Alternate Takes 08.10.08: Midnight Meat Train

Posted by Shawn S. Lealos on 08.10.2008

Alternate Takes looks at some influences of the Midnight Meat Train



Hello and welcome to Week 16 of Alternate Takes and my name is Shawn S. Lealos.

I subbed for Arnold Furious in his Furious on Film News Report and talked about Jackie Chan, Quentin Tarantino, Kevin Smith and the horrible misuse of The Midnight Meat Train. Read it by clicking HERE. I'll be subbing for two more weeks after this, so keep your eye out the next two Wednesdays.

I subbed for Michael Bauer in the ECW on SCI-FI REPORT once again this week over in the wrestling section. Read it by clicking HERE.

I also reviewed the aforementioned Midnight Meat Train and you can read that review RIGHT HERE. As an update, I implored horror movie fans to check out this movie while it was still available. It is still out there but the original 102 dollar cinemas it hit has dwindled. There was once three theaters in Oklahoma showing it, now there are only two. California is down to four theaters, Texas still has twelve showing it, while New York and Florida are down to one. Lionsgate swears they support this movie. They lie. If it is showing near you, support the movie and let the studios know we determine what we want to see, not them.

Thanks to this new obsession, I am once again switching things up this week. Instead of talking about Pineapple Express, I am going to showcase Midnight Meat Train.


And... here... we... go...

MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN



Directed by Ryuhei Kitamura
Cast: Bradley Cooper, Leslie Bibb, Brooke Shields, Vinnie Jones

I've said a lot about this movie over the last couple of weeks. I'd say just click here to read the review and we'll get straight into the...

Five Alternate Takes

5. THE WICKER MAN (1973)

Directed by Robin Hardy
Cast: Edward Woodward, Christopher Lee, Diane Cilento, Britt Ekland

Midnight Meat Train shares a lot in common with this classical horror masterpiece. Both films tell the story of a man who is swept into a world he doesn't fully comprehend. Both include a group of people who kill in the name of something greater than anyone understands. Both films end with a climax so bleak, no one can leave with more than a sense of dread. In Wicker Man, a police sergeant (Woodward) arrives on an island investigating the disappearance of a little girl. No one on the island claims to know the girl but a family residing there shares her name. When he asks the family about the little girl, the mother claims to have never seen or heard of the girl, but her daughter admits it is her sister and she is there on the island. While on the island, the devout Christian police sergeant is mortified at the widespread paganism of the island's inhabitants. Christopher Lee plays the island patriarch and when the good sergeant doesn't heed the advice to leave, his fate is sealed. I argue this movie has the most bleak, downtrodden ending of any movie I have ever watched. It was remade recently in a movie starring Nicholas Cage, but I suggest you instead seek out this original version, which was very hard to find for a long time. It is available in a great collector's edition and is worth every penny. "Come. It is time to keep your appointment with the Wicker Man."

" Do sit down, Sergeant. Shocks are so much better absorbed with the knees bent."

4. HELLRAISER (1987)

Directed by Clive Barker
Cast: Doug Bradley, Andrew Robinson, Clare Higgins, Ashley Laurence

The movie most people connect to Clive Barker is Hellraiser. To say it was successful is an understatement. It has spawned seven sequels, four of which went straight to video. It is also in development to be remade in 2009. The movie is based on the Barker novella The Hellbound Heart. The film studies Barker's infatuation with the subject of sadomasochism and introduces the character of Pinhead, a monster who at one time was as famous as Jason or Freddy. When the movie begins, we meet Frank Cotton, a man who buys an old puzzle box. When he finally solves the puzzle, hooked chains fly out and dig into Frank's skin. The chains then rip Frank's skin apart and a group of beings called Cenobites appear and investigate the remains. Their leader, Pinhead, picks up the box and returns it to its former state and the room returns to normal. What is interesting about this tale is that, as evil as the Cenobites are, it is the humans that are the more devious. Frank returns and soon is able to regenerate his body through the blood of others. Frank's niece Kirsty brokers a deal with the devil (Pinhead) to try to save her father from his powerful brother. The movie is gory and holds just the right amount of disturbing images to fit into the oeuvre of Clive Barker. None of the sequels comes near the power of the original, although Hellbound: Hellraiser II is a fun little horror flick as well.

" We'll tear your soul apart!"

3. NIGHTBREED (1990)

Directed by Clive Barker
Cast: Craig Sheffer, Anne Bobby, David Cronenberg

A little known, but greatly fun little flick is Clive Barker's Nightbreed. Based on his novella Cabal, Nightbreed tells the story Aaron Boone (Sheffer), a young man plagued by dreams of a strange city of monsters called Midian. His psychiatrist, a man named Decker (Cronenberg), informs Aaron that the young man has committed a number of grisly murders across the city but has blocked them out of his consciousness. Aaron finds he must learn about this strange city of Midian in order to finally learn the truth about himself. What makes this movie so interesting is when all is said and done, the monsters are not the villains, they are the victims and the humans in the film are the true evil. It is a theme that travels through much of Barker's work and is prevalent here. I think it is a brilliant idea and a fun B-Movie that has a lot more going on under the hood than you would expect from a flick about monsters. I'll let Clive Barker sell you on it.

- "No movie is perfect. There are screw-ups in Nightbreed and all kinds of things I'd do differently, but that's true of Hellraiser and my books as well. Whatever else you can say about Nightbreed, it's not like anybody else's movie, it's not a tintype. It delivers what I always promised it would - a monster movie that would spill over with weird images and creatures. There are lots of horror movies out there that don't have very much in their minds. Nightbreed does. You don't need to be talking down to people all the time. So yes, the movie has a bleak end. It doesn't cross all the t's and dot all the i's, but neither does Hellraiser. We don't know where the cenobites come from. I like the sense that there's a mythology that you only get a glimpse of. You don't get the whole thing, like you don't know how Freddy Kreuger gets into people's dreams. There's got to be a way to make the kind of movies that I want to, which are never going to be mainstream, ordinary, middle-of-the-road pictures, and find people in the major studios who will support them. Clearly it's difficult. David Lynch, Cronenberg and Romero are not working in the main flat of the studio. Argento is barely known in America. Those large organisations are extremely conservative." - Clive Barker

" It's all true. God's an Astronaut. Oz is Over the Rainbow, and Midian is where the monsters live."

2. CANDYMAN (1992)

Directed by Bernard Rose
Cast: Virginia Madsen, Tony Todd, Xander Berkeley, Vanessa Williams

While Hellraiser might be the movie that introduced people to Clive Barker, I would argue Candyman is his biggest hit. Very similar to the introduction of the cenobites, The Candyman must be called into existence by a mortal. In this case, it is using the old urban legend of Bloody Mary. If a person looks into a mirror and says his name five times, he is summoned at the expense of human life. Barker continues to make the evil creature somewhat sympathetic as Candyman was once a slave tortured to death for the simple crime of having sex with a white woman. Based on the short story The Forbidden (Books of Blood, Volume 5), Helen is a graduate student conducting research for a thesis on urban legends. When she hears about the legend of The Candyman, she travels to the place where the original atrocity happened and summons the creature. When the deaths start to pile up, she must find Candyman and do whatever she can to stop the evil she has unleashed. While the Hellraiser movies were starting to become reliant on special effects and flair, Candyman held back on the effects and built mood and darkness to tell a story with a lot of underlying subtext. Like much of Barker's work, it also has the downer ending that a truly great horror movie should have. It has garnered two sequels, but only part 2 received Barker's blessing. Barker refused to allow his name to adorn the third in the series, saying it added nothing to the mythology of Candyman.

" The pain, I can assure you, will be exquisite. As for our deaths, there is nothing to fear. Our names will be written on a thousand walls. Our crimes told and retold by our faithful believers. We shall die together in front of their very eyes and give them something to be haunted by. Come with me and be immortal."

1. SEVEN (1995)

Directed by David Fincher
Cast: Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kevin Spacey

While I would never dare to compare Midnight Meat Train with Seven, there are a number of similarities. When I saw Seven in theaters during its initial run, everyone in the sold out showing I attended left the movie in complete silence. No one was discussing what they just witnessed; no one was talking about what it all meant. It was complete shocked silence. It was the sign that Seven was indeed a masterpiece of filmmaking. David Fincher, one of the greatest filmmakers working today, crafted a dark, bleak movie that starred Hollywood's new golden boy Brad Pitt. However, Pitt was still working on redefining himself as a versatile actor that didn't need to rely on his looks to sell a story. Movies such as 12 Monkeys, Kalifornia and Fight Club would further prove that Pitt was a force to be reckoned with, but Seven was a tour-de-force. Pitt stars as a young detective looking for action in the homicide division. Morgan Freeman is the grizzled detective ready to work his one last case and retire in piece. So far, so generic. What happens next is one of the most horrific, deranged movies of recent times. Kevin Spacey plays a serial killer simply named John Doe. He kills his victims based on the seven deadly sins. How the movie plays out and effect our heroes is something you need to watch, so I'll stop right here for those who have not seen the movie. But be prepared for a movie so bleak and hopeless, yet so brilliant, you won't soon forget it.

" A woman... so ugly on the inside she couldn't bear to go on living if she couldn't be beautiful on the outside. A drug dealer, a drug dealing pederast, actually! And let's not forget the disease-spreading whore! Only in a world this shitty could you even try to say these were innocent people and keep a straight face. But that's the point. We see a deadly sin on every street corner, in every home, and we tolerate it. We tolerate it because it's common, it's trivial. We tolerate it morning, noon, and night. Well, not anymore. I'm setting the example. What I've done is going to be puzzled over and studied and followed... forever."




Up next week