Movie Review – The Odds, 2018

I got a chance to check out a new independent horror film this weekend called The Odds. It’s a 2018 film, feature-length, made by Uproar Pictures, written and directed by Bob Giordano.

The story revolves around two main characters, a woman and a man whose names we never learn. It is basically a two-person film (for the most part), and takes place almost entirely in one location. I’ve seen some terrific films of this sort in the past – “man in a box” type stories that are true character-driven stories.  Buried, from 2010 comes to mind (starring Ryan Reynolds), which takes place entirely in a coffin buried underground. For this type story to work you need two main things; a solid script, and great actors. The Odds has both.

The story opens with a young woman (Abbi Butler) entering a warehouse type facility. A man (James J. Fuertes) enters the room and sits at a table opposite her. We learn that she has entered a game, and the man is the facilitator of the game. She is competing against unseen players in distant locations, the winner to receive one million dollars. To win, she must have a high threshold for pain, as she is subjected to a different torture technique each round. The facilitator is in communication with the game leaders through a Bluetooth earpiece. Once three players drop out each round is over. We learn that the final round involves a game of Russian roulette, and once you reach that round there is no backing out. This ultimately leads her to question herself, her motivations, the man across from her, and even the game itself.

The film brought to mind for me a short story by Roald Dahl called Man from the South, which has been adapted several times, initially for TV as an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents (starring Peter Lorre), where a man bets his car against another man’s little finger that his lighter will work ten times in a row. Most recently Quentin Tarantino did a version of this same story for the 1995 film Four Rooms.

The bulk of the story of THE ODDS involves the back and forth dialogue between the two main actors. It would be easy to become bored with a 107-minute movie featuring just two characters, but that isn’t the case here. The script is well-written and builds tension throughout, engaging the viewer and drawing them in with excellent performances from the two leads.

The violence may be tough to watch in places for some people, but I thought the film did an excellent job presenting it without wallowing in it, walking that fine line without crossing into torture-porn territory. I found it an entertaining film, and worth tracking down. I understand a sequel in in the works, as well.

The Odds is currently making the festival circuit and will be screening at this year’s Nashville Film Festival on Friday May 11^th, 9pm, and Thursday May 17 at 8:30pm.

Benedictine the Mad Monk - 80s Nashville Horror Host

Here's a fun one. I've had this footage for some time now, not sure exactly where I got it. But I dug it out and got to looking, and realized this was a horror host from Nashville TN. He is called Benedictine the Mad Monk, and his show aired on WZTV Nashville Ch17. The movie he is hosting was the Hammer film TASTE THE BLOOD OF DRACULA. I was able to piece together the year from clues in the video, and realized it was from 1989.

I posted it on Youtube and asked if anyone has information on the identity of the Mad Monk to please let me know. Sure enough, a viewer chimed in within a day or so and filled me in on the mystery. Turns out this is none other than radio talk show host Phil Valentine! I would never have guessed. Phil himself then posted a comment a couple days later confirming that yes, that was indeed him under the monk's robes. The show only ran for about 3 weeks, which is why so many of us Nashvillians missed it. You can check it out below:

 

Dr. Gangrene named Best Columnist in 2016 Rondo Awards

Greetings Fright Fans! Dr. Gangrene here with some great news. The winners were announced in the 2016 Rondo awards and I am pleased to announce that I won BEST COLUMN for my Scary Monsters Magazine column THE DOCTOR IS IN-SANE.

 In addition the short film I wrote the script for, THE BEAST IN THE CAVE, (based on the H.P. Lovecraft short story and directed by Cameron McCasland) won BEST SHORT FILM.

 A huge thank you to everyone who voted for us. I truly appreciate your support and am over the moon about the wins. Congratulations to everyone who was nominated as well as all of the winners, especially Don and Vicki Smeraldi, editors of Scary Monsters Magazine who were given the prestigious MONSTER KID OF THE YEAR award for keeping the magazine alive.

Top 5 Classic Horror Anthology Countdown

In this video I take a look at one of my favorite sub-genres of film, the horror anthology movies, and countdown my top 5 classic horror movies.

 

Interview with Cameron McCasland

Great interview with Cameron McCasland about THE BEAST IN THE CAVE and THE PRISONER OF PERDITION over at Research my Trash website. Check it out here: http://www.searchmytrash.com/articles/cameronmccasland(3-17).shtml

and you can watch the film here:

The Colorless Fists of Iron

I recently watched the new Netflix series IRON FIST, and really enjoyed it. Is it my favorite of the Marvel Netflix series? No, it’s not, but that is not because of the reasons I’m hearing other people dismiss the series, and I am honestly a bit perturbed by these dismissals.

I first encountered this attitude when listening to NPR recently. A reviewer named Eric Deggans reviewed IRON FIST on the day it was released, March 17th, prefacing the interview by claiming to be a superhero-aholic. He said, “Yes, I actually paid to “download the awful "Batman v Superman" movie, and I still watch "The Flash" and "Supergirl" on the CW Network.”



Ok, fair enough. I saw that movie and watch those shows too. He then goes on to give a very biased review of the show. He calls it clunky, the plot and pacing bad and actor Finn Jones (Danny Rand) overmatched, without any real explanation of why he thought so. It was clear from the comments and his tone that he didn’t give this series a fair chance.

The review then peels off to talk about and play clips from two other movies he had issues with – GHOST IN THE SHELL and DOCTOR STRANGE. You see, Eric had a problem with the fact that the lead character in Iron Fist, Danny Rand (Finn Jones), is white, and travels to an Asian city to train in martial arts, and returns as a Kung-Fu master (therefore supposedly appropriating their culture). In fact, he even said nothing has made him more ashamed of his love of superhero movies than IRON FIST.

Seriously?  Despite the diversity of the cast and the strong depiction of women (Colleen Wing and Claire Temple kick some serious ass in this one, and the baddest villain in the show is another woman, Madame Gao), this is what makes you most ashamed? Have you even watched or read anything that wasn’t made in the past four or five years?

This honestly isn’t anything different than Eric’s beloved Batman. In the Christopher Nolan movie BATMAN BEGINS (2005) Bruce Wayne goes off to an Asian city (Bhutan) be trained by Ra’s Al Ghul and the League of Shadows, becoming their greatest warrior and returning to Gotham to fight for justice. Or how about ARROW on the CW, another show Eric undoubtedly watches. In it Oliver Queen is shipwrecked and eventually travels to an Asian city (I’m sensing a trend here) and trains with the League of Shadows, becoming a world class fighter. And how about any of the older superhero movies – like Tim Burton’s BATMAN (1989) for instance – there’s barely a face of color in the entire movie, and the women are set dressings or stereotypes at best.

BUT no objections were raised about any of these shows... Why the hate for Iron Fist?



Let’s step back for a minute and look at the history of the character of Iron Fist, aka Danny Rand. His partner and best friend was Luke Cage, Power Man, a black character, during the 1970s, a time of serious racial disparity. They operated in the roughest part of town and ran a business together, HEROES FOR HIRE in the book POWER MAN AND IRON FIST (note the black character is listed first), helping all those in need, without regard to race. He falls in love with Misty Knight, another black character. The book is full of characters of minority status. In fact, the whole point behind Power Man and Iron Fist is racial harmony and acceptance, and it’s a huge part of the character of Iron Fist. But that is all ignored in this review.

In fact, Iron fist wasn’t even the first Marvel martial arts character. The reviewer is either oblivious to, or intentionally ignoring the fact that Iron Fist was not the first Marvel martial arts character. SHANG-CHI: MASTER OF KUNG FU was created in 1973, six months prior to the first publication of Iron Fist. That was probably as much a part of the decision to make Danny a Westerner as anything else. They were differentiating him from the recently established character of Shang-Chi, an Asian. That’s important to note.

Marvel was merely staying true to the book with this TV series. They were depicting characters the way they were created, by writer Roy Thomas and artist Gil Kane, a faithful adaptation of the source material, which is an admirable way to approach it. I am all for diversity, and in this case would have been fine with them changing the character to another race (in fact I think it would have been an interesting take), but that’s not the direction the show creators chose to go. And that’s a perfectly valid decision as well. Unlike the two examples cited in the NPR review – Ghost in the Shell and Doctor Strange, which both changed races of characters FROM Asian to white, Iron Fist depicted the character as he appeared in the book since his inception in 1974. Which is a totally different thing. The comparison to those two movies is unfair, as they aren’t the same.

The reviewer mentions he would prefer if the creators of this show made Danny Rand Asian. I’m curious if he would have been fine with them making Luke Cage (from the Netflix series of the same name) Asian, or any other race, as well? And if not, why not? Perhaps that speaks more to his own racial biases than any problems in this show.

Shame on NPR for allowing such a shallow and unfair take on this topic. Why not contact Iron Fist creator Roy Thomas and ask him about the creation of the character and his thought process? Or better yet the writers of the new TV series and ask about their intentions? Why not get a real comic book expert on the show who could address the history of the character? Why not mention the diversity of the cast of IRON FIST, and the strong female characters in the show, and in fact the diversity of all of the Netflix superhero series? They’ve done a tremendous job in that regard.

But then none of that was the point of this NPR segment, was it? You just wanted to attack this perceived racial injustice of “white washing” and promote an agenda, and I guess that is ultimately what NPR is most interested in.

Catching up with Count Gore DeVol

Wherein I call my old friend Count Gore DeVol, aka Richard Dyszel, legendary horror host, and see what he's been up to in the lab lately.