easily and cheaply been done using pretty basic practical effects. I remember the CGI gore in Survival of the Dead totally removing me from the film. I pray for a campaign against the use of CGI blood. Broken-record-rant over. For now.
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I don't know, the CGI in Lords of the Rings seems fine to me.
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Well my point was that if it's noticeably CGI then it's not really doing it's job. While there's certainly some very realistic CGI in those movies, there were also quite a few scenes, particularly in the second and third films, where I found myself taken out of the action by effects that I considered to be lacking. There's just that absence of an actual physical, tangible presence that really stands out to me. I guess a lot of it is maybe a matter of preference. Personally I'd like those films a lot more if the effects were all Harryhausen-esque stop motion.
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Are you doing okay, Brad? You seemed to be in a really shitty mood in your Chillerama review.
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I'm fine as far as I know =) I was a little tired in that video, that might've been it.
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Yeah, being tired can bring out the worst in any of us. Get some sleep!
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Brad: you should also try watching Tintin. It's a great movie, which reminds me of Spielberg's golden indiana jones days (ofcourse meaning the 80ies and not that skull-movie)
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For the shot in the head thing: in a large amount of the lore, destroying the head of a vampire will kill it. Beheading and whatnot kills vampires. In fact, almost all supernatural critters can be killed by cutting off their heads or burning them.
So yeah, shot through the brain...should be dead.
Also Wolverine survives it because of the adamantium keeping the bullet from piercing the brain.
Wow...I just nerded it up a lot in this post.
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It's happened enough times in really really good works, that I'm perfectly ok with the fact that vampires can get shot in the head.
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Particularly in this series, where Selene drowns in the first movie, manages to get pregnant in the sequel, and then shot in the head in this one. Hey, she is just a walking corpse, obviously all of those things make sense.
At least with werewolves, silver is the metal associated with the moon, which is what controls their changes (well, in actual werewolf movies) so silver is their Achilles' heel.
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@Brad: Yes, the 3rd one is campy as hell, to a certain extent because it's not that expensive ($35 million, only the 1st one cost less). But it's watchable.
I think they all are watchable, at least as a rental. Don't expect smart, but it's popcorn entertainment, especially with friends.
I saw the first one on the big screen, and I do remember a review in a major newspaper over here in Germany, which perfectly summed up the first movie in a couple of words:
Zu laut, zu Blau, zuviele Türen (Too loud, too blue, too many doors).
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I wanna lube up Jerrid's head and stick it right up my pooper!
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what
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Hey Brad, you said you can't think of any anthology film that you didn't like. What about Tales from the Quadead Zone?
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As long as a movie feels consistent I don't get annoyed by weird logic too much, but I get Jerrid's complaint. Vampires are supernatural things, like ghosts. They don't age, they don't have reflections, and they can only be hurt by ritualistic and symbolic stuff. Werewolves on the other hand are more like zombies, they're not plausible but they're at least based on things from reality. True, this movie's definition of "vampire" is more grounded, but to me this only makes the little hold-overs like the weakness against stakes all the more jarring, especially since this more grounded kind of vampire would otherwise loosely qualify as a kind of zombie. This is something that really bugs me about the X-Men movies, every character is an entirely different type of thing, like they all dropped in from different movies, and practically no effort is made to reconcile them.
And isn't lycan short for lycanthrope, meaning werewolf? Is "werewolf" considered racist in the movie's universe?
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Gotta disagree with your assessment that you'll like this movie if you like the Underworld series. I enjoyed all three prior movies, but this, this shit is just horrible. Sure, the quality wasn't GREAT in the first three, but they were all about on par with one another, and they at least were fun and enjoyable. But the quality just PLUMMETS with this one. I DO NOT recommend this one at all, not even to fans of the series.
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I'm a fan of the Underworld franchise and yet watched the whole review.
I wouldn't say Awakening is the exact same movie as the first Underworld but I will say that it has a very similar feel to it, which is very welcome considering how much the second movie sucked...
Anyway, I saw Awakening and I can confirm, fans of the first movie will like this one.
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I work at a movie theater with an IMAX and I'm able to get free passes to any movie I choose. So, I chose to go see Underworld: Awakening in IMAX 3D with a friend of mine yesterday.
HOLY. FUCK.
You guys really didn't get a good experience! If you want to see this movie, go to the IMAX. The silver dust looks like it's swirling around the room like a giant snow globe, and I even got a little sick when the first sequence came up with the bubbles and the ice swirling. It was THAT immersive!
The 3D was absolutely fantastic as well! You guys mentioned that you cringed when the Lycans were trying to break through the car? Well, I did the same thing, but I almost jumped out of my seat! Plus the sound quality is ten times better in IMAX, so the smashing of glass and roaring of the Lycans was WAY more intense.
I wish you guys had an IMAX near you. It would make your movie going experience SO much better, especially with movies like this.
Anyway, just wanted to put in my two cents. I love what you guys do, and I look forward to every review.
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The downside to what you suggest is that they would have had to spend even more money on Underworld just to get decent 3-D effects.
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We need more Lloyd!
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Great analogy brad!
Loved you ripping on Jerrid for being so stupid even saying that still laughing my ass off
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"I see you found your Salon Kitty."
... And Jerrid has the funniest line in the whole episode! Thought I'd never see it. Kudos, Big J!
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"A little late"? Not as late as the Underworld movie is.
BA-ZING
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No, but seriously folks.
Basically: I thought the movie could've been better. I mean, it's been so long since an Underworld movie, they REALLY needed to pack an extra punch to it to make people remember it. But I feel like they played it safe and just made it an action flick. That's a big yawn to me. And I could NOT stop laughing, at the fact that Beckinsale's character enters EVERY scene in the exact same way: Jumping/falling from above, feet first, head-down. Seriously. Count how many times; you'll need two hands.
I don't think Beckinsale's character is that great. But I like her a shit-ton better than Jovovich's character in the Resident Evil movies. At least Beckinsale's easy on the eyes!
I really didn't care about the second one. I had low expectations of the prequel, but it was suprisingly...what's the word?......campy!
Also: Is it me, or was the movie really short? Maybe that's for the best.
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I tried to get through Chillerama last night and I think I have to get it a second chance when I'm not so tired. I ended up nodding off after Wadzilla and Werebear didn't quite work for me to the point that I completely tuned out while watching it.
I think a LOT of reason Chillerama didn't really work for me, though, is that the tongue-in-cheek, knowing-satire thing that has been spreading over the last decade or so has started to feel played out. It's difficult to describe, but I guess the best way I can put it is that I think a movie were supposed to take seriously that gives the audience unintentional laughs comes off better than an intentionally campy one that plots and plans its humor out intentionally.
Honestly, I thought they could have been much better short films if they'd been played, paced and shot like they were made in such a way to at least look like they might have been serious movies of their genres rather than overt goofs.
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I tried watching Underworld part one on three different occasions. Each time I fell asleep within the first 13 minutes and then woke up right at the anti-climax. Underworld sucks.
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Bland or not Kate Beckensale looks good in rubber fetish gear!
And yes they should do a twilight crossover, but only if it has strong lesbian overtones.
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To be fair, Brad... Superman originally had the ability to leap over tall buildings. Later on though, he'd be able to actually fly.
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I actually did enjoy the first three Underworld movies (well, alright, the second one was definitely the weakest), so I'll probably check this one out. I do hear that it's poor, even for Underworld, so I won't hold my breath, but I'll still at least give it a shot.
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Here's something I didn't get in the movie. The girl was born and raised in that evil corporation, right? Being used only for her DNA and other testing purposes? Why did they teach her to talk? Hell, why did they tell her she was locked up in a lab and that her mother was in the lab next to her? Why tell her that they're going to kill her the next day? That's just evil for the sake of being evil! If this girl was born in a lab and has never known anything outside of those four walls, why let her know anything else?
Also, Selene totally pulled off a luchador wrestling move on a werewolf. That's what this whole movie should have been.
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Oh Jim Ward, he was Captain Qwark in the Ratchet and Clank Games!
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You know, you're almost created a meme when you repeated "..He should get shot in the head like the rest of us." XD
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I just find all the Underworld movies to be cold and sterile. There's just no real emotion to the characters and the world feels false.
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Loved the review of "Chillerama" gonna go and check that out. Two "zombie" movies that I really enjoyed are on Netflix; "Autumn" and "Doghouse". Worth a watch, at the very least. Really enjoy your videos.
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I sat through the Underworld Review. I didn't think it was that bad. Though I am a fan of the 1st film because it has the best story out of the series and Bill Nigh & Michael Sheen are good in it. Bill Nigh in that film did seem to ham it up in that film. This film sort of made up for it at the end but for the most part I agree with Brad. but I was disappointed that he didn't like it for its (to me) unintentionally funny parts/lines and the gory scenes. This film proved to me that the 1st film was the best. I only watched the 2nd film once and the 3rd film a couple of times my main niggle of that film is it didn't need to be made the whole story is told perfectly fine in the 1st film.
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Hey, Brad, I just started working my way through the archives a month or so ago, so I hadn't caught up to this video yet. But I was listening to the radio this morning, and heard you get a recursive shout-out from Stephanie Miller about the one you gave to Jim Ward and her show. As a fan of both you and her, that was pretty awesome.
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Hi Brad,
Tuesday I saw your Chillerama review, next thing I had to do was drop a line to Stephanie Miller to let her know you gave her a shout out
(I hope you've got a podcast subscription to Steph or get one today because,
She played your shout out on air the first hour for Jim today!!!
Congrats on the national audience Brad
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Chillerama was awesome! Anne Frankenstein was the best part. Wadzilla and Zom-B were great too. I could see why Brad would be tired of zombie movies, but this was alot of great fun. Teenage werebear was awful.
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I just sat down and watched Chillerama tonight. That movie was awesome! I loved the segment The Diary of Anne Frankenstein the most. How often do you get to see Joel David Moore in a movie as Hitler alongside Kane Hodder as Jewish version of the Frankenstein Monster. Wadzilla was awesome too. Eric Roberts absolutely stole the show in that segment though. That was some good work from the guy who brought us Underdog and Zoom. I hated the segment I Was a Teenage Werebear. Ron Jeremy showing up was the only decent part of that. I think that segment didn't work because of the old,tired gay jokes(come on shoving a pole up the villan's ass). The intro to Deathication was great too( how many movies in this day and age do a Salo reference). I do think that each of the segments should have been cut to make more room for the Zom B-Movie portion. Still a great movie all around though. I wish that more movies like this were made.
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Claws: Birth. He had bone claws.
Silver Bullets: The screen writer for The Wolfman was listening to "The Lone Ranger" and like the sound of it, and put it in.
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Brad in regards to your comment about Montages with a major screw up, watch the academies tribute to horror films montage you get what you'd expect like Rosemary's Baby, The Exorcist, The Shining and then Twilight pops up!
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I saw the first Underworld in theaters because I love vampire movies but I haven't cared since. The vampires are weak and all they do is fight with guns, so why have them in the first place? I can't believe that they made four of these.
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the "plagues" weren't released as you would consider it. they are just how humans were viewing people being converted to either vampires or werewolves. there was no real plague. just stupid human unacceptance of other species
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Underworld: Awakening 3-D
I as a fan of the franchise am actually glad ya'll didn't reem this movie! Even though from what I hear from others that love the series this movie isn't that good! The whole thew plot is nearly the same as Ultra Violet thing!
I don't know if it's been mentioned yet but the virus thing is that a random virus killed a village of people way back in the middle ages and only one person survived and he became immune to it and mutated and became immortal. And he had 3 sons; 2 immortals and 1 mortal. the 2 immortals were both bitten while still young by a bat and a wolf and they became the 1st vampire and werewolf and the mortal son was the ancestor of the main male lead of the 1st 2 movies
Michael! And that was the whole plot of the 1st movie was the Lycans wanted him as he was the only human alive that could be infected with both Werewolf and Vampire viruses and become a hybrid... even though it was shown that they could crossbreed!
If you want one of these movies you'd like most fans love the 3rd as it's pretty much independent of the others you don't need to see the others to know what's going on!
Funny bringing up Superman with Jerrid looking like Lex Luthor!
I have seen that Resident Evil trailer and that's the one good thing about that series are the weird trailers! the 2nd movies trailer started out as a makeup ad!
Also in the movies the older a vamp or lycan is the more damage they can take and not die! in the 1st movie the lead werewolf took 2 silver bullets to the head and just... birth them out his brain and was healed!
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Chillerama
Giant Sperm monster, Jewish Frankenstein, Zombies.... You've sold me! I'll look into this one!
If I recall there's a real 70s Gay Werewolf movie out there but the name escapes me! I found out about it from a reference in El Superbeasto the Rob Zom bie animated movie! The whole silver dildo to kill it thing!
I've not gotten sick of Zombies yet myself! Maybe the whole downer endings to them maybe but the basic concept no!
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Thanks for reviewing Chillerama, Brad!
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I dunno...I don't think "I Was a Teenage Wearbear" was all that bad, nor was it trying to beat you over the head. It is kind of a one-trick pony, though. Once you get past the pun it's just a 70's beach/monster film, but it's still entertaining. Still, if you didn't like it, you didn't like it. Sorry.
The Diary of Anne Frankenstein was probably my least favorite segment, but Joel Moore was easily my favorite performance. I usually kinda waffle about whether or not I like him, but I think this has sealed the deal for me. And even though it was my least favorite vignette, it was still good.
I agree that zombie films are seriously overdone...but I loved "Zom-B Movie" none-the-less, and not just for Rich Riehle (although he was spectacular...I just watched "The Man From Earth" the other day), it was so over the top that it started to suck, but continued to the point where it was awesome again.
I didn't expect to like Chillerama nearly as much as I did, I'm totally glad I watched it.
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ok so the movie was terrible and I completely even as a fan of the series but here are my three points of piece because of the other comments and the movie as a whole.
1. People mentioning Twilight for starters shame on you I mean seriously the fact you consider this an actual real life thing and not just something designed to make teenagers want to be adults for five seconds is just wrong. Saying that the "werewolves" in Twilight turn out to be shape shifters at the end of the series so stop comparing them to the "lycans" which does in fact comes from the latin Lyconthrope which means "were man" or wolf man.
2. the reason the movie is so terrible if you actually like the series is the fact that (if you have watched the other films) the lycans where never the "bad guys" they where actuall fighting the vampires for there freedom making them the heroes in a sense. Especially lucian (michael sheen) who free the lycans and fought because of the vapire elder Viktor (Bill Nighy (Legend)) killing his own daughter and her and Lucian fell in loved and created a hybrid offspring (which was never born)and became the whole point of the series to begin with.
3. and finally the film fails because not only does it forget the whole back story but completely forget it. In the third prequel film the humans in Latvia and that are where the movies are set know full well of both species existence and lets be honest it you saw a vampire or a werewolf and everyone knew them to be real you would tell your children and so would they tell they're children and so on and so forth. I mean nobody would forget and then say, "oh yeah remember the werewolf / vampire problem we had, we should totally just wipe them out.
Thats americanism.
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I watched Chillerama, and I enjoyed it overall, but I see what you mean about the werebear segment. The songs were terrible, and there was something really grating about the whole thing. Maybe because it's trying to be more clever than it is? I like Joss Whedon stuff /and/ I'm gay, and I still didn't like it. They fucked up big time.
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Brad, what was wrong with "Tales from tha' Hood"? I thought it was pretty good, just a lil' preachy at points. I enjoyed it way over Chillerama.
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