As the movie ends, the sight of Tony wandering around the streets of London
casually dropping plastic bags of flesh into the river evokes, if not pure horror, an overwhelming sense of isolation and loneliness – which is perhaps even more terrifying. Tony is an interesting movie, but its lack of a strong plot means that it falls a bit flat, which is a shame, because for a largely silent protagonist with no social skills, Tony is an oddly compelling character.
CLAIRE HORNSELL BIG HAIRY DEAL
THE REAL WOLFMAN Written by Laurie K. Miller
CHEERBLEEDERS
cheerbleeders.com
11:00 mins. Even J.J. Abrams’ receptionist is talented, it turns
out. Peter Podgursky, currently paying the bills as the front office guy at Bad Robot (the company owned by Abrams: Cloverfield, Lost and the Star Trek reboot), is a graduate of USC’s film program, and Cheerbleeders is his thesis film. The horror- comedy features Penny and Devon, two goth out-
casts locked in an archetypal high school battle with the cheerleaders and football team. Penny brings her grandfather’s Greek urn to show-and-tell one day and one of the jocks dumps the ancient, slimy contents on Devon, which gives him supernatural control of the cheerleaders. Now, it’s pay- back time, and only Penny stands in Devon’s way. A little rough techni- cally, but still more entertaining than 90 percent of the competition. JASON LAPEYRE
NIGHT OF THE HELL HAMSTERS
nightofthehellhamsters.com
15:50 mins. Hamsters: they sure look cute, but they’re re-
ally just fuzzballs with razor-sharp teeth. This twisted short from the UK follows a babysitter and her boyfriend who unwittingly conjure up de- monic hamsters via a homemade Ouija board. Soon, blood and fur fly as the couple tries to fend off the creatures with everything from a saucepan
to a cricket bat. Writer/director Paul Campion, who honed his visual ef- fects talents working on The Lord of the Rings trilogy and Sin City, packs more gore and cool, campy special FX into Night of the Hell Hamsters than most Hollywood horror fare. Until you see a charred, floating hamster with glowing red eyes say, “Your boyfriend sucks cocks in hell!” you ain’t seen nuthin’!
LAST CHANCE LANCE
2:22
222short.com
9:00 mins. A woman wakes up screaming, her body
racked by pain. She stumbles to the bathroom, trying to make sense of the horrible agony. It’s difficult to reveal much of 2:22’s plot – which un- folds in flashbacks – without giving away the rea- son for her distress, but most of the action revolves around a chance meeting with a hand- some stranger at a nightclub. Respect has to be
given to lead Tara Lightfoot for putting herself out there with her perform- ance, but on the whole, the film is disappointing. The flashbacks are cliché and Lightfoot’s character is as underdeveloped as the generic story. The un- warranted nudity suggests that even the filmmakers’ lacked confidence in their short’s ability to keep an audience watching without some titillation. JASON LAPEYRE
CINE MACA B R E
History Channel We can all agree on who was the most famous cinematic werewolf. (Taylor
Lautner, right kids? Ha!) But many questions remain about history’s most fa- mous “real” werewolf. The so-called “Beast of Gévaudan” terrorized rural 18th- century France, mauling more than 100 peasants (mostly women and children) to death before, as the legend goes, being shot and killed by a silver bullet. In many ways, the Beast of Gévaudan is to werewolf mythology what Vlad is
to vamps. (See Brotherhood of the Wolf for one modern interpretation of the leg- end.) And so fans of the fictional loup-garou may find themselves curious about the validity of the story. Enter the History Channel, producers of Ancient Aliens and MonsterQuest. They sent two American guys to the scene of the crimes to investigate. George Deuchar is a crimi- nal profiler who suspects a serial killer was responsible. Cryptozoologist Ken Gerhardt believes it must be an animal, but is hoping to find proof of a real were- wolf. They both act like idiots as they traipse around France meeting histori- ans, animal trainers, church officials and the like, examining documents and con- ducting experiments. I’m not saying these men are idiots, but the format of this kind of TV show sets them up to ask stupid questions and engage in awk- wardly scripted conflicts, all intercut with blurry werewolf recreations. Alright, so there is certainly some neat
info here: how full moons make people and animals go loco, how therians go loco when filmed (“Turn that flashlight off! It’s interfering with my shape-shifting!”) and why the Catholic church may have had a vested interest in convincing locals they were loco. The forensic tests, such as which animal jaws can crush through a spine and thus decapitate hu- mans, or how accurate a silver bullet actually shoots, are fun in a poor-man’s CSI kind of way. But most of this research territory is well-trodden. And their conclusion? Well, not to spoil it for you, but it’s pretty laughable. The DVD is just the 90-minute Real Wolfman show with no extras, which is
fine because I don’t think I could take any more of the History Channel’s brand of mythbusting.
LIISA LADOUCEUR CIRCLING THE DRAIN
DANTE’S INFERNO: AN ANIMATED EPIC Starring Graham McTavish, Vanessa Branch and Steve Blum
Directed by Mike Disa Written by Brandon Auman Starz
The latest animated video game cash grab tie-in features, oddly, classic
literature’s Dante – but not the one you know. Released alongside the eagerly anticipated console game it is based upon (see RM#98), Dante’s Inferno: An Animated Epic is a direct-to-DVD feature-length adaptation of the gory
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