The Gratuitous B-Movie Column 9.15.08: Issue #27

Posted by Bryan Kristopowitz on 09.15.2008

"Outpost" (2008) and "Heartstopper" (2006)

The Gratuitous B-Movie Column Issue #27: "Outpost" (2008) and "Heartstopper" (2006)

Hello, everyone, and welcome once again to the internets movie review column that agrees with Mr. Gumby, that cement is, sometimes, more interesting than people think (no, really, it's true), The Gratuitous B-Movie Column, and I am your host Bryan Kristopowitz. This issue, issue number twenty-seven, I take a look at the 2008 British action/horror flick starring the new Frank Castle Ray Stevenson, "Outpost," and then I take a look at the 2006 super Canadian horror flick that features (but doesn't star) Freddy Krueger hisself, Robert Englund, "Heartstopper."

Outpost


"Outpost" is one of those action/horror flicks that, on paper, as an idea, is dang near can't miss. Modern day international mercenaries, while on a job in war torn Eastern Europe looking for an old military bunker, are attacked by old Nazi ghost zombies. Sort of like Neil Marshall's "Dog Soldiers" except, instead of super werewolves as the bad guys, it's, well, Nazis. Who the heck wouldn't want to watch that? However, when that "can't miss" idea is actually executed, it's not as great as first assumed.

Helmed by first time full length movie director Steve Barker, "Outpost" starts out well enough, allowing the audience to get to know the cast of characters. There's Stevenson's "DC," the merc leader and his close confidante Prior the redneck (Richard Brake), Brett Fancy's Taktarov, Enoch Frost's Cotter the African soldier, Michael Smiley as McKay, and Julian Wadham as Hunt, the rich guy who hires DC and his hand picked team, among others. They're all fairly interesting, with their own quirks and backstories. When the team eventually finds the bunker and the team hunkers down because of a mysterious firefight, the flick slows down to a crawl. They find a pile of bodies in a room and one guy that is alive (The Breather, as played by Johnny Meres), and while he's incredibly creepy, it takes way too long to find out who and what he really is and why he's there. It also takes way too long for the Nazi ghost zombies to show up. By the time they do show up, you're likely to be lost and forget why the mercenary team is there in the first place. In short, the movie has a serious pacing problem.

Now, there's nothing wrong with making an atmospheric horror movie or inundating the flick's forest setting with all sorts of haze and general damp creepiness. That's what Barker obviously focussed on and, in that respect, he knows what he's doing. But there's got to be a pay off to all of that atmosphere and general creepiness. Something has to happen. The movie just doesn't follow through on that. It doesn't provide the audience with anything thrilling, anything exciting, either on an intellectual or a visceral level. After about an hour it's all just so mundane and kind of pedestrian. When the Nazi ghost zombies finally show up, they just sort of stand around and... well, stand around. They end up not being much of a threat. It's a huge letdown.

So, how do you fix "Outpost"? Simply put, make it go faster. Make the villains more of a threat. Give the mercenary team something more to do than stand around, waiting for the inevitable. Even when the team is engaged in something, like setting up a perimeter around the bunker, or digging a hole for some reason, or just guarding the place, watching for the "enemy," it's all just so lackadaisical. I don't think I can stress this lack of urgency enough. The last half (yes, half, not the last twenty minutes, which is what we get here) should be all about the merc team running away from and or defending against the Nazi ghost zombies. We should get a better sense of the doom they plan on bringing to the bunker and its inhabitants. And we really don't need an overlong explanation as to why the Nazi ghost zombies are there (according to the movie it has something to do with a super machine the Third Reich had been working on during the war. It's got something to do with bending magentic waves and Einstein's Unified Field Theory or something like that. If that is the case, we should know all about that in the first half hour). All we really need to know is that the Nazi ghost zombies are bad, mean, and awful and they're coming to the bunker to kill. They need to be actual real villains.

It sounds like I'm really dumping on this movie, doesn't it? I guess I am. But, even with its many, many drawbacks and pacing issues and total lack of pay off, it's not a bad first movie. As I said, it's got some good performances and good creepy atmosphere. It's just not as good as it should be. It should be more. It should be better.

I wouldn't go out of my way to see it again, but if you do happen upon "Outpost," watch it. Maybe you'll get a different read on it.

Maybe.

So what do we have here? Gratuitous fake Eastern Europe, gratuitous big ass military transport truck driving through a rundown neighborhood, clip loading, a sleeping mercenary, gratuitous Ray Stevenson, a low rent Eastern European underage stripper, gratuitous black African mercenary, walking into the woods in formation, gratuitous jet fighters flying overhead, a loud radio noise, looking through binoculars, gratuitous personal mercenary lights, a firefight, dead body recon, a dangling crucifix, walking around in the dark, gratuitous electrified fishtank, a pile of dead and rotting bodies, gratuitous barfing, gratuitous old style film projector, gratuitous hidden old Nazi flag, robbing the dead, gratuitous weird old Nazi machine, playing chess with a guy who looks like he's dead but really isn't, gratuitous Einstein, a room with a blinking light, gratuitous classical music, another firefight, a big ass wind, wall punching, personal booze drinking, gratuitous old Nazi movie, with goose stepping and an old propaganda cartoon, bullet to the head, "life is vibration," gratuitous Nazi ghost zombies, nail to the head, up close eye gouging, bayonet knife to the mouth, more robbing the dead, head crushing, axe to the stomach with gut spilling, a white flag with the number five on it, punch to the face, multiple Nazi ghost zombie stabbing orgies, old machine fixing, and not much of an ending.

Best lines: "Do you speak the language?," "You've worked with mercenaries before," "Okay. Everyone on me," "This is it. Minerals, huh? Right," "What the fuck does a guy like that want with a shithole like this?," "That's one nervous little bitch trigger finger you got there, teardrop," "Fuck," "Talk fuckmeat!," "So what, does that make you a fucking tourist?," "You can say what you want about the Nazis, but they had style," "Bodies. Dead men this high," "Aw, this shit is why I left the Marines," "Bet you'd talk to her if she bent down and touched her toes, huh big lad," "Checkmate?," "Your men need to grow up!," "I never really trusted science," "Mr. Hunt, is that you, sir?," "What's the matter, you look like you just fucked your sister," "That bright light ain't heaven, it's just a muzzleflash," "Fucking love culture!," "There is no God," "Talk with me. Please," "We're in charge," "As far as I remember the Germans lost the war, and I don't think we're fighting a bunch of pensioners, do you?," "Someone want to tell me what the fuck he's talking about?," "The last time you found yourself dealing with the undead what did you do?," "Oh, you're humming my balls!," and "So what do you do when you're not being a soldier of fortune? Drink."

Rating: 6.0/10.0

Heartstopper


And then there's "Heartstopper," a gory as all heck super Canadian slasher flick that tries very, very hard to be good but ultimately can't follow through on its promise (there seems to be a lot of that going around in this column). The movie actually stars Meredith Henderson as Sara Wexler, a suicidal teen who ends up, in the middle of a massive hurricane like storm, trapped in an about to be closed hospital under siege by a demonic heart removing serial killer (John Chambers, as played by James Binkley) who just came back to life after being executed for being a demonic heart removing serial killer. With fellow high school classmate and pseudo shady wounded hoodlum Walter (Nathan Stephenson) as her only real friend, Sara must find a way to continually escape the deadly advances of Chambers (who spends the first half of the movie killing people in incredibly nasty and gory ways) and survive the night.

The first half of "Heartstopper" works quite well. It establishes the various characters and what they're about (we see Sara attempt suicide, we see just how bad ass and awful Chambers is, Englund gets to work his charisma as only he can in a thankless role as the area's sheriff and Chambers' sworn enemy Berger) and the situation with the rundown hospital and the storm is well thought out. When Chambers is revealed to be "supernatural" and he starts working through the various "lesser" cast members, ripping their hearts out and whatnot, the movie is really working itself up to quite a final showdown (because, as we all know, that's what slasher flicks lead up to, the final confrontation. Well, the good ones always do). But then things slow down to a crawl. Suddenly the danger potentially lurking around each corner (Chambers appearing out of nowhere, thrusting his hand into a person's chest and tearing out his or her heart) goes away. Yes, Chambers is still out there wandering the hallways, stalking Sara and Walter and douchebag Nurse Grafton (the great Laura DeCarteret), but, again, there's no real sense of danger for anyone. Chambers just stops being a threat. You can't have that in a slasher flick (you can't have that in any horror movie).

The ending doesn't make any sense, either. Unless I missed something (and that could have happened), I don't understand why Chambers' "living tattoo" is, well, a "living tattoo." And is it me, or does the "living tattoo" appear on Sara's arm in pieces? Another big problem with the flick is Walter's shirt. You'll notice that throughout the movie, once the blood starts flowing in a major way and starts getting on people, the amount of blood on Walter's Pac-Man shirt changes. Sometimes Walter's shirt is caked in grue, at other times the blood is dried up. Is the constant changing supposed to be funny? Is it supposed to say something? Or is it just a continuity issue that you just have to overlook? As far as I can tell, "Heartstopper" isn't one of those hip and edgy "winking" horror movies (I believe Walter has a line where he tells Sara not to hide under the bed because in horror movies that's where the killer always looks first, but I don't think it's a tell that the director wants you to know that he's hip to the fact that he's made a horror movie). I'm going to say that it's just a big continuity error that the moviemakers couldn't find a way around. I could be wrong about that, though.

Meredith Henderson is quite good as the suicidal Sara. She's one of the better female slasher flick heroes in recent memory. Nathan Stephenson, once you get past the whole "he looks like that guy from High School Musical" thing, he's a good secondary hero to Sara. His character is just as vulnerable as Sara, so there's very little of that "masculine hero" crapola, which is a nice change of pace. And James Binkley is quite good as Chambers the demonic heart removing serial killer. He loses some of his menace when the movie slows down, but he makes up for it with his physical presence (I don't think I've ever seen such a relatively small main bad guy be as scary as Binkley). And then there's Robert Englund, who, as I said, has the thankless role of the local sheriff, Sheriff Berger. He does his usual great job and makes his few moments on screen memorable (he gets one of the best death scenes in the movie, second only to the car accident guy who gets his stomach ripped open by Chambers). I just wish Englund worked more often in larger parts instead of the extended cameos he seems to do more often than not. Englund can obviously carry a movie, can carry a franchise, so I think it's about time small genre movie producers (heck, just small, and even big, movie producers) get behind Mr. Krueger and use all of his assets. There's just no excuse not to.

Even with its problems, I did kind of like "Heartstopper." It's fun, it's got plenty of blood and guts (that's always fun, isn't it? Of course it is), it's got a pretty decent villain, and it works about half the time. For a low budget super Canadian slasher movie, sometimes that's all you can hope for; that it isn't completely bad.

If you see it around, you might want to check it out. It isn't great, but it isn't all that bad, either.

So what do we have here? A pretty decent hard rock opening theme with flash cuts over the credits, gratuitous heart removing, attempted suicide, gratuitous priest attempting to talk to and comfort a bald guy on death row, priest intimidating, gratuitous Robert Englund, gratuitous Robert Englund drinking coffee, gratuitous death row execution via electric chair, gratuitous electrical storm that helps along the execution, a flaming body, "living" tattoos, exploding eyes, fixing a dislocated shoulder, gratuitous autopsy, a pus filled lesion, a big ass knife, heart removal with nasty gloppy intestines, gratuitous cigarette smoking in a hospital, gratuitous Robert Englund eating cherry pie, a massive rain storm, face burning, janitor killing, laundry smelling, a room full of dead bodies, a swinging light bulb, gratuitous Robert Englund getting his ass kicked, handwashing in a bucket, a slippery floor, gratuitous defibulator attack, a great Robert Englund death scene, hiding under a hospital bed, gratuitous Pac-Man shirt that keeps changing the amount of blood it has on it, chains on the door, threatening legal action, fire extinguisher throwing, a series of cardboard box obstacles, gratuitous Chambers using flowery language, one nasty ass gut ripping scene, throat slashing, scalpel to the eye, face slashing, neck snapping, up close wound stitching, hiding out in a blood storage tank, a blood transfusion, a blood trail, praying to Jesus, lead pipe to the head, a wheelchair gun attack, gratuitous sulfuric acid attack with face melting, talk about a Girl Scouts hunting badge, penis shooting, heart stabbing, scalpel to the leg, glass door cracking, a tornado, gratuitous stock footage of storm destruction, and a lame ending.

Best lines: "Hey, slut," "God loves you, John. Do you believe in God?," "Most people would call that a nightmare," "Feels good knowing you're about to take a life, doesn't it, Sheriff?," "God's mercy ain't got nothing to do with me," "What's a pretty kid like that got to be suicidal about anyway?," "Language!," "I scared you?," "Looks like you got stabbed. No shit," "Triangle, square, down, down, left," "He's a real heartstopper, huh?," "You have the right to shut the fuck up!," "If you knew how feeble your savior was you would have stopped believing in him years ago," "Well, that's a fire hazard," "What the hell is this place, a prison?," "I'll tell you what, I see any undead psycho killers I'll join your fan club," "Sara Wexler, something wicked your way comes," "You're not Dr. Drayis. No shit," "I need to look at you!," "I need a change of face," "You were going to throw a bag of salt water at Chambers?," "Sometimes you gotta do a lot of bad to do a little good," "And this is for my mother!," "You should have taken out my heart when you had the chance," "The only great pain in this life is having to live it," and "I don't get it. What the hell happened in here last night?"

Rating: 6.9/10.0

***

Well, I think that'll be about it for this issue. B-movies rule, always remember that. And, if there's anything you would like to see reviewed here, send me an e-mail or send me a line below.

"Outpost"

Ray Stevenson- DC
Julian Wadham- Hunt
Richard Brake- Prior
Paul Blair- Jordan
Brett Fancy- Taktarov
Enoch Frost- Cotter
Julian Rivett- Voyteche
Michael Smiley- McKay
Johnny Meres- The Breather
Directed by Steve Barker
Screenplay by Rae Brunton
Distributed by Sony Home Entertainment
Rated R for strong violence and language
Runtime- 90 minutes
Buy it here



"Heartstopper"

Meredith Henderson- Sara Wexler
Nathan Stephenson- Walter
James Binkley- John Chambers
Robert Englund- Sheriff Berger
Laura DeCarteret- Nurse Grafton
Michael Cram- Doctor Hitchens
Directed by Bob Keen
Screenplay by Vlady Pildysh and Warren P. Sonoda, based on a story by Vlady Pildysh
Distributed by Anchor Bay Entertainment (although the DVD I watched wasn't from Anchor Bay)
Not rated
Runtime- 85 minutes
Buy it here