Day 272: Mulberry Street

Mulberry Street

Where the streets have no names...well, except for all the ones that do

New York City is a great location for horror movies. Plenty of scary things happen there in the real world so it's only natural that horror films would fit in. Whether it's Cloverfield or Midnight Meat Train, or C.H.U.D., the city allows for all sorts of scary genres and subgenres. In a city where anybody can feel like a nobody, anything can happen. You can have large cataclysmic events or self-contained person terrors. In the case of Mulberry Street, you get both.

Mulberry Street is a 2007 “zombie” movie released by After Dark Films (Zombies Of Mass Destruction, The Deaths Of Ian Stone). The movie stars Nick Damici (World Trade Center, Stake Land) as Clutch, a retired boxer living in a shabby apartment on Mulberry Street in New York City. Clutch's daughter Casey (Kim Blair, The Look, The Mighty Macs) is a soldier returning home to New York from war, sporting fresh scars on her face from battle. Clutch is preparing for her return with his friend Coco, when strange news reports about rat attacks across the city start to come out. The building's super Ross is busy fixing all sorts of problems with the buildings when he is bitter by a diseased rat. Ross begins to slowly transform, first with coarse hair growing on his body and then facial mutations. Similar mutations occur across Manhattan as the city shuts down public transportation in hopes of containing the outbreak, which is transmitted through infected bites, from spreading. Waves of violent cannibal attacks stretch across the city as Casey tries to reach her father. Ross has now become a full-fledged zombie with Clutch and Coco fighting him off and locking him in a closet. At the same time, Clutch ventures out into the mayhem to find his neighbor, Kay (Bo Corre, Eldorado, Harrow Island) whom he has feelings for. He finds Kay at the bar she works at and the two fight off the infected people, who now resemble giant humanoid rats. Casey, who stole a car, manages to find her father, but Kay is grabbed by a zombie before they could save her. Quarantine is declared for the city with scientists and soldiers planning to come in and exterminate the infected. They make it back to the apartment and barricade themselves inside. Ross has escaped the closet and is crawling around the walls of the apartment. With the infected inside the walls and pounding at the door how will the tenants of Mulberry street survive?

"Oh, Lordy! Save me, Cheeseus!"

There's some debate online if this movie is officially a zombie movie or not since the infected are technically mutated rat people and not the undead. For all intensive purposes, Mulberry Street is most definitely a zombie movie. All the tropes are there: infection caused by a bite, mutation, cannibalism, loss of humanity, and swarms of mindless monsters chasing the uninfected. I mean, there's a scene straight out of Night Of The Living Dead where the mutants hands are coming through the door trying to grab Clutch and Casey. Just because one detail has been changed from typical zombie canon does not change what the movie is about. The story itself is fairly standard zombie fair, complete with chase scenes and bloody violence. The movie smartly uses New York City as the setting for the movie. The infection spreads incredibly fast (the events of the movie take place in just one day) and the quarantine makes sense, as Manhattan is an island. In all likelihood, it wouldn't have worked, but for the story, it's acceptable. If you've in a New York City subway station, you've seen the rats, so the basic concept is sound as well. Unfortunately, we never get a reason as to why the rat bites are changing people. It would have been nice to get some sort of clue just to add to the overall horror. Was it a chemical leak or nuclear waste? How about a comet hit the city? Just give me something to work with.

The lack of a reason, while not important to the story itself, does present another overall problem in the movie and that's a lack of social commentary. Like all good zombie movies, there needs to be a bigger overall meaning to the movie. While other zombie movies question human nature or our impact on the environment, Mulberry Street pretty much ignores all of this. I thought they might be building something with Casey, showing her post-traumatic stress from the war or hiding her scars, but nothing came from it. Even the ending was another lost opportunity, with soldiers coming to the apartment to kill the infected. It was a good chance to talk about government conspiracies or human nature, but again, we get nothing. I don't need to be preached at, believe me, but I need something more than just “mutant rat people overrun New York City”.

Mulberry Street is obviously a low budget horror movie as most of the movie is shot within the apartment and on public streets. The movie gets the most of it's actors thanks to good performances from everyone. On paper, the idea of Mulberry Street sounds silly, but it's actually a decent horror film. You can probably compare it to 28 Days Later in terms of fast chase scenes and frantic action. The violence is good with a fair amount of blood and gore. The mutated rat people look decent, though the camera never really focuses on them, so I can't really determine if the makeup and effects were great. My biggest issue with the movie is the grainy, low quality footage. Some scenes are perfectly clear, but it's when they venture outside of the apartment where the quality of the footage goes down the drain. The poor quality of the film makes multiple scenes extremely difficult to see what is happening. It's not an artist decision by the director, it's just a cheap camera and the rest of the movie suffers for it.

Seriously, did they smudge sand all over the camera when they shot this?

Mulberry Street is a decent zombie movie that tries to make the most out of a low budget. While the idea of mutant rat people running loose in New York City sounds worth of the SyFy channel, the movie is actually not as silly as it sounds. There is a good amount of action and violence with some nice suspense. The acting is what helps keep the movie from becoming ridiculous. The biggest problems in the movie come from the low quality of the film during certain scenes and the lack of social commentary. Mulberry Street has it's moments and with a bigger budget and a little more thought in the script, it could have been great.

6.5/10

Day 229: Graveyard Shift

Graveyard Shift

Sure he's missing his eye and skin, but he still has his smile

Stephen King is a household name. While the mainstream audience knows him from his work on The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, and Stand By Me, we horror fans love him for his work on such classics as Children Of The Corn, Cujo, The Stand, and The Shining. King is able to create horror movies in believable setting and weave tales that are both compelling and horrifying. His stories are full of suspense yet we cannot look away. Being a superstar writer whose movies have also become big hits, I find it strange when I come across a movie based on his work that I've never heard of before. What could possibly be the reason?

Graveyard Shift is a 1990 horror movie based on the short story of the same name by Stephen King. The movie stars David Andrews (Fight Club, Apollo 13) as John Hall, a drifter who has just arrived in a small town in Maine. He goes to the local textile mill and is able to procure a job from the manager, Mr. Warwick (Stephen Macht, General Hospital, The Monster Squad), a sadistic man that enjoys verbally abusing and punishing his workers. John works the graveyard shift, 11 pm to 7am, pulling cotton from a separating machine. The mill is infested with rats and John tries to scare them off by throwing empty soda cans at them with a slingshot. Warwick employs Tucker Cleveland (Brad Dourif, Deadwood, The Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers), a disturbed Vietnam veteran, as the mill's exterminator, but he is unable to keep the population under control. The mill should be closed down due to the infestation and potential fire hazards, but Warwick is able to bribe inspectors and keep it open. Workers sent down to clean up the basement start to disappear. When the exterminator goes into the graveyard next to the mill to kill rats, something pulls him down into the ground. Warwick send Hall and several other workers to clean up the basement. They discover a subterranean maze beneath the mill that leads into the adjacent graveyard. They also realize that they are not alone. Something is done their with them, picking them off one by one and eating them. Hall, an unraveling Warwick, and the rest try to flee onto to come across a mound of bones, belonging to missing workers and the graveyard. What is this horrible monster and how will they survive?

"Oh yeah, you're going to need that tooth removed."

Well, there's a good reason why I've never heard of this Stephen King movie: it's just not good. Graveyard Shift is a simple monster movie that takes way to long to get to the point, forcing the audience to sit through a whole lot of nothing. There are a few hints at the monster living beneath the mill, barely enough to keep things interesting. Despite John Hall being the main character of the movie, more time is spent on Mr. Warwick. He's the most developed and entertaining character in the movie, so I understand why, but then why bother with focusing on the background of Hall when it really doesn't matter. There's no need to make him a drifter if it really makes no difference. He could have just as easily been a regular worker. They tried to make him interesting and set him up as a hero, but it feels too hollow, mostly due to the story being stretched out. As a short story, I can see the appeal of Graveyard Shift, but as a full-length movie it doesn't work. The plot is very basic and when you stretch it out over and hour and a half, you realize how thin it really is.

The movie tries to make up for the lack of entertainment by cramming in a lot of excitement and violence in the last twenty minutes or so. When it finally becomes a horror movie, Graveyard Shift becomes far more watchable and fun to watch. The sets used for the underground tunnels look adequately creepy and the dark atmosphere plays nicely with the violence. The monster looks pretty good when it was finally revealed as some kind of giant, mutated bat. Making the monster a bat does beg the question of why were rats a big focus for most of the movie. Shouldn't the big monster be a rat? The inclusion of rats made me hope that the movie would be similar to H.P. Lovecraft's “The Rats In The Walls,” one of my favorite Lovecraft stories. While the stories are separate, the scene where Hall is climbing a huge pile of human bones in an underground labyrinth is straight out of “The Rats In The Walls” and was very cool to see. One thing that wasn't a problem in the movie was the acting. Everyone plays their part well with Stephen Macht and Brad Dourif putting in the best performances. 

"Have I ever told you about the time I was a doctor in the Old West?"

Graveyard Shift is a good short story, but as a full-length movie, it just doesn't work. Some short stories have enough going on with them that they can be stretched out and easily fill an hour and a half of screen time. The acting is good, so that's not the problem. Unfortunately, Graveyard Shift is unable to do this, leading to boring scenes and weak character development. Nothing of real importance happens until the last twenty minutes or so, which is a shame, because they are a pretty entertaining twenty minutes. They have action, suspense, scares, lots of blood, and even a fight between Hall and Warwick in which they hit each other with skeletons and bones. It's just not enough to make for a better movie.

5/10