Resident Evil: The Final Chapter

By William Pattison, aka Eric Morse

For Horror Bob's Blog

Well, I went to see Resident Evil: The Final Chapter. I was of two minds on this film. The fighting sequences were fantastic. The production quality was good. Paul W S Anderson is a wonderful director. The big problem I had was with the story. I enjoyed the plot, which was simply the computer program The Red Queen informs Alice that there is an air born cure for the T Virus and she has a short time to return to Raccoon City and get in order to save the human race. The problem was the script, to be more exact the continuity points. It starts at the very beginning of the film, when Alice is going over the T Virus history. Suddenly she says that another guy created the T Virus other than Doctor Ashford (from Resident Evil Apocalypse) and that it was HIS daughter The Red Queen was based on. Also that they daughter had had a disease that caused her to age rapidly and the T Virus was created as the cure. On top of that they say that the creator of the virus was killed before the outbreak and this executive adopts the daughter. From this point on all the continuity that we’ve known from the previous five film is cluster-fucked for this new continuity they created for this one film, like they did with the film Highlander: The Source and Highlander: Endgame. Also they didn’t even show the battle that was starting at the end of the last film. They just mention it in passing.

So, I enjoyed the film but I felt betrayed by the fact that they fucked up the entire established continuity just to make this film work they way they wanted. A film can have great special FX and wonderful production quality, but if the cheat on the story it fucks up the entire thing. It is a flawed tapestry. If you are simply going to see this film for cool battle scenes and zombie and monster action you will enjoy it. If you are a person who wants a good solid story you will be sorely disappointed.

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Review: The Scarlet Gospels (Book)

By William Pattison

For Horror Bob's Blog

On Sunday and Monday I listened to the unabridged audio book of Clive Barker's The Scarlet Gospels. It took eleven long hours. Honestly, I think Clive did a far better job on his series of Hellraiser comics than he did on this novel. This novel had a lot of issues for me. For one thing it was very unbalanced and parts of it seemed very uninspired. I think there were exactly four scenes in this book (I won't go over them) that were brilliantly Barker, but that was it. 

The major uninspired part of this book was Hell itself. The truth is there really wasn't anything hellacous about the Hell Barker describes, it could have been Middle Earth or Imagica for all you could tell.It definitely wasn't a place where Pinhead or his troops fit in. I definitely prefer the labyrinth and Leviathan in the films over the Hell in this book. Unfortunately, it is the trip through Hell that takes up the majority of the book. 

I liked how Barker handled Lucifer, I think that was pretty much the best part of the book next to Pinhead's intro. I felt Harry D'Mour was wasted in this book, even though he was the main character. Really the only good part for D'Mour was when he entered the secret "party" house of his dead client. After that his part just didn't thrill me. 

I felt Pinhead's anticipated death was completely lack luster and a waste. Also, that the entire end of the book was as drawn out as the end of Peter Jackson's film adaptation of Lord of the Rings. 

So, in the end I can't recommend The Scarlet Gospels. If you want some really good Clive Barker/Pinehead action get the four part Clive Barker's Hellraiser comics that came out four years ago.

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