The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2014: Cube (1997), directed by Vincenzo Natali

     The Trailer

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The Appropriate Tune: "Trapped In A Box", by No Doubt

     Yeah, vampires are scary, and zombies aren’t very nice, but there’s one thing that puts every movie monster in the world to shame: humans. As scary as those monsters can be, they are still fictional after all, and humans are more or less real. The fear of our fellow man has guided the development of the whole of civilization, caused wars, lead to racism, classism and has shaped our pop culture accordingly. Look at how money money has been made on the true crime and slasher genres, which is based entirely around the premise of people killing other people. Sure, if you go around thinking everyone around is trying to murder you at all times you’re either a severe paranoiac or a Republican, but if the idea wasn’t at least somewhat believable than it wouldn’t be successful. Who knows what people are capable of when pushed to their limits?

      The premise of Cube is a simplistic but highly effective one. 7 people awake to find themselves in strange color coded rooms, with no memory of how they ended up there. Each wall of each room has hatches that enter into other rooms, which also open into other rooms, forming a gigantic, constantly shifting cube. Not only that, but some of the rooms are rigged with various deadly traps, which ensure an instant and painful death for whatever poor bastard happens to stumble into it. Who put these people in this fantastical death trap? What horrible crime could they have done that would warrant such a punishment? None of that matters. The only hope these prisoners have to avoid a slow, painful death by starvation and dehydration is to band together and escape the cube, and they’ll soon find out that this is going to be harder than anyone ever thought.

      I don’t want to seem like I’m blowing smoke up Vincenzo Natali’s ass, but Cube is an amazingly effective horror/thriller film. The atmosphere of this film is fantastic, with a level of tension that builds and builds until it becomes almost suffocating. There is no outside force, no Jason Voorhees or Freddy Krueger waiting to kill everyone except the hot chick so that we as an audience can direct our fear towards some monstrous creature. It’s a couple of people locked in a room (in a sense) , and it’s one of the most of the most suspenseful films I’ve seen in a while. If that’s not a recommendation to place Cube in your Halloween watch queue, I don’t know what is.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2017 - Brain Candy (1996), directed by Kelly Makin

The Trailer
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The Appropriate Tune: "Having An Average Weekend", by Shadowy Men On A Shadowy Planet

     Since the advent of television way back in dinosaur times, we’ve had sketch comedy shows. From the Colgate Comedy Hour to Key & Peele, these shows have not only entertained generations of people across the world, they’ve also been the jumping off point for some pop culture’s most beloved figures. Bill Murray, John Candy, at least three of the Wayans, the list goes on and on. However, even though there have been plenty of sketch comedies I have seen, and plenty I haven’t (why the hell can I never find The State anywhere), for my money the greatest of them all, the one that had me glued to the screen for every episode, was The Kids In The Hall. 

     Founded in 1984, The Kids In The Hall comedy troupe, composed of Dave Foley, Mark Mckinney, Bruce McCulloch, Scott Thompson and Kevin Macdonald, made its way onto the TV screens of the world (or at least those who had HBO) in 1989, thanks to the helping hand of Saturday Night Live mastermind Lorne Michaels. To say that The KITH was anything like SNL would have been a mistake however. Rather they were far more closely related to the work of Monty Python, taking the then-modern day Canada of the 80s and 90s and injecting it with a healthy dose of absurdity, and artfully combining relatable crass humor with high-concept ideas. Unlike Python however, whose greatest material centered around poking fun at the stuffy old remains of the British Empire, The Kids In The Hall were far more universal, riffing on yuppie business culture, angsty teens and everything in between. Not only that, but a lot of the appeal of The Kids In The Hall, at least in my opinion was The Kids themselves. Not only did they exude this combination of youth, wit and intellectualism (the alt-rock to The Young Ones’ punk, you might say), every member of the cast had several characters that they would continuously return to, like Scott Thompson’s Buddy Cole character or the secretaries, as well as frequent appearances on the show as themselves. It’s hard not to know the men of Monty Python, sure, but the focus of the FLying Circus is entirely on the atmosphere and the sketchcraft, not on the performers. When you watched Kids In The Hall on the other hand, you had a very clear idea of who Dave Foley was, what he was like as a person, what his characters tended to be like, and so on, along with the rest of the cast. You can’t help but become attached, I guess.

     Like Monty Python, The Kids In the Hall eventually graduated from television to film with Brain Candy, directed by Kelly Makin, who directed several episodes of the show as well as the shows Flashpoint and Queer as Folk. Kevin Mcdonald stars as Chris Cooper (and only one other role, in contrast to the rest of the fellows), a chemist working for a major pharmaceutical company who has developed a drug that chemically fixates a person’s mind on their happiest memory. With the antidote for depression in their hands Chris’ superiors are eager to push it out to the masses and the depressed masses are eager for a cure to their ills, as Chris gets swept away in the wave of success. Of course it’s hard to tell what a pill like Gleemonex could do to our society in the moment, the changes it would have on human nature, especially if it were, say, rushed out the door without being completely tested. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see how things play out. I’m guessing comedically.

     Coming a year after the series had ended, Brain Candy collects some of The Kids’ favorite subjects into one convenient package. Corporations, rebellious youths, suburbia, gay culture, and a whole bunch of guys dressing up like ladies. Aside from a bit of colorful language and some ass shots, better special effects, and a kickass soundtrack, this is exactly what you got from the TV series stretched out to 140 minutes. Which is just about enough for me, considering I’m a huge fan of the show and these guys in general, and to see them together in something (relatively) new is a treat.

     Ironically, the largest criticism I have about Brain Candy is that The Kids In The Hall don’t go far enough. To return the Monty Python comparison, Monty Python’s Flying Circus was a fantastic series, but when Monty Python made the transition to film they didn’t stick to familiar territory (aside from that first one I guess). They explored! Transforming the Arthurian legend into a utter farce, Retelling the life and crucifixion of Christ with a guy who’s not Christ (complete with space battles), a musical comedy about EXISTENCE ITSELF, Monty Python took advantage of the medium of film few other comedians have, and it was a complete success on all fronts. What The Kids In The Hall have here is familiar, good for the fans who just want to see one last rodeo, but what I loved about the show is seeing how bizarre they’d go and confidence with which they did it. Brain Candy sees them playing it a bit too safe, a bit too close to the vest for the guys who devoted several sketches to Dave Foley pretending he had really heavy feet, and ultimately you’re left thinking to yourself ‘was that it?’. Also the lack of appearances from those iconic characters I mentioned before, while understandable from a narrative perspective, is still disappointing. If you’re going to go in new directions then go, if you’re going to play it safe then play, but don’t tease us with a few faces and then just leave us hanging. I didn’t even really like The Chicken Lady man, but I’ll take what I can get.

     If you didn’t like The Kids In The Hall when they were on TV, then Brain Candy isn’t likely to change your mind. If however you’ve never seen the show before, this might actually be a good way to test the waters. Gives you a taste of their style of comedy, their range of characters, with enough time to decide whether to make the commitment. Opinions of current fans will, as has been shown, vary. And if you’re asking yourself why this movie is on a Halloween list, try looking under the bed tonight. You just might find a Canadian staring back at you.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2016 -- Rock & Rule (1983), directed by Clive A. Smith

The Trailer
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The Appropriate Tune: "Real Wild Child (Wild One)", by Iggy Pop

     The War was over.

     The only survivors were street animals: dogs, cats and rats. From them, a new race of mutants evolved.

     That was a long time ago…

     Mok, a legendary superrocker has retired to Ohmtown. His computers work at deciphering an ancient code which will unlock a gateway to another dimension.

     The only component he needs is a special voice…

     So begins Rock & Rule, the epic sci-fi/fantasy tale of a punk rock dog man trying to save his girlfriend, who I think is a cat but is mostly a sex symbol, from an evil glam rock wizard who is trying to summon a demon in order to destroy the post-apocalyptic dystopian world in which they all live through the power of rock & roll. You know, that old chestnut.

     Anyway, this was the debut film for Nelvana, a Canadian animation studio who you might know from Care Bears: The Movie and not much else filmwise, and what a debut it was amping up to be. A multi million dollar animated film that was emphatically not for children, which featured music from the badass bands of the time (in this case Debbie Harry, Lou Reed and Iggy Pop)? I mean sure, Heavy Metal, which Nelvana passed on to make this movie, had kind of already ascended into the pop culture consciousness on that ticket two years prior, but that only meant that the market was primed for that kind of material. The people loved Terminator so you give them Robocop, the people loved Indiana Jones so you give them Romancing the Stone. The people loved Heavy Metal, so you give them Rock & Rule. Recipe for success, right?

     Well, no. Rock & Rule was actually a huge failure, both critically and commercially. So much so that it almost destroyed Nelvana, who only just managed to avoid bankruptcy by taking on loads of TV work. Which is a shame, seeing a studio taking a chance and putting out something relatively unique and having it shot down. It’s the kind of thing that gets you feeling jaded about the state of filmmaking, gets you wondering why you would even want to put money into an industry that rewards derivative shit and rewards free spirits, an industry that pushes remakes, reboots and cinematic universes onto its consumers like a pushy prom date with a Mickey Finn in his hand. Makes you wonder why you would ever want even get into making films at all, if all you had to look forward to was seeing your creative vision poked and prodded into oblivion by a committee of marketing drones. Especially when people continually buy into that same derivative crap over and over again, swallowing it down because they’re apparently too ignorant to even conceive of something better. Might as well not even get out of bed in the morning, if all you have to look forward to is the same depressing spiral into the garbage dump that creative expression in this world has become.

     In the world’s defense, Rock & Rule is pretty crappy.

     Maybe that’s not quite right. Rock & Rule is an average movie, one that is outshined by its peers; Heavy Metal, the works of Ralph Bakshi, Don Bluth’s The Secret of NIMH if you want to dig deep, in most respects. Rock & Rule isn’t as dark, it isn’t as sexy (more important that you would think on the internet), it isn’t as funny, the characters aren’t as interesting or likable, the soundtrack isn’t as good and the animation feels slower and less fluid. Which doesn’t make it outright bad, in fact it’s probably even with Ralph Bakshi’s American Pop to me, which was another animated film that heavily featured music from around that same year, but it’s not all that exceptional either. Aside from some of the background art, which actually does look quite impressive, there’s nothing about Rock & Rule that really stirs the viewer to any reaction beyond ‘yeah, it was fine’. For a movie called Rock & Rule, there’s far less rocking than you’d expect. Not much ruling either, to be honest.

     If you’re a big animation fan, as I am, then you might be interested in Rock & Rule as a piece of movie history that doesn't have a Disney logo stamped on it. If you’re interested in Heavy Metal and you’re looking for some twisted cartoons to scratch that itch, then you might be interested in Rock & Rule. If neither of those things apply to you though, then you might be able to give this one a pass. And if someone offers you a glowing ball of pink light, just say no. It’s just not worth it.