Thursday Movie Picks: Movies set in a Mental Institution

If you've been hanging around here lately, you'll know that I've been taking part in Wanderer's Thursday Movie Picks Meme over at Wandering Through the Shelves. The quick and dirty on it is that you write about three movies that pertain to whatever category she has set up. The only parameters being they should either be your best (or favorites), worst (or least favorite), or hidden gems. It really is a blogathon-esque activity so swing by, see the categories she has set up for upcoming weeks and join the fun.

This week's theme was a tough one for me. We're talking movies set in a mental institution. Of course, the easiest route to go was pick the best and most famous of them all, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest then find two others to fill the need for three pictures. It's worthy of every drop of ink spilled and key stroked in praise of it. However, you should know me by now. When two roads diverge in a blog, I try to take the one less traveled by, and that makes all the difference.

Wow.

How dare I paraphrase the great Robert Frost knowing that in just a few moments I'm going to drop some nihilistic crap on you?

What do I mean?

Well, we're exploring one of my guilty pleasures for this week's picks: slasher flicks. These are certainly not the best movies to take place in a mental institution, for sure. Some might think they're the worst, but I don't. I wouldn't call these hidden, by any stretch. So, I guess we can call these favorites. Screw it, let's just get to it.

A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors

When the kids of the Elm Street kids can't stop having nightmares, they get sent to a psyche ward where Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) goes after them, one by one. This was the first movie in the franchise to venture off of Elm Street. It's also the first to give us the wise-cracking while he kills you version of its iconic killer. If you're a fan of the franchise, then you know this is one of the better entries into the canon. Along with Freddy's change in personality, the movie also introduced some pretty cool concepts. Oh, this one last tidbit is a personal one. I'm not even sure why I remember this, to be honest, but watching this movie in theaters way back in 1987 was the first time I had heard the phrase 'sleep deprivation.' Incredibly random thing to throw in, I know, but that's what I got.

Friday the 13th: A New Beginning

So yeah, we're going from a part 3 to a part 5. Deal with it. This installment of the Friday the 13th series finds young Tommy (John Shepherd), who had just killed the iconic Jason at the end of the prior movie, The Final Chapter, being admitted to a mental institution for troubled teens. Of course, it's located deep in the woods, silly. Why yes, the kids at this institution start turning up dead, one by one. How'd you guess? Okay, I won't pretend this is some form of high quality cinema. I will say that it's one of the better pictures in the franchise.

Halloween (2007)

Lots of people hate on Rob Zombie's remake of John Carpenter's horror classic. Ignore everything I say from this point forward, but I think this one is just about as good. Unlike the original, it spends lots of time in the place where that movie only started from and spoke of, the mental institution Michael Myers (Tyler Mane) escaped from. The actual remake part of the film, Myers following around and killing the teens of Haddonfield, is actually the weakest part. Right up through that escape, however, director Rob Zombie gives us the best story-telling of his career and some of the best in an American horror flick in quite some time (in '07, that is). I promise I'm not drunk or high. Anyhoo, a large chunk of this involves us watching Myers pass a lot of years being counseled by Dr. Loomis (Malcolm McDowell).

Okay, tell me I'm the one who should be committed.

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Machete Kills

Directed by Robert Rodriguez.

2013. Rated R, 107 minutes.

Cast:

Danny Trejo

Demian Bichir

Mel Gibson

Sofia Vergara

Amber Heard

Charlie Sheen/Carlos Estevez

Michelle Rodriguez

William Sadler

Walton Goggins

Cuba Gooding Jr.

Antonio Banderas

Lady Gaga

Vanessa Hudgens

Jessica Alba

Machete (Trejo), our favorite ex-Federale, is back. As sequels must, things start off on a sour note for our hero as his partner/girlfriend Sartana (Alba) is killed during a bust gone bad. He himself is about to be taken out by corrupt Texas law man Sheriff Doakes (Sadler) (are there any other kind in a Machete movie?), when the phone rings and none other than the Commander-in-Chief himself, Pres. Rathcock (Sheen/Estevez), demands that he be flown to White House immediately. Once there, the president asks Machete to go to Mexico and assassinate Mendez (Birchir), an ex-cartel member who has acquired a nuclear bomb he is threatening to use on the U.S. Machete's pay for this job? His criminal record will be expunged and he will immediately be granted full citizenship in this country. Mayhem ensues.

The citizenship angle is important, or at least it would be, if this were the first movie. That one immersed itself in nearly all of the issues associated with the immigration debate. This one starts down that same road, but it rather quickly detours, concerning itself with being as zany as possible. Unfortunately, what's left has no gravity and our tale goes spinning off into the atmosphere. Literally. As in we wind up in space. Don't worry, that's no spoiler. We are told right at the beginning that the next installment in the franchise will be Machete Kills Again...in Space. Without the weightiness of an issue to hold it together, the movie never connects with us on any level. Its predecessor consistently went hard at the issue it attacked. Even if you disagreed with its basic stance, there was something to grasp. Here, there is not.

Like the first movie, we get a never ending succession of jokes. The difference is that in its predecessor, with the immigration issue as its anchor, it shaped itself into a sharp, if ultra-violent and exploitive, political satire. Instead, this aimlessly throws as much against the wall as it can and hope some of it sticks. Some of it does. Director Rodriguez really stretches his imagination to come up with a plethora of outrageous occurrences. Some of them make us say 'wow,' while others make us laugh. The problem is that rather than being part of a cohesive whole and sustaining its humor, these jokes are all stand alones, fleeting moments of comically presented gore. The one strand of consistency is that no matter where we are in the movie, we'll soon get a reference to an older movie. Most often, and most overtly that reference is to Star Wars. This usually works. Other times, we get the director paying homage to his own past work which is a bit narcissistic, to say the least. This usually doesn't work.

It's not all bad, though. We do have some fun performances. Danny Trejo is once again spot on perfect as the titular Machete. It's a wonderful deadpan that would make Steven Wright proud. YouTube him, young'uns. William Sadler gets to go over the top as that crooked law man and does a nice job. It was nice to see him just cut completely loose. The same can be said for Mel Gibson in a bad guy role. As much as we say we hate him these days, he was pretty good in this flick. Weirdly, Walton Goggins, Cuba Gooding Jr., Antonio Banderas, and Lady Gaga all play the same person (La Cameleon). It doesn't quite fit anything that's going on and is odd more than it is good, but is interesting. For the top prize, there is a tie between Charlie Sheen and Sofia Vergara. Sheen, billed under his birth name of Carlos Estevez in a nod to the whole immigration thing, is wonderfully cast as the most fun president the United States has ever had. While not realistic in any way, he's still a blast to watch. Vergara chews scenery with reckless abandon, playing every scene to the hilt. It helps that she's often outfitted with some of the director's versions of biological weapons, including the pecker gun he used in From Dusk 'Til Dawn. She makes every bit of it work and is the most fun part of the film, along with Sheen.

Machete Kills is a movie I could see some people loving because of the outrageousness of the action, the fun performances, the ridiculous humor, and a few quotable lines ("Machete don't tweet"). For me, it didn't quite come together like it did the first time. Almost all of the focus has been removed in the name of making the sequel a "bigger" movie than its predecessor. It is. The third, if they actually complete it, promises to be even bigger. However, the director has already seemed to lose his way with this franchise. At his best, Rodriguez brings his limitless imagination for morbid, twisted humor and welds it to an intensely focused narrative purpose to create, as our New England friends might say, a wicked good time. This time, the latter part of the equation is missing. There is some fun to be had. However, if you enjoyed the first one, even if you couldn't pinpoint it, you might be struck with the unsettling feeling that something is off. In some instances, way off.

Halloween (2007)

Directed by Rob Zombie.

2007. Rated R, 111 minutes.
Cast:
Malcolm McDowell
Daeg Faerch
Tyler Mane
Sheri Moon Zombie
William Forsythe
Scout Taylor-Compton
Hanna Hall
Danielle Harris
Danny Trejo
Brad Dourif 

John Carpenter’s Halloween is widely regarded as one of the greatest horror movies ever made. It is undeniably one of the most influential and imitated movies of all time. Every slasher flick that followed owes it a huge debt of gratitude. Without it, there may not have been a Friday the 13th or A Nightmare on Elm Street. That it would be remade was inevitable. Musician turned director Rob Zombie tackles the task.

To Zombie’s credit, he’s not content with merely doing a spot-on remake with updated wardrobes. He truly tries to make it his own. He does this by taking us deep into the world of the iconic slaughterer of teens. We first meet Mikey (Faerch) when he is just a wee lad, albeit one with a penchant for killing small animals. Very tired of how people treat him, he graduates from animals to humans. Through a startingly realistic series of events, he kills four people who make the error in judgment of pissing him off. We then spend some time with him in a mental institution, both at the beginning and end of his stay. Eventually, we get to the point that serves as the starting point for the original, his escape from the institution and subsequent return home. This constitutes the first half of our feature and it is spectacular film-making. It’s much more brutal, unflinching character study than true horror. Since it revolves around a child committing some hellacious acts, all of which are graphically depicted, it’s all sorts of unsettling. The magic of it is that through the mayhem of his life, we feel bad for Mikey. Like we do about most children who come from adverse circumstances, we feel his life could’ve been different. It could’ve been better. We see points where small changes my have made a world of difference.

During Michael’s escape, something happens that eats away at the movie. His humanity is quickly and completely stripped away. All of the empathy the film had been working so hard to build up comes tumbling down due to his final encounter with the guard played by Danny Trejo. This is an occasion where predictable would’ve been a good thing. Had the expected thing happened, basically the opposite of what actually does, it would’ve maintained our feelings for him going forward. Instead, the director’s nihilism got the best of him. From this point on Michael Myers (Mane) is once again a faceless monster we’ve no attachment to.

This brings us to the second half. From here we get a mechanical but truncated remake of the original. Things keep happening at a rapid rate so we’re never bored. The problem is our emotional involvement has taken a nosedive. The reason for this is two-fold. I’ve already explained the first part of it. The other part is this shortened second act. We meet the people of present day Haddonfield that Michael will shortly terrorize. However, we don’t know them. We don’t care about them. They are merely the bodies in various stages of undress that our killer will mutilate. Like all the best movies in the franchise, the original isn’t about Michael Myers. It is about Laurie Strode, the Jamie Lee Curtis character now played by Scout Taylor-Compton and the terror he cast upon her. We felt for her. We were scared with her. This time around we couldn’t give a flip about her. It wouldn’t be an issue if we still cared about Michael but we don’t. In the blink of an eye he went from a scarred, misguided and dangerous child to a superhuman behemoth who’s only function is viciously killing anyone in his path.

Rob Zombie’s Halloween is a hard movie to judge. The first hlf alone makes it worth seeing. It contains some of the best storytelling of any American horror flick perhaps of the 21st century. The second half is stilly visually exciting, but leaves us flat as the boogeyman coldly moves from victim to victim. Murder is a gruesome but clinical and joyless task he must continuously perform for our morbid pleasure. The director gave us Mikey and created a soft spot in our hearts for a child who can’t seem to help but lash out in ways fatal to others when he’s angered. Then, Mikey was snatched away. In his place, we were given the machine known as Michael Myers.

MY SCORE: 7.5/10

Predators

Directed by Nimród Antal.
2010. Rated R, 107 minutes.
Cast:
Adrien Brody
Alice Braga
Topher Grace
Laurence Fishburne
Danny Trejo
Louis Ozawa Changchien
Walton Goggins
Oleg Taktarov
Mahershalalhashbaz Ali
Derek Mears

The tough guy (Brody), as he’s called most of the time, wakes up in the middle of free-falling from thousands of feet. I hate when that happens. Thankfully, he does have a parachute on, but has some trouble with it. It opens nearly too late. After surviving that little ordeal, he picks up his big gun…wait a minute…I didn’t see an assault rifle when he was falling. Anyhoo, he soon discovers a bunch of other have also dropped into this strange jungle. Most of them have really big guns, too. None of them know where they are or how they came to be suddenly falling from the sky. For the record, we never really find out.

Shortly, it becomes apparent our uneasily formed team of badasses is on another planet and that they’re being hunted. I was just telling someone the other day how much that sucks. It sucks even more when you realize the hunters are no Elmer Fudds but, as the title suggests, those nasty creatures we’ve come to know as Predators from way too many movies. Our crew getting picked off one by one while trying to figure out how to get home ensues.

We largely stick to the formula of the Arnold Schwarzenegger original. The major differences being our setting, a jungle on their planet, and the number of predators. The former adds to the sense of futility while the latter ramps up the danger. This keeps the movie on the narrow path fans of the franchise expect. In other words, they didn’t try to reinvent the wheel. Things are kept simple and it works. It is exactly what it wants to be.

Trying to dissect a movie like this is pointless. I can explore some of the gaping plotholes, the cheesy dialogue, the absolute waste of the good fortune to have both Adrien Brody and Laurence Fishburne in the cast and the predictability. None of these things really matters. The franchise has built up an immunity to such criticisms. Fans want to see Predators kill people while people try to survive and occasionally kill Predators. Mission accomplished.

If there is one gripe that might stick, it is with the ending. After more than an hour and a half, it’s like nothing is accomplished, except the passing of time. It seems that after a certain amount of time has passed, the director just got tired of making it. I can see Mr. Antal yelling “Cut!” and then saying “That’s enough, I’m done.” I can’t tell if it’s supposed to be a hopeful or hopeless ending. Either way, it feels lazy. Then again, does it matter? Predators kill people. People kill Predators. Stuff blowed up real good. And I sorta liked it.

MY SCORE: 6/10

Machete

Directed by Robert Rodriguez.
2010. Rated R, 105 minutes.
Cast:
Danny Trejo
Jeff Fahey
Jessica Alba
Robert De Niro
Steven Seagal
Michelle Rodriguez
Don Johnson
Lindsay Lohan
Cheech Marin

A couple years ago, director Robert Rodriguez joined forces with his bestest buddy, fellow filmmaker Quentin Tarantino to create Grindhouse, an homage to low-budget, 1970s grindhouse cinema. Rodriguez’s Planet Terror is unquestionably the more adrenaline-charged of the two halves. It has loads of zombies, a heroine whose amputated leg is replaced by a functioning machine-gun and buckets of blood. Between the this and Tarantino’s Death Proof were a few faux-trailers that fans immediately began hoping would really be made into movies. One of those trailers was Machete. At least in this instance, fans get their wish.

Machete (Trejo) is the name of both our hero and his weapon of choice. He’s a Mexican Federale on his way to rescue an apparent kidnapping victim from druglord Torrez (Seagal). Long story short: it doesn’t quite work out for the good guy. His whole family ends up dead, along with his partner. He himself is left for dead in a burning house. It should hardly be a surprise he manages to escape. The movie knows this is too easy and doesn’t even bother showing it to us. We just jump into the opening credits and theme song, after which we switch locations from Mexico to Texas.

Once in Texas, we find the immigration debate is on steroids. Senator John McLaughlin (De Niro) is so anti-immigration, he and his cronies literally hunt Mexicans under the cover of night. Luz (Michelle Rodriguez) runs a taco stand that’s really a front for “The Network”, a modern-day underground railroad for Mexicans trying to cross the border into the States. Then there’s Machete. He’s been moseying along as a day-laborer but suddenly finds himself hired to kill the senator. After some double crossings, which the senator survives, Machete has to go on the run from the American law, try to clear his name and bring the real bad guys to justice.

As expected, a healthy dose of graphic and over the top violence keeps our inner-sadists sated. This includes beheadings, impalings and even a crucifixion. There’s also enough nudity to live up to the exploitation flicks to which Machete owes its existence. It basks in the light of outrageous, testosterone driven fun.

Those things alone would make it worthy of a look. However, it adds something extra. It gives us really sharp social commentary through satire. The immigration issue is front and center. However, it also riffs on internet culture, celebrity culture, our obsession with technology and even the clergy. Between the action scenes, there are plenty of laughs to be had.

The cast aids immensely in our enjoyment. For the most part, they play it straight. It’s as if they’re unaware how ridiculously exaggerated this all is and it works perfectly. In the lead, Danny Trejo is deadpan but awesome. A surprisingly good Steven Seagal and surprisingly creepy Don Johnson steal all of their scenes, not to mention the incomparable Cheech Marin. Even Jessica Alba is solid. My one minor complaint is with one of my all time faves, Robert De Niro. He actually turns in a fine performance. He’s the one person who doesn’t quite play it straight and is at his campy best. This actually fits the character and the movie. For some reason though, I just felt like this should’ve been William Shatner’s role. In no way am I suggesting Shatner is a better actor than De Niro. I’m only saying that, in my humble opinion, the senator seems to perfectly fit Shatner’s abilities.

If you’re a fan of Rodriguez’s work and have some understanding of what you might be getting into, you’ll have a blast. The key here is that although nothing that actually happens is to be taken seriously, the movie’s message is. Of course, if you’re one of the hardliners who support what the government is doing in Arizona and think Mexicans are stealing “our” jobs, this might piss you off. If you’re not, or you at least have a sense of humor, it’ll be a fun ride. As for me, I’m anxiously awaiting the sequels we’re promised at the end of the movie: Machete Kills and Machete Kills Again. Please Mr. Rodriguez, make it happen.