Tag: mummy

EVIL DEAD THE MUSICAL – LIMITED SHOWING AT CENTER STAGE – ADULT ONLY VERY BLACK HORROR PARODY BY LAKE CHARLES’ NEW AND BRAVE BLACK MARKET THEATRE GROUP

 

SHORT TAKE:

Adult VERY black humor musical based on the cult horror classic Evil Dead trilogy.

WHO SHOULD GO:

Adults ONLY with a taste for macabre comedy and who wish to encourage the efforts of our newest theatre group, Black Market Theatre, to put on more nouveau plays that Lake Charles might not otherwise get an opportunity to see.

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LONG TAKE:

I have seen the social commentary that was Night of the Living Dead, the parody of zombie movies Shaun of the Dead, the apocalyptic World War Z and the over-the-top comedy Zombieland.

Now as my eighth grade social studies teacher used to say: "You can bury me face down because now seen everything!" Evil Dead the Musical is based upon the parody zombie horror flick of the same name that became a cult classic in the 80s starring the otherwise pretty much unknown Bruce Campbell.

Evil Dead the Musical plays through Halloween at our own Center Stage here in Lake Charles, at 3426 Ryan next to the Mellow Mushroom, and is being put on by some very familiar faces out of the McNeese University Theatre Department. Buy your tickets HERE.

Three husband/wife teams contribute to the mayhem which put this show on. Jessa and William Lormand direct and Jessa plays Cheryl, sister of the intrepid hero, Ash. William doubles in the band which plays live music along with Bryce Louviere and Daniel Fontenot.

 Ash is Timothy Smith and his bride Sarah is Linda, appropriately, Ash's love interest. Lara and Luke Connally, who have appeared in numerous productions around town, including Kiss me Kate and The Secret Garden, play, respectively, Annie, daughter of the ill-fated scientist and Jake, the ill-fated hillybilly neighbor who foolishly guides them to the cursed cabin. Tyler Brumback and Amy Phillips, who have portrayed love interests on stage before, most notably in The Secret Garden, play Scott and Shelly, the bawdy weekend roommates. Ed and the voice of the possessed moose head (you've got to see it to know what I'm talking about) is Joey Boyette, another veteran of local theater. KBYS' own radio personality Curry Burton is the Voice of Knowby. And Nikki Guillory plays a deadite.

The premise is that 5 college students, with far too much time on their hands, set out for a weekend of debauchery at an abandoned cabin in the woods.

Things turn REALLY ugly when it turns out the cabin belongs to a scientist who unwisely set loose demons with an ancient book of the dead. Beset by demons and attacked by trees in need of an exorcism, one by one each of our intrepid heroes are dispatched and zombiefied, (from the movie) until only Ash is left standing with a sword in one hand and a chainsaw for his other hand.

If it sounds gruesome…it is. But it is all done very lightly. Evil Dead the Musical is to zombie horror stories what Bullshot Crummond was to the detective genre, a vehicle to poke fun at every trope ever written.

Everything is as far over the top as possible, from the gore to the raunchy jokes to the gratuitous profanity. Even one of the songs has a title and chorus which prominently features the "f" word.

All is performed by our locally grown thespians with all the ridiculous enthusiasm and robust absurd abandon you might expect from a group of very talented actors given leave to ham it up in a zombie vaudeville.

This is a very adult show. The venue itself requires identification to prove that you are 18 or older just to get in, as liquor is served on the premises. Although nothing explicit is seen, there are a lot of sexual gestures and references as well as a lot of blasphemous profanity. Those extremes are deliberately gratuitous as part of the parodic elements of the comedy.

The show is not for everyone, but if you could enjoy a combination of Rocky Horror Picture Show with Shaun of the Dead, while keeping the other above cautions in mind, then head out for our local production of the hit play Evil Dead the Musical. Having a chance to see these very nice, seemingly normal people portray these extremely bizarre parts is reason enough to go support the efforts of this troupe. Black Market Theatre has obviously put in an enormous amount of effort to bring this play to Lake Charles. And if we want to see more off-beat and unusual productions come to Lake Charles then, if you are of the right temperament and age group, you should go support the Black Market Theatre's foray.

A final warning, this is a public venue that allows smoking and when I got home I had to wash every stitch I had on, from my sweater to my pony-tail holder. So be advised, if you have any respiratory problems, this could be a serious health issue for you.

So KUDOS! to the Black Market Theatre Group (connect with them by clicking their name) for daring to put on such a boldly different production and thanks to Center Stage for being good sports and agreeing to host this venture. I look forward to future adventurous collaborations at this newest addition to Lake Charles' theatre venues put on by this newest Lake Charles theatre company.

JUST SO'S YOU KNOW:

As a point of interest, Evil Dead hit the cult circuit in the 80s as a breakout movie for Bruce Campbell. Anyone interested in this genre might find a similarly avant-garde film starring the same Bruce Campbell which both parodies the mummy movie concept and does legitimate respectful homage to, of all people, Elvis Presley. The movie is Bubba Ho-Tep and is of the same rough cloth somewhat bawdy and gory comedy. However, it is set in a nursing home, and respects the limitations of its indigenous characters. Bubba Ho-Tep might be described as the mild flavor version to the Evil Dead "slap your mama"-style spicy horror movie. Bubba Ho-Tep actually even has a certain gentle charm and intelligent theme to it about growing old without growing insignificant; and God finding a purpose for you even when you no longer believe you have one yourself. Heady stuff for the same guy whose iconic earlier character features a chainsaw replacement for a hand.

THE MUMMY – LIVE ACTION COMIC BOOK FUN

SHORT TAKE: The Mummy is a live action comic book – the trial run for Universal’s new Dark World franchise. It ain’t Shakespeare – or Wonder Woman – but it’s a lot of ridiculous fun.
MY TAKE:
When I was a 5 year old there was no such thing as iPods, DVDs, Nintendo, Gameboys or even cell phones. So when our family traveled in my dad’s Oldsmobile from New Orleans, LA to Disneyland in 1964, in order to keep his youngest child (me) occupied, whenever he stopped for gas he’d go into the station and buy a copy of every age appropriate comic book he could find. I must have read a hundred Superman, Superboy, Supergirl, Casper the Friendly Ghost, Spiderman, Fantastic Four, and Wendy the Good Little Witch magazines. So I’ve always had a  soft spot for comic books.
Jump forward 53 years. My husband and I went to go see The Mummy – a movie 118 years in the making. No kidding. 1899 was the birth year of possibly the very first movie about a mummy – a silent short called Cleopatra’s Tomb directed by George Melies – the same auteur who directed 526 silent shorts, including the famous A Trip to the Moon. 
So how does our trip to see The Mouse in 1964 connect with 2017’s  The Mummy? Well…I was puzzled by my own reaction to The Mummy. While I love a well done scare fest, I usually spend a good deal of time watching it through my fingers and feeling creeped out and looking underneath my car before I get in it in the parking lot. But despite The Mummy being full of staggering mummies, zombified victims, living sandstorms, and other monsters (I will not now name for the sake of spoiler prevention), I came out of the movie feeling like a bouncy kid. I suddenly realized The Mummy is not actually a horror movie – it is really an extremely well done, well plotted, well performed live action comic book!
Wisecracking, never to be taken completely seriously leading man with flawed motives, vivid images, wildly outrageous developments:  massive flock of birds taking down a military plane, a mysterious cavern found by chance by two mercenaries, the dead being brought back to life as the mummy’s slave, a pit hiding a terrible secret under a pool of mercury, an underground secret science lab full of enough sparking and exploding electric tubes to swell the heart of Kenneth (1931 Frankenstein prop master) Strickfaden, evil incarnate in the form of a beautiful scantily clad tatooed woman. The Mummy throws in homages or outright supporting spots to a number of other monster stories.
I can picture the comic book panels to almost every scene in the movie.
It has all the tongue in “shriek” of Hugh Jackman’s Van Helsing, John Landis’ American Werewolf in London, the troll in the bathroom scene from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, and  Goosebumps – the movie about RL Stine’s fictions coming to life. No matter how much they amp up the scare factor you just can’t take it seriously enough to be disturbed.
SPOILERS FOR NEXT TWO PARAGRAPHS – ESPECIALLY EGREGIOUS AS THESE SPOILERS REVEAL “PUNCH LINES”
And how CAN you take a movie seriously when the lead, Nick Morton (Tom Cruise) has a quippy argument in a woman’s bathroom with his recently deceased best friend Chris Vail (Jake Johnson) on whether Nick was justified in shooting Chris just because Chris was trying to stab everyone around him after he had been zombified by the Mummy Princess Ahmanet???
And somehow the terror value is (intentionally) lost when Ahmanet has Nick held down by her zombie minions and is preparing to stab him with a ritual knife. See –  as she pulls his shirt up and rakes her fingers down his torso …. Nick starts laughing because he’s ticklish!!
OK – SPOILER FREE REST OF REVIEW!!!
The above mentioned scenes come within an inch of opera buffa or even outtake qualities but fit nicely with the tone of the rest of the movie.
And it makes sense because apparently Universal is starting its own franchise of “Dark Universe” films of which this is the golden nail in the railroad track. I can foresee it entirely possible to put all these worlds: DC, Marvel, Dark Universe within each others’ reach. And OH what mash ups are possible.
And why not! Within the last 118 years there have been mummy link ups with everything from Laurel and Hardy to Sherlock Holmes. AND, while we’re at it – why not the Hulk with Frankenstein or Dracula with Batman or Creature from the Black Lagoon with Aquaman? There really is no reason not to – if you can write a good enough plot and theme to go with it. If the scriptwriters can create the masterpiece that is Wonder Woman, then I suspect not even the sky’s the limit.
From Cleopatra’s Tomb to this year’s The Mummy, there have been over 402 films with a mummy theme – entries ranging from Laurel and Hardy, Charlie Chan, Scooby Do and the Three Stoogesto the iconic Boris Karloff 1932 classic entry The Mummy, to the Brandon Fraser semi-parody Mummy franchise. There have been mummy movies with Sherlock Holmes, Abbot and Costello, and even Tom Baker’s Dr. Who! There have been mummy movies which have been frightening, suspenseful, and comic – sometimes a combination and sometimes unintentionally one or the other. And there is one my husband and I have determined we MUST see sometime soon called Bubba HoTep about an Elvis impersonator in a nursing home who thinks he’s the original and a black man convinced he is JFK dyed black by LBJ as part of a failed assassination attempt.The two team up to save their fellow residents from a shambling resurrected mummy – which makes some kind of sense because a mummy has a fighting chance against elderly which it would not have against more fleet of foot younger potential victims……I am SO not kidding. This is a real movie. Though I suspect NOT for the kiddies or the easily offended – so be advised.
Obviously, this is not a topic to be taken very seriously. But I digress.
BOTTOM LINE: There are a HUGE variety of mummy movie options. Many even with the name The Mummy. THIS The Mummy with Tom Cruise is fun and entertaining, though not for younger kids who might not be as amused as the more jaded of us by cliched over-the-top monster scenarios. Those who are panning this Mummy I think just don’t get it. The Mummy is not intended for introspective thoughful watching. It’s simply a comic book hoot. And that’s a wrap. Mums the word. Go home now – your mummy’s calling you.