The Five Dollar Bin: Welcome and Monsters

Welcome, Nerds and Nerdettes, to The Five Dollar Bin, to get us started I thought maybe I should explain what it is exactly that I am planning to do with this segment. 

Have you ever been to Wal-Mart or someplace like that?  If you haven’t then let me explain, somewhere in the store is a wire bin – it’s usually near the electronics department – and in this bin are a whole bunch of DVDs just thrown in together, no organization of any kind, and they are all $5 – unless some idiot decided he didn’t want the DVD he’d already been carrying around for half an hour and instead of putting it up he just tossed it into the bin despite it being $24.99 and now you’re all excited cause you want this film SO bad and you take it up to the register and they ring it up and suddenly they’re saying you owe almost thirty buck when all you bought was a $5 movie and a bottle of water and that just isn’t right, dammit!… Where was I!?

The point is the bin is a place to find cheap movies, some are bad quality transfers, or bad quality movies, or both, and some are older new movies – 6 months or a year – that the store bought too many copies of. 

The Five Dollar Bin is going to focus on the first kind of movie, crappy old movies and forgotten classics.  Now I’m not going to be going around checking actual five dollar bins before I review a movie – frankly if a movie is selling for 15 bucks I’m still likely to talk about it on here – I’m going more for that type of movie.  Don’t expect any Oscar winners.  I’m going to focus on a few key genres (Horror, Science Fiction, Fantasy), though anything is possible. 

I’ll also be doing some tips on how to decide between different releases of the same movies – especially when it comes to public domain films two different DVDs of the same movie can result in two completely different viewing experiences. 

Some of the movies I have on slate for upcoming reviews include: Demonic Toys, Evil Bong, Mr. Wong, Detective, Warriors of the Wasteland, and The Guy With Secret Kung Fu!  But I also have some Alfred Hitchcock and John Wayne films in store so you never know what you’re going to get. 

Now for our first film review:

Monsters

I debated long and hard with myself over what film to start us off with and my desk is evidence of this fact.  Setting on it right now as I type these words is not only this film, but also A Gun, A Car, A Blonde an odd pseudo-noir film made in the late ninties and box sets of the Hellraiser, Puppet Master, and Prophecy franchises.  Additionally, I spend most of yesterday watching Malibu Shark Attack and Sharktopus.  In the end, I had to go with this one Monsters – it fits right in with my previous Nerdy Top Ten post as the epitomous monsters are in fact giant monsters (kaiju), but also because my dad hates it. 

Monsters is a 2010 British sci-fi/horror film written and directed by Gareth Edwards. It was Edwards first feature film.  He currently filming the 2014 American reboot of Godzilla.

Since I mentioned them already, let us take a second to talk about the two aforementioned Shark films.  They are both high on premise, but low on plot.  You know pretty much everything you need to know about the films if you know the title.  Take your grain of salt, read the title, and skip ahead to chapter five or six on the DVD, go on.  Lost? Confused? Didn’t think so. 

If you accept the promise of the title on these films and their ilk, you don’t really need to know anything else to jump on at most any point in the film.  Now I know what you’re thinking, and no I’m not saying that makes these bad movies. I’m saying that they are fun, munch on popcorn flicks that take no thought.  They’re about hot chicks getting killed by monsters that land someplace between Scary and Silly.  They belong on your DVD shelf in between your Roger Corman’s (whose name appears in the credits of Sharktopus btw) and your Ed Woods. 

That’s not the kind of monster movie Monsters is.  This film is high concept, high plot.  Just as the titles of the other films tell you all you need to know about the monster, this one’s tells you nothing, it could have been named Love Purple Banana 7 Excelsior and you would have known no less about the film’s premise or plot.  Calling it Giant Monsters or Alien Monsters (Maybe) or Monsters Invade Mexico would have give you more on the premise (and don’t worry there weren’t any spoilers in that – all that info is conveniently give to you in the first few seconds of the film thanks to on screen text – as the film begins In medias res a few years after the monsters first arrived), but it still doesn’t tell you anything about the plot. 

Warning: SPOILERS below!!!

The plot concerns two Americans in southern Mexico, who have to travel across dangerous territory to the American border and safety.  Along the way, a “they come from opposite worlds” romantic tension forms between them.

I won’t go into too many details and spoil the movie completely but you get the drift.

SPOILERS END

Now, if you take a close look at the plot description above you’ll see I didn’t mention monsters.  At all.  Not even once. 

As is true of all great movies of this kind, there is the plot (what is happening to the characters) and there is the premise (what’s happening to the world around the characters).  Now in some movies, the plot and the premise are closely related – the premise of Jaws is a shark attacking a small coastal town, the plot is three guys on a boat hunting the shark – while in others, such as this film the plot and the premise are almost unrelated.  Sure there are monsters running around endangering our stars, but it could have been a war or terrorists or criminals or different monsters.  So, in this film the plot and the premise both exist and while the premise is the cool monster stuff, the plot is what drives the film – unlike Sharktopus and Malibu Shark Attack where the plot is so unimportant to the film it would function just the same without it. 

And before you say something along the lines of “well if the plot of Monsters is unrelated to the monsters, doesn’t that make it a bad film?” remember this: Dawn of the Dead’s plot has nothing to do with Zombies, Casablanca has nothing to do with World War II or Espionage or Crime.   The latter is a love story – a love triangle to be exact – while the former is about some people holed up in a mall trying to survive a disaster.  True, the disaster in Dawn is the Zombie apocalypse but it could have been war or terrorists or criminals or giant monsters in Mexico.  Does that make these movies bad movies? 

Monsters can be slow moving in places, but it has its share of action, and does manage to fit a complete and mostly compelling story arc into its 94 minutes.  It is, however, more of a thinking horror movie, it doesn’t beat its deeper meaning over your head – I can’t remember if I’ve seen it twice or thrice but it wasn’t until this most recent viewing that I got the inner meaning (wall on the border between Mexico and the US and it took me at least two viewing to get it was about “aliens!” Sheesh! Unless it’s about disease, or the environment maybe.  Hmm…of well. No one answer I guess). The monsters could have had a lot more screen time, but the film went for quality over quantity giving the monsters more impact when they do appear. 

A sequel Monsters: Dark Continent with new writer, director, and cast is currently filming.

Let’s see…

Rated R for Language, Some Sexuality, and Mild Horror Violence (no gore).  

4/5 Stars

Fun Fact: Lead actress Whitney Able was hired because she was lead actor Scoot McNairy’s then real life girl-friend (they are now married) and the director wanted to make sure this leads had strong chemistry.