[REC] 2 (2009)

More a continuation (in a Peter Jackson's Lord Of The Rings way) than a sequel to the excellent [REC], [REC] 2 opens with the famous night-vision shot of Manuela Velasco being dragged off into the darkness and picks up the story moments later with the building being stormed by a SWAT team.

The armed police have been assigned to escort a sinister, scar-faced "government representative from the Ministry of Health", Dr Owen (Jonathan Mellor), into the quarantined housing block.

As with its predecessor, this Spanish-language horror is filmed in the shaky-cam style of hand-held cameras - whether carried by the SWAT team or a trio of juvenile delinquents who come into the story about half-way through.

Very quickly we are reminded that this is not your Uncle George's zombie film, but something a whole lot more supernatural, as it fills in some of the questions left hanging by [REC].

Imagine a tower block full of Regan MacNeils! This is the Aliens part of the story after the scene-setting Alien-ness of [REC].

The religious backstory makes for interesting meat, but the truly clever tricks come towards the end when the nature of the hand-held camera medium is used to brilliant effect.

[REC] 2 works on its own merits, although it may come across as a bit of a 'do-over' of [REC] when looked at like that.

However it's when you take the two halves as a single film you realise that this is an amazing, original horror movie that, in a market saturated with cookie-cutter zombie movies, has found a unique spin.

THROWBACK THURSDAY: Saviours Of The Multiplex Generation

As part of the first year of our Scriptwriting For Film & TV course we each had to give a 20-minute presentation on the "Theory and Analysis of Broadcast Texts".

Mine was entitled "Shallow Grave & Trainspotting or How Danny Boyle, John Hodge and Andrew Macdonald were The Saviours Of The Multiplex Generation".

I won't go on about the subject matter as that's not what made the presentations so memorable. 

Several of the finest presentations were made by people who didn't stick with the course beyond the first year.

One young girl - who was, to put it euphemistically, quite flighty - did a talk on A Room With A View (that she'd clearly done no preparation for), which primarily consisted of her finding different ways to say "I just really love it".

But the most glorious part was the purple dye running down her face and neck throughout, where she had hurriedly dyed her hair that morning and not counted on getting caught in the rain on her way to the presentation.

However, the presentation we all remember more than any of the others, as much for the reaction from Paul and I as anything else, was from one of the older students on our course.

This gentleman was using slides to illustrate his talk, about "the importance of character".

Unfortunately, he was clearly nervous and mumbling, and gradually the slides got out of sync with his script.

Paul and I were both trying to control our giggling fits, but then suddenly a slide of sheep in the back of a lorry appeared - and, to this day, I have no idea why - and we just lost it.

Paul - facing down glares from a couple of our female friends - had to excuse himself and leave the room, as I wiped the tears from my eyes and bit my lip as my face turned redder.

It was definitely a "you had to be there" moment, but it's one of those memories that all of our group still holds dear, a touchstone for the laughs we all shared during those three years.

Here are the faded notes for my presentation, and as you can see from the pictures below, they included overhead projection sheets (both photocopied and handwritten). That's how high-tech things were back in the Dark Ages of the 20th Century.

Jennifer's Body (2009)

Remember that visceral feel of tingly excitement you felt the first time you watched the original Nightmare on Elm Street or Sam Raimi's Evil Dead II?

Prepare to feel it again (although maybe not for quite so long).

Jennifer's Body isn't quite in those leagues but is still a meaty, thrilling, monster-stalking-teens horror flick... that just happens to star two of the hottest stars in Hollywood at that time: Megan Fox and Amanda Seyfried.

The story opens with Needy (Seyfriend) in a mental institution then flashes back to explain how she got there.

Needy and Jennifer (Fox) are BFFs, friends since childhood, in a small town called Devil's Kettle - named for a nearby waterfall and its freaky sinkhole (a wonderful detail that makes for a great red herring).

Head cheerleader Jennifer is a typical gorgeous, ditzy teen, always thinking about boys, while Needy is a more normal, average, homely girl with a pleasant boyfriend, Chip (Johnny Simmons) - until the girls go to the community's one, out-of-town, bar to see a visiting big city band play.

A fire breaks out at the dive, killing several people, and in the confusion Jennifer leaves with the band... only to show up hours later at Needy's home, looking like death... and spewing up disgusting, tarry bile over the lino.

Jennifer is no longer the girl that Needy grew up with, but a flesh-eating demon (possibly a succubus) after the band tried to sacrifice her to Satan to ensure they had a successful career.

Unfortunately the ceremony required a virgin and that's one thing Jennifer wasn't!

And to maintain her good looks, Jennifer now needs to feed...

Writer Diablo Cody clearly has an ear for teen banter and there's a lot of a very dark humour at work here that, with the overall Buffy The Vampire Slayer vibe of the piece, made it compelling viewing in my book.

About two-thirds the way through, my sixth sense started trying to tell me that there was "something else" going on here and while some of the clues suggested a Fight Club-style twist might be on the cards; ultimately I was quite relieved to be proved wrong.

What seems odd though is there are several rather hurried segues between scenes that, upon further exploration of the DVD, are covered in the "deleted scenes" (particularly from Chip and Needy's tussle with Jennifer in the abandoned swimming pool to Needy's attack on Jen in her bedroom).

As it stands the movie is only just over an hour-and-half long and it could easily have absorbed a lot of these cut moments back into its flow.

There's also a couple of sequences of heavy info dumping when (a) Jennifer is recounting what happened to her when she went away with the band and (b) when Needy is researching what has happened to Jennifer.

I realise both, and especially the latter, are slightly tongue-in-cheek - as highlighted by Chip's comment: "Our library has an occult section?", but it isn't quite as subtle as maybe Diablo Cody and director Karyn Kusama were hoping.

Perhaps I was paying too much attention - because I was enjoying it so - but some of the more mysterious aspects of the story, like the wild animals flocking round Jennifer when she is about to kill someone and Needy's almost physic connection with, and vivid daydreams about, the demon are thrown out there but never really fully explored or explained.

Ultimately, Jennifer's Body is a flawed masterpiece. It could have been a horror movie of legendary status because it's heaving with good ideas, but somewhere along the line those ideas got either partially diluted or exorcised completely.

Its failure at the box office wasn't helped by some dreadful miss-selling and the complicit, lazy media who accepted the PR spin that this was some Megan Fox vehicle in an American Pie (with lashings of blood) style vein.

It's so much more than that, but unfortunately the movie's strange idiosyncrasies meant it wasn't strong enough to overcome the crass publicity campaign that 20th Century Fox had attached to it.

It would be nice to think there's a more complete "director's cut" lurking out there somewhere that more closely resembles the writer and director's original vision for this movie, but I fear that's an empty dream.

Nevertheless, Jennifer's Body is still a fine piece of gore-splattered, Buffy-style entertainment that's over too quickly and certainly leaves you with a desire to revisit Devil's Kettle sometime soon.

Things Get Strange One Last Time This November

The fall of 1987. Hawkins is scarred by the opening of the Rifts, and our heroes are united by a single goal: find and kill Vecna. But he has vanished — his whereabouts and plans unknown.

Complicating their mission, the government has placed the town under military quarantine and intensified its hunt for Eleven, forcing her back into hiding.

As the anniversary of Will’s disappearance approaches, so does a heavy, familiar dread.

The final battle is looming — and with it, a darkness more powerful and more deadly than anything they’ve faced before.

To end this nightmare, they’ll need everyone — the full party — standing together, one last time.

Quarantine (2008)

The chances are if you have similar tastes to mine you will have heard of the Spanish alt-zombie, shaky-cam, found footage, horror flick [REC] - well, Quarantine is the American remake for those who don't do subtitles.

While not a shot-for-shot remake, Quarantine is very, very similar to the original - even down to the look of the quarantined apartment building.

The lovely Jennifer Carpenter, from Dexter, replaces the elfin Manuela Velasco, as the TV journalist doing a "ride-along" piece with the Los Angeles fire brigade when they are called to a block where an elderly resident is apparently in trouble in her room.

When the police and fire brigade force their way in, the crazy old woman attacks them and things very rapidly go to Hell in an oversized handbasket.

The reporter, and her mostly-unseen cameraman, find themselves trapped inside the building with an assortment of residents - including Alan Harper's wife from Two And A Half Men (Marin Hinkle), the burnt guy from American Horror Story (Denis O'Hare) and Fish from Ally McBeal (Greg Germann) - some of whom are manifesting signs of a kind of super-rabies!

Quarantine, while sticking close to the visceral template established in [REC], appears to be playing down the supernatural left turn in the third act, yet remains uncertain as to which way it wants to take things as it heads towards the now infamous final shot (which is also, rather bizarrely, the DVD cover) that was so effective in [REC] that it has has become a cliché in lazy horror movie making.

So, yes, Quarantine is excellent fun, but mainly because [REC] was so good in the first place. I guess the makers of Quarantine should, at least, be applauded for not screwing up the material they were handed - which makes a change!

Both films, ultimately, are so similar that it really comes down to the mood you are in when choosing which to watch - Spanish or American?

[REC] (2007)

It must be a nightmare trying to conjure up an entirely new idea for a horror film these days, but the Spanish writer/directors of [REC], Jaume Balaguero and Paco Plaza, took a good stab at it.

A TV reporter (the amazingly cute Manuela Velasco) and her camerman are filming a "day in the life" documentary about a local fire crew, when the call comes in to rescue a woman trapped in her apartment.

Unfortunately this routine job turns out to be anything but when the old woman suddenly attacks and bites one of her saviours.

Things spiral out of control from there, when the people in the apartment block find they have been sealed in by the police and special forces - because of a "possible infectious outbreak".

As with Cloverfield, The Blair Witch Project, Man Bites Dog, Diary Of The Dead and probably several others I've missed, the film is entirely seen from the point-of-view of the unseen TV cameraman, making the audience very much a part of the action, limiting our knowledge of what's going on to what the reporter sees and hears.

It's superbly paced from the get-go, with events almost happening in 'real time', with thrills and spills snowballing as the 'outbreak' in the apartment block gets increasingly out of control.

Manuela Velasco

As TV journalist Ángela, Manuela Velasco is amazingly easy on the eye, and a convincing actress to boot, while the rest of the cast were clearly chosen for their 'non-film star' looks, which adds to the authenticity of the piece.

[REC] drip feeds the clues as to what's really going on, but it doesn't long for a savvy audience to grasp the fact that we're seeing a zombie outbreak up close and personal, which is why it's mystifying - and intriguing - when the plot takes a sudden and unexpected left turn into Exorcist territory towards the end.

I love films that let me figure out what's going on for myself, but this sudden shift from scientific reasoning to supernatural weirdness caught me totally off balance.

There had been mutterings from an elderly couple earlier, that hinted at there being more to this than meets the eye, but this was a major leap of faith by the film-makers that I wish had been developed slightly earlier.

Nevertheless, [REC] is a brilliant zombie flick, and a major change of pace from the usual Romero fare (not that there's anything wrong with that), so is well worth checking out if you're into zombie action horror... or just want to watch a really cute Spanish woman running around in a vest top for the better part of 75 minutes.

[REC] was remade in the States, for audiences who can't handle sub-titles, as Quarantine.

There's No Such Thing As A Free Cure

A quantum physicist develops a machine that creates a tunnel to a subatomic universe. In his quest to prove the machine's efficacy, he inadvertently discovers a radical treatment for cancer. But with all experiments, things can, and sometimes, go horribly wrong.

Written & Directed by Calvin Lee Reeder.

Coming to select theaters July 25, available on digital August 5.

OOPS!…I DID IT AGAIN

Top Left: In a wheelchair; Top Right: doing my exercises at home;
Bottom Left: in hospital, Friday; and Bottom Right: in hospital Saturday

When I started this iteration of my blogging career I hadn't intended to write too much about my various health conditions, in fact just the opposite: I was looking to celebrate my triumphs over adversity.

However, my body had other ideas. Over the last few weeks, I had begun to lose strength in my legs (my left has been weakened since my stroke 20 years ago, but I could get around with a walking stick).

There was no inciting incident, no major accident that could have triggered this change in my strength and stability.

In no time at all, I went from one to two walking sticks, then a zimmer frame and a wheelchair. I could no longer get up and down the stairs normally (something that generally hadn't been an issue) and, instead, was having to scooch up and down on my arse! Even washing and going to toilet became a major operation. It was also all too easy to forget this new normal and try to get up to retrieve a book from a shelf or some such, and just find myself collapsing backwards as my legs concertinaed up.

Luckily, I had an appointment with my GP (originally for something else), but, I have to be honest, she was rather useless and - baffled by my symptoms - simply prescribed painkillers and Ibuprofen gel, in the hope that it would go away.

In fact, the problem just got worse and Rachel emailed the surgery asking for a referral for physiotherapy.

The doctor, promptly, replied suggesting I go to the hospital for a check-up, as she couldn't make a referral without a diagnosis.

So, on Friday, we rolled up at the hospital, and I have to say, although Rachel and I were there for pretty much the rest of the day, we were looked after brilliantly. I was subjected to barrage of blood tests and scans, that were all inconclusive.

Ultimately the doctor there said I needed to come back the next day for an MRI at 9.40am.

Of course, the most annoying thing about that day was the fact that the tickets I got for Rachel and myself to see Superman on its opening day went to waste. Rachel has assured me she'll get us some more tickets once my current health situation has calmed down.

Our instructions were to get there for 9am, and the general understanding was that it shouldn't take that long.

I was all prepped and ready, then inserted into the MRI machine... and immediately made the mistake of opening my eyes.

I was in a coffin! It was so claustrophobic.

I freaked out, mashing the panic button, so they pulled me out as quickly as possible.

Everyone was really understanding and lovely, and I was wheeled back to the orthopaedics department, while options were discussed. 

Unfortunately, this meant I was - understandably - bumped to the end of the queue as they had a day's worth of emergency scans to squeeze in.

Many, many hours later - some of which I napped in my comfortable chair - they dosed me up with Diazepam (Valium), gave me an eye mask and let me choose the music I could listen to while in the MRI. I chose My Chemical Romance.

And this time, helped by the fact I also kept my eyes squeezed shut for the 20 or so minutes I was in there, everything ran smoothly (in fact, I was told to "keep still" when I started bopping to Welcome to The Black Parade - one of all-time favourite tunes).

A short time later, Rachel and I were back in the orthopaedics department being guided through the images of my spine by another excellent doctor. He pointed out the prolapsed disc in my spine as the likely cause of my problems, but explained that all this data would be sent to a consultant at King's Hospital, in London, for a definitive verdict.

So, that's where we are at present: I still can't walk, but can get round slowly on the frame, I'm still attending my weekly pensioners' exercise class (the last doctor stressed how important that was), I've got a follow-up appointment with GP next week, and hopefully we'll hear from someone in-between about the analysis on the scan (although the doctor said if we don't hear that's good news).

Our NHS has been marvellous (as always); all the staff were incredible, kind, and generous (even when rushed off their feet). As were our friends who puppy-sat Alice, and Rachel's wonderful parents who do a flawless job of looking after us all.

Rachel has been my rock throughout this sudden turn of events and I know for certain I couldn't have made it this far without her.

Onward and upwards...

Jim Shooter - From Marvel to Valiant (2025)

Back in 2023 Jim Shooter was kind enough to sit down with us at Galaxy Con Columbus.

Even though our conversation was only supposed to go for 45 minutes, we wound up talking for well over an hour about the direct market and his time at Marvel Comics, Valiant, and Defiant.

This 15-minute video covers a bit of that ground. It starts abruptly because he's one of the few people I interviewed that I didn't believe actually needed an introduction.

Jim was a legend in the comics world and no matter your feelings on his work as a writer or editor-in-chief, he made a tremendous impact on the industry, and it all stemmed from his love of comics and defying all odds and getting to work at Marvel as a teenager.

It was a pleasure to have had the chance to speak with Jim and an honor to include him in the film, Shopping for Superman.