‘Frankenweenie’ was an overall disappointment and is definitely not meant for children. It started out strong, but the movie quickly deteriorated with how far-fetched it was becoming and finally crashed and burned in the last scene when it becomes evident that Victor Frankenstein has not really learned anything throughout his journey.

However, the movie was slightly redeemable because of Tim Burton and the voices of the actors, in addition to the references to other horror movies. Tim Burton strikes again with stunning animations set behind a stark black and white landscape. While serious for the majority of the movie, it does have its funny parts, especially when there are references to old horror flicks and characters such as Mrs. Frankenstein, Dracula, Igor, the Invisible Man, Godzilla, and Gremlins. The main characters are voiced by the talented Catherine O’Hara, Martin Short, Charlie Tahan, and Winona Ryder, who all brilliantly portray their characters in the movie.

The story follows elementary school kid Victor Frankenstein trying to find the perfect science fair project when his beloved dog, Sparky, gets hit by a car. Devastated, Victor decides to try to make Sparky come back to life by harnessing electricity and using the wind and lightning storm outside to his benefit. Lo and behold, it magically works and Sparky comes back to life, to Victor’s joy. However, Victor decides to try to hide Sparky. Not surprisingly, Sparky is seen by the Igor-like classmate, who demands to be taught how to bring animals back from the dead. The spreading of this top-secret knowledge brings about chaos as the race to get the best science fair project causes the kids to make less-than-wise decisions about what they wanted to bring back to life.

While the characters are interesting and vivid, the storyline rapidly deteriorates (until the audience is tempted to just get up and leave the theater) because of the immense implausibility, not to mention the depiction of the adults. The parents, especially Victor’s, never have any idea what is going on with their own kids and hardly lift a finger to help when their kids are in mortal peril. All the parents in the movie are passive to the point of absurdity, while the elementary school kids save the day and the town.

Even though ‘Frankenweenie’ is a heartwarming story of how much a boy loves his dog, the intense emotions it portrays is inappropriate for kids. The theater was filled with crying kids when Sparky died the first time and when it looked like he was going to die again. Since the majority of kids have some sort of animal, they easily connect with Victor and how they would feel if their pet died. Since Victor was able to make Sparky come back to life, kids might believe that their pet can come back to life, too. The horror sequences at the end of the movie, when so many scary animals are being brought back to life, is too much.

There is no real lesson to learn from ‘Frankenweenie.’ Throughout the movie, it seems Victor is making progress with understanding death, but he ultimately makes little progress. He is still so obsessed with keeping his dog alive at the end of the movie that kids do not really learn how to healthily cope with the loss of a pet. While ‘Frankenweenie’ is not all bad, it is one of the movies that should be questioned as a “kid’s movie.”

Rating: 1/5

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In part two of the Cole Haddon interview, Cole goes into how he was able to put ‘The Strange Case of Mr. Hyde’ together, along with the many inspirations and influences he had when making the comic.

Toonari Post (TP): About your comic, ‘The Strange Case of Mr. Hyde’, your first issue was released in April 27 of 2011. Since then, you’ve released three other volumes, and now, in February, Dark Horse will be coming out with the four volume package. The one thing I was immediately impressed with was the artwork by M.S. Corley. How did you two come together for the project?

Cole Haddon (CH): M.S., I actually forgot what that stands for, but I know ‘M’ stands for Mike. At the time that the deal had been made and we were moving forward on ‘The Strange Case of Mr. Hyde’, my editor at the time, Dave Land, who has moved on from Dark Horse since then, sent me five or six really talented artists to consider, people who actually had name recognition. But a lot of it was, I don’t mean this as a slight, but it was the more conventional stuff.

There were a few that were a little out there, but for the most part, it was styles that I was familiar with. I knew from the start that I wanted ‘The Strange Case of Mr. Hyde’ to just look different, that when someone picked up the comic book to just immediately think that “this is something different, maybe I should pay attention to it.”

After going back and forth a little bit, they sent me Mike’s work, which I was immediately struck by because it didn’t look like other things that were out there. But he also didn’t have much of a history in comic books.

He had illustrated an eight-page story for Dark Horse Presents’ MySpace page. I believe that’s how it worked, which ironically enough involved Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Jack the Ripper, very odd, but a much more monstrous version of everything.

So it struck me as different and special, and we got on the phone and didn’t stop talking for like 90 minutes about how much we loved classic horror movies. Of course, that inspired ‘The Strange Case of Mr. Hyde’, and by the end, it just seemed clear Mike wanted to work on the research and figure out how to put on the page what I saw in my head.

I haven’t regretted the decision since. He’s done nothing, but amazing work and pushed himself every step of the way, even when there could have been easier ways of doing things. He consistently challenged the instincts that both of us had.

TP: At the point when Adye and Jekyll meet up with Newcomen in the Museum of Waxworks, that made me think of ‘The House of Wax’ with Vincent Price. What would you say your biggest influence for making this comic is?

CH: I think probably as an aesthetic storyteller, everything has come, for me, from film. Film has led me to every classic book I’ve ever read. It’s sort of the launching pad to my entire existence. Probably several years ago, upon seeing ‘Pulp Fiction’, it was the first time I realized that my natural instinct to mash things together, just because I thought it was cool, actually could work.

For instance, something that Tarantino has been doing ever since, is mashing together genres and films that have no business being in the same movie, but somehow works. I could only dream that I’m remotely effective as he is.

But that was really the launching point for combining a love of a lot of classic horror from Universal Pictures Monster movies of the ’30s, ’40s, and ’50s, which had a huge impact on this series, to the Hammer Horrors to the ’50s, ’60s, and early ’70s before they went off the rails.

That had a huge impact. In fact, there is a Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee cameo in the series if you look very carefully. It was always the intention to draw inspiration to from the films that had such an impact on me as a child, to somehow reintroduce that feeling, that love of Gothic horror to a reader who might not be all that familiar with it.

The colorist, Jim Campbell, did some remarkable work, I think. He was probably chiefly responsible for invoking the feel of those Hammer films, in particular with the color pallet he chose. Contrast, saturated, and de-saturated colors between the upper-class and the lower-class to thematic colors for characters, the use of the brightest, most garish red we could come up with for blood that is never diluted by shadows or distance.

Blood, just like in all of the Hammer films, just has to scream at the audience. Even the ‘House of Wax’ reference is correct. Madame Tussauds is a real location.

Because the film goes hand-in-hand with the comic book, it was important that there were set pieces, major set pieces that people would recognize and would be exciting to see on the screen, and Madame Tussauds was one of those just for what it offered in terms of action, in terms of being able to actually have a visual representation of what the popular idea of what Hyde is.

There is also the fact that I love the Vincent Price ‘House of Wax’ and go all the way back to the Michael Curtiz’s ‘Mystery of the Wax Museum’, which is an old, two-color inspiration for the ‘House of Wax’.

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Recently, Toonari Post spoke with Cole Haddon, author of ‘The Strange Case of Mr. Hyde’. The comic, by Dark Horse, was a successful four volume series which has recently breached Hollywood and will become a full-length motion picture. Cole Haddon explained to us how he got his start and how he came up with the story behind ‘The Strange Case of Mr. Hyde’.

Toonari Post (TP): How did you start your current career?

Cole Haddon (CH): I moved out here to L. A. six years ago with the intention of breaking into the film business as a screenwriter. That took about three years with the help of friends I made, because I got representation and got some attention on some scripts I was working on. That led to reaching the comic book world to a meeting with Dark Horse Entertainment, and that’s how I became a comic book writer. But, for the screenplay stuff, that was just hard work and people eventually liking what I was doing, and it paid off.

TP: How long have you been focused on screenwriting, and then evolved to comics?

CH: As long as I can remember, I’ve always wanted to be a storyteller. I think I’ve just gone with that title as an umbrella for what I wanted to do, because I drifted between so many different mediums. When I was 13, I thought I was going to be a comic book writer, and I was also an illustrator.

So I was trying to break into the business just as the image boom was exploding around the country. But it took me forever to draw a comic book. Where other people do it quite naturally, I would have been spending two years to do two issues. But I enjoyed the stories so much and transitioned into screenwriting, and then went off to college where I then again transitioned into writing novels and short stories.

Until about 28 or so, I just realized film was where my heart had always been, and I was just running in circles around it, because I think in Michigan, where I’m from, you’re largely told that’s a dream for other people, that you should just go get a job at General Motor or if you get your degree and become an engineer, or a lawyer, or doctor, or something simple and easy and clearly lucrative.

So I ran from diving in for a long time, and I just gave up on running and got in the car and drove out here, and I’ve been here ever since. Very long and winding, and not at all a direct path, but I always knew that I wanted to be telling stories, and that, so far, looks like what I have to do.

TP: When you went into making the comic, was there anything specific you wanted to introduce into the comic world? What did you feel was missing and that you wanted to add in the comic book industry?

CH: I’ve been a comic book fan since I was probably eight and worked at comic book stores, and like I said, I thought I was going to work in the comic book industry from a very young age. That was mostly from the love of super hero comic books, and as I got older, though, I found I wanted more and more sophisticated stories, which weren’t always to be found in the super hero series.

So, I think when I finally got the opportunity to move into the medium, thanks to Dark Horse, I really wanted to use it as a means to explore themes that I wasn’t really allowed to touch in my screenwriting career.

In many ways, I call comic books my independent film because it pays like shit, but the satisfaction is through the roof. I control everything, and you get to create your own property, such as ‘The Strange Case of Mr. Hyde’.

So having that freedom to explore ideas, sometimes challenging ideas about society and religion and politics and many of these things that I found in the medium that I wanted to play with, and I didn’t necessarily see enough. There is much of it out there, but it’s stuff I had to look for. So when I finally got into it, I wanted to, at least, focus on that myself.

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To start off the new year, Dark Horse Comics tried to scare the pants off its readers with the seventh installment of ‘Creepy’. For those of you who are unaware, ‘Creepy’, along with its cousin ‘Eerie’, was a popular horror comic series back in the ’60s and ’70s by Warren Publishing, to which Dark Horse Comics recently acquired the rights. If you would like a more detailed explanation on how Dark Horse acquired these series, click here.

Let’s see if ‘Creepy’ has truly risen from the dead or if it was robbed from the grave. When first looking upon ‘Creepy’ #7, we are given menacing, yet beautiful, cover art by Sanjulian, which works to give the readers goosebumps even before they open up to the first page.

The comic really seems to be a staple of classic horror tales from the ’60s and ’70s. It is clear that a lot of thought went into this aspect of the comic, which really inspires nostalgia in those who grew up with it. The comic, itself, is a series of short stories by different artists and is brought together by a ghoulish host named Uncle Creepy.

While having different writers and artists for each story is a great way to keep the comics fresh and unique, there are also vices that can bring down the comic in quality. With this in mind, let us look at the first story of Creeper #7!

‘Mud’ is a very simplistic story. We are introduced to Ronnie, our protagonist who is getting pushed in the mud by the town bully, Jake. We then see Ronnie walking through the woods, venting his anger and demanding revenge. In typical horror flare, a monster of vengeance comes to his aid. Overall, this chapter has some classic horror themes.

My biggest gripe about it would be the art design. The details are nice, and the style is gritty. In a few panels, however, I found the noir style intolerable due to the amount of action that was occurring. This made certain panels hard to see and left me sitting there jumping between panels. The chapter was good, but on its own, it would not further the comic’s appeal.

‘The Shroud’ is a chapter filled with stereotypical characters, a foreseeable plot, and an “I saw that coming” ending. These factors make a very entertaining trip through the classic horror story. Our protagonist is Steven, an overconfident man who rushes into things (which usually turns out for the worst).

In the story, he finds himself at a storage site, cleaning out the inventory. His wife, Sherry, is very cautious and always disagrees with her husband’s plans, but still tags along. It was there that they find a mysterious textile  for which people would pay handsomely, and others would kill to get their hands on. Its gritty style brings this chapter to life and is another classic pulled straight from the past.

‘Bloodsuckers’ is Creepy’s version of the modern vampire. Taking place in a swamp town, an angry southern sheriff discredits the citizens’ fear of vampire attacks while an election-weary mayor exploits them for votes. The story is your typical cat-and-mouse game, but takes an interesting twist when murders include both human and vampire victims. This chapter had a really nice twist at the end, which makes this one of the best stories.

The ‘Ultimate High’ was mainly filler and the weakest chapter of the comic. The moral of the story is nothing more than another adaptation of ‘Reefer Madness’. The final story seems to come straight out of the ‘Twilight Zone’. ‘Deep Ruby’ offers a mind-blowing experience filled with bizarre and amazing visuals, where the lack of a true story is forgotten as you are taken on a short, yet amazing, ride from beginning to end.

A final thought on Creepy #7, though, is that the comic is a hit-and-miss. Most of the stories are good with a few exceptions that I found extremely irritating. I felt that ‘The Ultimate High’ was out of place and did not add anything to the volume. Everything else was solid, and the short story format makes it easy to pick up at any volume. It is a must-read if you are a fan of ’70s and ’80s horror. If not, then this will probably not interest you. 7/10

Creepy #7 comes out January 25.

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Almodovar has done it again. The Spanish filmmaker has once again wowed audiences all over Europe with his latest movie ‘The Skin I live In’, one of his darkest scripts to date that will make you squirm in your seat.

A brilliant plastic surgeon, portrayed by a cold-blooded looking Antonio Banderas, experiments with human skin in his well-equipped operating theater, a solitary palatial mansion where he secretly uses a young girl ,Vera, as his guinea pig.

Vera, wonderfully played by the talented Elena Anaya, and her smooth skin will play a big part in this chilling story as the surgeon keeps experimenting on her in order to create an indestructible skin. Vera is not only getting her skin replaced but also adapting a new look, specific features that might resemble someone else.

With a twisted plot that will make your brain guess and relate the facts of the story all the way though the movie, Pedro Almodovar delivers a bizarre storyline with a very superficial title, What’s more superficial than our skin?, and yet move us in so many different levels by exposing us to a raw representation of the human nature.

The script, that was freely adapted from the novel Mygale by Thierry Jonquet, has been considered one of Almodovar’s most elaborated stories of all time, drenched in a hand-embroidered universe of thrilling scenes that will throw you back to those of Hitchcock and Buñuel. You can still perceive the pure Almodovar elements in the visuals as well, let alone the music, composed by long-time collaborator Alberto Iglesias.

Leading a pack of fierce actors, the submissive beauty of Elena Anaya tries to get untangled from the abusive and aggressive character of Antonio Banderas, by using her sex-appealing fragility that differs from her surgically-enhanced super skin. Marisa Paredes, Jan Cornet, Blanca Suarez and Roberto Alamo help you shape and mold this tale in your head.

One more time Almodovar’s supporting actors are as essential and relevant as the leading ones. The filmmaker, two-time Academy Award Winner and recipient of the most emblematic awards in cinematography, is no stranger to controversy. He has been slammed by moralists and conservative audiences for dealing with LGTB themes, explicit scenes, irreverent humor or feminism.

This time around he is facing criticism for a rather violent plot and some backlash from the Spanish media, which did not stop his unconditional and devoted fans from making ‘The Skin I live In’ the second highest grossing movie during its first week in Spain.

International markets such as France, Germany or The United States have always shown a warm appreciation for his work making his movies both critically and commercially successful. In the United States, The movie premiers at the New York Film Festival on 12 October 2011 and then it is expected to hit theaters across the country just in time to get some Oscar Buzz.

Image Courtesy of  http://www.facebook.com/theskinilivein

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A lot of horror movie remakes have came out recently, Let Me In, the American version of Let the Right One In, and Fright Night, and The Crow are to be scheduled for release in the near future.  But the one that most are talking about is the remake of Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark.

Visionary filmmaker Guillermo Del Toro, director of Hellboy, and Pan’s Labyrinth, has written the script.  Del Toro is known for his fantastical monsters, and scary undertones to his movies.  Well, so far Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark has people shaking in their boots even when watching the trailer.

Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark is a monster movie about a young introverted girl named Sally Hurst (Bailee Madison).  Sally is threatened by the monsters whom have been locked up in their new house for years.  Moving in with her father Alex (Guy Pearce) and his girlfriend Kim (Katie Holmes), she has to persuade her father of monster’s existence if she is to survive.

Del Toro was brought up in an extremely Catholic household, when he was young he started to make small movies and then learned make-up artistry from the legendary artist Dick Smith who worked on The Exorcist.  His most critically acclaimed movies consist of the two movies set during the authoritarian rule of Francisco Franco, El Laberinton Del Fauno (Pan’s Labyrinth) and El Espinazo Del Diable (The Devil’s Backbone).

Many of Del Toro’s movies are themed with child-like horrors with a child protagonist.  Primarily, Del Toro’s work and sense of style is derived from his childhood.  Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark is one of his movies that draws heavily from his childhood.

When Del Toro was a kid, he had watched the movie made for TV under the same name as Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark.  He claims it was one of the scariest movies he has ever seen. “For my generation it was the scariest TV movie we ever saw.  It creeped out my whole family and it stayed on my mind,” Del Toro said in the production notes.

When all the writing, shooting, and editing was finished, the movie was sent to the MPAA  (Motion Picture Association of America).  The hopes of obtaining a rated PG-13 were dashed when the movie came back stamped with an R-rating.  Del Toro and the creators spoke to the MPAA to see what they could change for a the lower rating.  The MPAA responded, “Why ruin a perfectly scary movie?”

Troy Nixey is set to direct.  Prior he has only directed one short by the name of Latchkey’s Lament.  His real achievements lie with comic books.

Nixey was an illustrator for Only the End of the World Again, written by Neil Gaiman.  Nixey had also co-created the comic Trout and is know.  In his comics Nixey usually draws very dark and sinister illustrations.  Nixey’s directing will complement Del Toro’s fantastical and frightening style and add to the chills that will run up the audiences’ spines.

Del Toro is one filmmaker that is hard to say anything bad about.  His movies never fail to chill and entice the audience with his fantastical monsters.  The trailer for Don’t be Afraid of the Dark scares the viewer in the first minute, it is not hard to become hooked in the first minute.  With only one directing credit to his name, Nixey will have his work cut out for him for his first major film.

People at the Virginia Film Festival are already raving about the movie, while many others fear to see more than the trailer when it comes out August 26th.

Image COurtesy of  http://www.facebook.com/DontBeAfraidoftheDark

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