Nilbog Milk

THE TAINT (2010)

2012-02-12T18:29:00.000-08:00

Great news, guise, the gender dichotomy inherent in the horror genre has been upended! You know how almost every horror film after NIGHT OF THE LEPUS has been bejeweled with exposed and exploited lady breasts? Well, thanks to THE TAINT and its 2.5 million engorged penises, it's not an issue anymore and we can all be separate-but-equals. At the very least, the meatsword damage in this film checkmates the stone phallus lady-vexation in CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST, so it's off the table from now on, K.

Science goes awry again as a male stimulant that inadvertently causes violent misogyny gets dumped into the water supply. Heads get smashed and hideously erect beef whistles spout gallons of paintlike semen. For the duration of this film, we'll follow sunglass wearer Phil O'Ginny (it's Irish) and badass squirrel-slaying park ranger Misandra(!) as they navigate the post-Taint apocalypse. There are flashbacks aplenty and the film skips around like an eight-year-old girl playing hopscotch in front of a movie theater showing PULP FICTION. But it works.

It doesn't surprise me that Troma just picked this up. The massive number of man bananas on display aside, TAINT recalls the best of Troma: profuse gore and ridiculous and hilarious purposeful camp. The effects in this are pretty impressive, as in the applaudable decision to not make this a 2-and-a-half hour thing. TAINT clocks in at just over an hour, which is plenty of time for this sort of exercise, so please tell every other horror filmmaker in existence today, okay? The effects are GREAT except when they're not supposed to be, like when yogurt guns are shot and giggle sticks sliced by knives. But the head-crushing, oh my, it's immaculate.

There's no reason to get too intellectual or whatever. But obviously this movie is playing with gender roles deep-rooted in our society. BUT here is what I want you to take away: THE TAINT is not boring! This is NOT the movie equivalent of being lectured at by some chubby professorial type in a sweater with cat hair all over it. It's fun, it's outlandish, and if you watch it and just get head-crushing and mutilated winkies out of it, I'm sure the film's makers would say, "Fine, bro." It's also not part of the burgeoning gay-horror scene, like those BROTHERHOOD movies, 99% of which are horrible. And why is American minority-horror always horrible? Like, is there A single good black-American horror film? (PS: If this is not the most offensive part of the review, I am quitting)

I liked this so much that I forced my co-workers to watch it on my birthday (yesterday, THANKS FOR REMEMBERING) and, I don't want to give away my identity, but we work in a pretty conservative and staid field and they all laughed and were mortified immensely. So that is a recommendation of sorts! If you dig the seemiest side of genre stuff, you would be doing yourself a disservice by not obtaining this. It's a good watch with your non-church or riot grrrl friends.

Buy it here!

AMAZON JAIL (1982)

2012-01-21T19:11:00.000-08:00

AMAZON JAIL comes to you courtesy of Oswaldo de Oliveira, who also brought us the superbly brutish BARE BEHIND BARS. This man knows women in prison in the movie way, not the pen palling with the Manson ladies way. AMAZON JAIL isn't as willfully putrid as a lot of ladies in lockup affairs, though. Not even one vagina-burrowing rat shows up here, nor does anyone fire up a nipple-electrocution device. But this film still glides along on sweet insanity and sweet bared manchests...

Is this not what you paid to see? A pudgy and hirsute gentleman running a brothel in the Amazon? With his neurotic and watermelon-loving main squeeze? Keeping girls penned in with a series of wooden stakes?

The captive girls in this film get off pretty lightly on the WIP scale. When Mr. Moustache tries to pressure them into sex business at his parties, they form a UNION to resist! Thankfully, this is not WISCONSIN JAIL. Inevitably, they escape into the jungle with only wispy nighties and girl power to aid them. Birds, snakes, and lesbians rise to challenge them in their procession to freedom and suffrage or whatever.

AMAZON JAIL is, overall, a pretty good bad movie. Bad bad movies are 100% boring, but this is only 40% or so boring and overlong. The remainder of the running time is devoted to hilarious, ridiculously good times like Moustache's sex/dance parties....

...and vaudeville sordidness...

It's really episodic, which is fine, because it's pretty consistently entertaining...

Especially when we meet the guy in the ice-cream suit who is a gay Satanist preacher.

If "quirky" hadn't been ruined by the likes of JUNO, I'd use it as a plank of support for this. It's offbeat and fun enough in places. Clearly, DW Griffith can just skip rolling in his grave, as AMAZON JAIL could only be confused by the most inept as a "classic film". But those who seek background insanity to drink over will find fertile fields contained herein.

This is my hundredth post on this thing! And it will possibly be the last post for a good long while...I'm thinking about starting a blog to cover horror and genre ebooks, so that will likely take up more of my time until I get bored with it. Mors ultima linea rerum est.

SATAN'S BLOOD [ESCALOFRIO] (1978)

2011-12-31T17:12:00.000-08:00

Mondo Macabro delivers again! This seventies sleazefest from Spain goes for the gold in one of the most difficult hybrids in horror: the erotic horror film. I know there are tons of them out there, but has anyone, even a baby fresh from the oven, been frightened by the likes of the WITCHCRAFT series? As stimulating and good as it is, do you think a viewer was ever really upset by the alluring DAUGHTERS OF DARKNESS? These are questions for science, but I can answer this question—what is a film that is legitimately both sexy and scary? Answer: SATAN'S BLOOD. Or ESCALOFRIO. Either works.

A couple meet up with what are purportedly a college friend and his galpal, then everyone goes back to a mansion in the sticks. The mansion-owning couple have quite the collection of occult doodads, although if you are like me, you will sigh and wave your arm like a diva whenever a pentagram is shown. So these people are like Wiccans or something? Still, it's the seventies and there's no reason to be a pentagram pedant about such business. The foursome end up playing eighth-grade games on the coolest Ouija board I have EVER seen...

...then the non-Pagan couple discover their hosts naked on an (UPSIDE-DOWN) pentagram and are promptly placed under a spell and sucked into an orgy. I cannot lie on New Year's Eve, these scenes are quite stirring. The ladies are gorgeous and all-natural, the guys are not distractingly repulsive. It's choice. But SATAN'S BLOOD isn't just about sexy times on the logo of Wicca, it's about horror! Awful lady-eating, bad things with dogs, and death aplenty all go down. I don't want to overpraise this thing because it's a low-budget film with all the attendant flaws, but so few films get this stuff right that it's well worth your time to seek this out.

One peripheral note: you'll recognize lots of the voices in the English dub from all your fave Italian zombie and such movies. This kind of made me wonder if voice actors got pigeonholed into roles and, if so, if hearing their voice automatically colored the viewer's perception of characters. This is another question for scientists, I expect. In the meantime, break out las tits and los black candles and get yourself a copy of this one.

THINGS TO LOVE IN 2011

2011-12-24T19:00:00.000-08:00

I live in West Virginia, so there's A LOT that I have yet to see (THE WOMAN, CHILLERAMA, MELANCHOLIA, etc.) because most things don't come anywhere near here. West Virginia is like Kryptonite to movies that aren't chick flicks or explodey superhero things. Also, I am going by US release dates because I can't fly over to Japan to see the 2010 premiere of 13 ASSASSINS; I can just wish about it. Fun fact: I watched 308 movies this year (so far).

1. ABSENTIA ~ I saw this at a con and, as far as I know, it's still playing festivals exclusively, while CREATURE and DYLAN DOG made it into theaters, so there you go, there is no God. This is one of the most elegant horror movies I've ever seen and, from a storytelling/atmosphere perspective, it's irreproachable. It has the same brooding, melancholy tone that made SESSION 9 so memorable and it sticks with you long after viewing. Incredibly depressing and so good.

2. HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN ~ The least elegant movie I've ever seen and one of the most quotable. "When life gives you razor blades, you make a baseball bat... with razor blades." "They're going to make comics out of my hate-crimes!" Most of the time, neo-grindhouse fails because it tries too hard to be arch and quirky or whatever, but HOBO manages to stay entertaining without crossing the line into being oh so pleased with itself and its wit. It's insane how much better the spin-offs of GRINDHOUSE trailers are than GRINDHOUSE itself.

3. 13 ASSASSINS ~ It's probably impossible for someone to like everything that Takashi Miike has done, but I've enjoyed the majority of the stuff I've seen. Even so, this feels like a comeback, although it's probably one of his more conventional movies, even with the one-hour fight scene. That is not hyperbole. A dramatic martial-arts epic in the vein of Kurosawa, for real.

4. THE TROLL HUNTER ~ I loved this and thought it recalled GHOSTBUSTERS or GREMLINS in that it was rooted in horror, but was generally a fast-paced action-comedy with really likeable characters. Scandinavia redeemed itself after my unpleasant RARE EXPORTS experience.

5. ATTACK THE BLOCK ~ And this is like a modern-day GOONIES or something, only peopled with British street thugs. A better, not-annoying Euro SUPER 8.

6. DREAM HOME ~ Not to be confused with DREAM HOUSE, which is American and allegedly sucks, this is the first genre thing I've seen from Hong Kong since the China takeover and it was shocking how explicitly the movie criticized life under China. It doesn't have the old Category III levels of gore, but it's wet enough. I hate slasher movies so much, but this one won my heart and nestled into a very short list of adored slashers, probably right under BLACK CHRISTMAS.

7. I SAW THE DEVIL ~ Korean revenge horror from the director of the great TALE OF TWO SISTERS. Over two hours, but not at all bloated or boring & you definitely get your money's worth of violence. Wow, of things that I loved, a whole two so far were made in America.

8. FINAL DESTINATION 5 ~ But America is sometimes really good at taking formulas that work and breathing a bit of new life into them. Seriously, never driving on a bridge again.

9. PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 3 ~ Formulas work, breathe new life, tank tops, demons, muy bien.

10. SOURCE CODE ~ I almost put BLACK DEATH here because it's fabu, but it definitely released in 2010, so SOURCE CODE it is. Sharp modern sci-fi that recalls THE MATRIX and INCEPTION, only on a train, which recalls UNSTOPPABLE and SNAKES ON A TRAIN.

Also pretty good: COUNTRY STRONG, ENDHIRAN (ROBOT), DRIVE ANGRY, DON'T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK, CONTAGION.

Best bad movie: It is going to be hard for anything to top the SHADOW PEOPLE, although you're not going to enjoy it as much if you don't get my friend Ernie to watch it with you.

I am very grateful that I have genre movies and the horror community to take me away from real life when I need an escape. Best wishes for the little 2011 you have left and the 2012 that lurks in wait...

9 TO 5: DAYS IN PORN (2008)

2011-12-13T11:05:00.000-08:00

If I ever made a porn, I would block it EXACTLY like this.

AKA the post that will finally make me alter my content settings. I've been on a porn kick lately. I read Ron Jeremy's book (there totally is one!) and Legs McNeil's pretty great The Other Hollywood, among others. It's fun to learn about such a seedy and poorly-understood industry & it's depressing to learn that it's often exactly what you'd expect. Abused or neglected girls with problems, creepy exploiters, low porn-industry self-esteem or raincoat-and-cigar sleaze. 9 TO 5 shows you a lot of that, too, but the delivery is a a bit more graceful and successful than many similar efforts.

The doc selects a very varied group of subjects and jumps us all around their lives, an approach that recalls The Other Hollywood & Qbert and yields all sorts of benefits—I'd be skeeved out or gutted with sadness if I spent too much time with some of these folks, but pirouetting from couple Audrey Hollander & Otto Bauer to working-stiff-porn-agent Mark Spiegler to the charismatic Roxy Deville makes it easier to digest the whole.

The filmmakers focus on pairs in a lot of instances—Belladonna and her husband, Euros Lucie and Tom, Audrey & Otto, Sasha Grey and her boyfriend, and sisters Mia & Ava Rose. It's intriguing and educational to see how far from healthy these connections land, but it's difficult to measure the extent to which porn is responsible. A good modern liberal would probably scoff at some fat schlub's insistence that couples are just the way we're meant to be, but I'm sure it probably doesn't help your trust issues to see your boyfriend sodomizing your best friend by a dishwasher. Then again, maybe there's a golden mean between mating like Pentecostals and trying to out-orgy Rome.

But keep in mind that the porn business is all business. One of the truest things that 9 TO 5 teaches is that porn has very little to do with real-life sexuality and contact. It's highly doubtful that Audrey Hollander would be undergoing frosting enemas (or something...I was kind of covering my eyes with a sheet at this point) unless there was an enema gap in the free market. The porn business is an adjunct limb of show business and is just as callous and bottom-line-eyed, despite dealing in flesh and fluids instead of cute robots and shit.

Guess what: I don't even like porn (softcore/Skinemax material is a different story) and had no idea who 90% of these people were, but I still found 9 TO 5 to be a fine viewing experience. If you're at all interested in the subject, I'd start here and then move onto the porn section of your local library to conduct further research. I can't wait to see the Google keyword traffic patterns for this one!

IMPALER (2007)

2011-12-04T16:23:00.001-08:00

After October's engorgement, I don't feel up to analyzing lengthy and often overlengthy horror movies, so I'm probably going to slowly fill up this blog with a few documentaries. First is IMPALER, which covers the gubernatorial campaign of "self-proclaimed" (this gets said A LOT) vampyre, Satanist, and wrestler Jonathon "The Impaler" Sharkey. Fun fact: I have only known one person who spelled his name "Jonathon" and he had sex in public rest stops in Louisiana and liked to fondle the hair of sleeping boys.

This Jonathon could give mine a run for his money, though, as IMPALER starts off a mocking documentary, sneering at The Impaler's quirks and bingo-hall bravado, but it gets really really weird when (SPOILER) it's revealed that Jonathon's half-sister Kat, whom he claims to have nailed, is actually an alternate personality of Jonathon himself!! Beyond that insanity, we spend lots of seedy time with Jonathon and delve into his mom-abused past and multiple fake deaths. The worst traits of Satanists, wrestlers, and rednecks congeal into the cauldron of Jonathon. Even given the traumas he allegedly suffered as a youth and all the hard luck, I still found it pretty hard to like him or feel for him. He seems too infused with the spirit of every loud dumb redneck I've ever known. I was rooting much more for his dingbat wife's kids to run away and escape to saner pastures.

The film itself is pretty rough-looking, with gobs of handheld shots and minimal ambient lighting. Parts of this drag and bore, but overall it's not a wasteful experience, albeit basically being just a sideshow.

Watch it here.

HALLOWEENAGE #31: THE SHINING (1997)

2011-10-31T15:35:00.000-07:00

So Stephen King was legendarily displeased with Stanley Kubrick's liberty-taking adaptation of THE SHINING. A friend told me this story when we went to the Kubrick SHINING and it's tremendous, so let's pretend it's true:

"Kubrick didn't have any contact with Stephen King before the movie except one time he called him late at night and the conversation was like...

KUBRICK: Is this Stephen King?

KING: Yes. It's 2 in the morning!

KUBRICK: Stephen King, your novel suggest that you believe in an afterlife. Do you believe in an afterlife?

KING: Uh...yes.

KUBRICK: (pause) Well, I don't. (hangs up)"

Whatever the case may be, Kubrick's film excised whole swaths of King's book and changed a lot of things around, so there was more reason for this remake than the usual "people know the title, so maybe they will pay to see this by mistake". Plus it was a mini-series on ABC and occupied multiple nights like roustabouts occupy Wall Street, so very little had to be trimmed due to time constraints. This is both a good and a bad thing.

I guess addressing the differences would be a good place to start. Tony is this edition is not a croaking finger, he's a fully-formed floating nerd from the future who dispenses warnings to young psychic Danny. Much more is made of Jack's alcoholism, including scenes at the AA meeting and him swinging around a copy of the Big Book. Also, Jack's bitter relationship with his dad comes into play here, making me wonder how much of that is autobiographical, since King also mined it for the "Jordy Verrill" portion of CREEPSHOW. Of course, a big difference is that this has a different cast.

Did you know that I hate child actors? I'm not as fond of Kubrick's SHINING as some, but one of its strengths is the way that Danny never becomes annoying or cloying. Bad remake, bad! Because Courtland Mead as this Danny swallows way too much screen time with inane dialogue and songs about snow. Plus he has an annoying nineties haircut, like he took a picture of one of the cannibals from CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST and told his beautician that he wanted to look like that. Child actors should be seen, not heard, if they can't be sentenced to live on a farm where cameras are not allowed. Too cute and cloying. Advantage: Kubrick.

I like Rebecca DeMornay. She is a knockout and a solid actress and I would love the chance to disappoint her, but perhaps this is not the right role for someone of classic beauty. To me, Shelly Duvall works better in the role and seems more fragile and imperiled. But Mornay delivers a really energetic performance and definitely should not ever feel jealous of Duvall. I love you both equally. Advantage: Kubrick.

The casting of Steven Weber from that show WINGS was an interesting choice and he wisely opts to not channel Nicholson. Pretty good performance, although it does feel hindered by TV content restrictions, as it's hard to take a person seriously as a crazy person when he keeps calling someone a "damned pup". It's hard to top Nicholson's screeching screaming and camping around as well. Advantage: Kubrick.

There are things that this SHINING does better, though. It's much more a straight horror film, so the horror elements that come into play are sometimes more effective. The tub lady is an easy highlight here, as she's memorably grotesque. Sometimes the ghosts look iffy or laughable...

...but sometimes they make the whole four hours of this worth watching. And there are fun cameos!

I've never read the book (and probably never will), but occasionally the dialogue is a little corny, especially the earnest interchanges between Jack and Wendy. When people are shrieking and going nuts, it's fine, but those scenes could maybe benefit from a heavy editing hand. Danny's dialogue, too, feels unconvincing, like kid dialogue from the fifties cut and pasted into a 1970s(?) setting. The more obvious supernatural elements work just fine here and I wouldn't say that either film's approach is superior. Of course, this SHINING lacks some of Kubrick's pricey helicoptered camera shots and stuff, but director Mick Garris of MASTERS OF HORROR renown does a good job at framing shots and keeping camera movement interesting and none too showy.

One more weakness and then I am never watching a horror movie again because I am so tired: the CGI hedge animals here. Oh my god, this bungle! They look terrible! Thankfully, they show up at the midpoint of the film and then only briefly, but they are not even a tenth of the greatness that Kubrick's hedge maze is. I actually became embarrassed for the film. Such a poor choice.

This is quite long and demanding of your time, but if you enjoy the story or books in general or the Kubrick version, you should probably check this out. It's pretty interesting, if also pretty flawed.

HALLOWEENAGE #30: DOCTOR DRACULA (1978)

2011-10-30T17:38:00.000-07:00

I was taken aback and excited about this...

...but then I saw this and said, "FUCK FUCK FUCK!"...

...but this turned out to be a pretty good experience overall. Al Adamson, director of BLAZING STEWARDESSES and DRACULA VS. FRANKENSTEIN, made a pretty good bad movie here with the technical consultation of Anton LaVey, founder of the Church of Satan. Synopsizing the plot is going to be tough, but let's try: a gang of Satanists in tuxedos include a famous scholar named Wainwright, who is possessed by the spirit of Svengali. At one of Wainwright's magic shows, he is confronted by a psychiatrist named Dr. Anatole Gregorio. I doubt I am spoiling anything by revealing that the doctor in DOCTOR DRACULA is a vampire. And vampires hate Satanists like Satanists hate Wiccans, apparently.

There are whole other subplots involving dead moms and a girl named Trilby who is a goddess of psychic energy or some shit. Plus a prostitute who gets turned into a slave of the Satanic grotto/coven, then exclaims, "I feel a lot better about the direction my life has taken!" This thing is stuffed with good times, from lines like "He can't hear and can't speak, the way he expresses himself is through his magic tricks" to situations like Doctor Vampire answering the door with, "I was just about to go to bed" while wearing a full tuxedo. It's such energetic nonsense that you won't have time to get bored.

A woman climbs a tree to escape a vampire and a girl possessed by her mom sounds just like Tony in THE SHINING and yet Robert Carradine as head Satanist Radcliff is still the best thing about DOCTOR DRACULA. He delivers his lines with full-on Heston/Palance gusto, even when he has weird pauses in the middle of them, like he is trying to remember lines. Even drunk or unprepared Carradine smokes everyone else in the cast. Every Radcliff scene is a highlight.

The depiction of Satanism here as this weird booster club of middle-aged cranks makes me wonder how much input LaVey had into the finished product, as the Church of Satan allegedly started out as a similar gang of nerdy weirdos back in the sixties and it would seem to damage his mystique and profits to come right out and admit it. I mean, I think it's cool that old people would get together to worship Satan and talk about "the mace of Lu Dong—Huxley wrote a book about it!", but I could see it going over badly with your typical moviegoing crowd.

This is atrocious and incompetent, but it avoids the cardinal bad-movie sin of putting me to sleep. I'm actually surprised that it doesn't have more of a reputation, as I could definitely see people who like ROBOT MONSTER or TROLL 2 enjoying this. Exquisite.

HALLOWEENAGE #29: SHOCK 'EM DEAD (1991)

2011-10-30T07:49:00.000-07:00

IMDB-researching this was much more fun than watching the movie itself. The gushing praise for the film should be in a textbook on ringer reviews and the fact that this is the first line of Traci Lords's bio—"Traci Lords is a study of a determined and complex woman with a very controversial background"—does not ever stop being incredible. SHOCK 'EM DEAD is heavy metal horror, released in 1991, when this kind of metal was dying very quickly indeed. For some reason, this feels more dated and less fun than similar flicks like 1988's BLACK ROSES and 1986's TRICK OR TREAT.

I'd be curious to see how it was received in 1991, the same year in which Nevermind hit. The story of loser Martin, who strikes a deal with a voodoo woman to become the world's greatest rock star, but loses his soul in the process, SHOCK feels more like an "Up All Night" sex comedy with mild violence than any kind of horror film. Same characters and stupid clothes from that era, same cramped sets and small jacuzzis. And the music is much more embarrassing than Fastway's awesome TRICK OR TREAT soundtrack or the various true metal on BLACK ROSES. This is tepid AOR, with titles like "Virgin Girl" and "Hairy Cherry".

The music business scenes also seem really weird and ancient, with "band showcases" and lots of talk about six-figure advances. Oh, yeah, and Traci Lords is in this, albeit not enough to warrant occupying the entire VHS cover. She plays the bassist's girlfriend, who captures Martin's fancy after his rock star transformation into Vinnie Vincent or something. She also stays fully clothed, which means that her acting ability is the only gift she gives this film and therefore ugh. Traci wasn't bad in the NOT OF THIS EARTH remake and she's not terrible here, but her performance definitely ain't enough to salvage this thing.

"Bland" is a pretty fair term to use for the whole thing. It's not the worst movie ever, although it might be the worst heavy metal horror film ever (ROCK N ROLL NIGHTMARE is a little more memorable than this...can't think of anything else that might trump it for sheer boredom or putridness).

HALLOWEENAGE #28: NARCO SATANICO (1984?)

2011-10-29T21:05:00.000-07:00

So I heard about this thing on Cincinnati's groovy Night of the Living Podcast, but I'm not even sure that I have the correct NARCO SATANICO, as this is allegedly a retitled TERROR, SEXO Y BRUJERIA that was padded with added footage. IMDB lists a NARCOSATANICOS DIABOLICOS, released in 1991, that is apparently a sexy comedy. So who knows? There aren't even any narcos in this, apart from the various magical remedies used by the witch who helps Vicky obtain the love of Ricardo. Using Satan's aid.

Satan fathered lies, though, and Vicky ends up killing Ricardo. Ricardo's ghost then possesses his brother Carlos and sends him lusting after Vicky for a while before giving her her murder back. Along with the way, there's some weird stuff, like rapid editing of a guy in a demon mask and a cat overdubbed with a panther roar, but mostly NARCO SATANICO plays like a cheapo grindhouse movie, though not as crushingly dull as the worst of them.

One thing that apparently still happens in Mexico is that superstition is spliced with science, so the end of this features a courtroom scene in which one man mocks another for not keeping abreast of the current trends in "hypnometric trances". See, everyone has two bodies, their physical bodies and their astral bodies. So the testimony in this case is conducted under hypnometric influence, with possessed Carlos traversing the astral landscape. Underneath the lovingly-lingered-upon cross in the courtroom. But then this ends with a zombie ripping out guts, so I forgive it. Not the best thing ever, but not godawful either. I'd be curious to see the other, more rib-tickling NARCOSATANICOS...

HALLOWEENAGE #27: STRAIT-JACKET (1964)

2011-10-29T11:46:00.000-07:00

I had a very fun argument with a friend about the merits of William Castle and Alfred Hitchcock. My contention is that Castle is like the American Hitchcock, only less good and more fun. I would probably pick other films as supporting evidence for this before STRAIT-JACKET. Not that it's bad, it just doesn't hit the highs of 13 GHOSTS and HOMICIDAL.

Part of the problem is that STRAIT-JACKET sort of lacks the humorous, playful touches of those earlier films. Derived from a script by Robert (PSYCHO) Bloch, it's a way more straitforward mystery/thriller. William Castle doesn't even show up to intro the film while chain-smoking! On the debit side, the acting is perhaps a little more memorable than normal, largely thanks to Joan Crawford as released-asylum-mom Lucy, who was put away twenty years ago for axe-murdering her unfaithful husband and his girlfriend.

Lucy's released into the care of her daughter Carol, who plans to wed rich boy Michael, perhaps over the objections of his rich parents. Deaths by axe start happening. If you have seen a horror movie before, you will probably be able to predict the assorted twists in this one. It's not particularly rich in dialogue or excellent in execution, but it's all right. Opt for older Castle first if you're just diving into his body of work, though.

HALLOWEENAGE #26: SHE CREATURE (2001)

2011-10-28T19:47:00.000-07:00

It's pretty singular that this exists because "mermaid" is my monster of choice when discussing innovative villains with friends. Mermaids, before they were little mermaids and dolls with brushable hair, were the Sirens of The Odyssey and objects of simultaneous desire and terror. Sounds good to me. SHE CREATURE is pretty close to what I had in mind and the fact that is works so well is a credit to me and my good ideas.

Some Irish carnies with a mermaid act get a real mermaid through carny chicanery and plop her on a boat for the States, where money can be made. One of the carnies is a relatively sweet and sympathetic character named Lily, who becomes frienemies with the fishwoman. Also, mermaids have a sort of problem once a month or so with their weird moon cycle business. That is plenty of plot to make a good movie.

And this is a good movie. I cannot believe it was made for television (IMDB says), because the performances and direction and atmosphere are far too professional. IMDB also says that it's "Mermaid Chronicles Part I", although I wouldn't bet on a sequel appearing ten years after the fact for a movie that almost no one has ever heard of. Unless you make it happen, horror consumer.

Thankfully, this is a very self-contained story and it's enjoyable as a self-contained thing, although it definitely leaves space open for future killer-mermaid adventures. I wasn't going to hate any movie that had both carnies and mermaids, but I didn't expect to love this as much as I did. Recommended as hell.

HALLOWEENAGE #25: THE BLACK PIT OF DR. M (1958)

2011-10-28T18:38:00.000-07:00

I'm going against the grain with this one, as the consensus seems to be that it's an exemplary piece of fifties horror while I find it just pretty good and not lacking flaws. It's fine and fun, but I wouldn't cite it as the Ultimate in genre film for this era.

One big stumbling block for me is that BLACK PIT is suffused in religion. Weird fifties hyperCatholicism touches everything in what is essentially a tweak of the Frankenstein tale: Drs. Aldama and Masali agree that whichever of them dies first will find a way to come back so that the other can go to the other world and return in a living body.

Aldama dies first, leaving behind a daughter which he'd earlier abandoned. The daughter ends up at Masali's sanitarium and chaos ensues before Masali learns of the "horrible price to pay" to accomplish his trip to the beyond. This starts slowly, but picks up pace as it throws in all kinds of crazy happenings, from a lab accident to a music box-lulled madwoman. The acting is pretty solid and there's some absolutely gorgeous lighting and cinematography to be seen.

But it kind of ends up feeling like a LEFT BEHIND movie when the movie shoves Roman Popery down your throat. It ain't subtle, either...Dr. M "cannot go" to a little church and says, "If I knew how to pray..." before the narrator reminds us how Paul said we're not supposed to uncover covered things. FRANKENSTEIN obviously had a bit of this man-playing-God business, but it was much more delicate about it.

I can see why the outlandish elements of the plot and the artful design would win hearts, but this just didn't feel like anything I need to revisit. The Jesus stuff is cloying and the slow parts are pretty damn deliberate. It's worth a watch, especially given how many smart people love it, so check it out and make up your own damn mind. See if you can complete the "senseless struggle to break the barrier that separates us from God."

HALLOWEENAGE #24: SHEITAN (2006)

2011-10-27T20:02:00.000-07:00

Did you ever see a French film and feel bad about yourself because it was so artsy and difficult to understand? Well, problem solved because SHEITAN exists. This is pretty much the same city kids-go-to-the-country-to-die movie you've seen one billion times already, only more annoying because the kids are both French and way into club/hip hop culture.

It's momentarily entertaining to hear poncy French and see translations like the one above (don't get me started on the DJ who "don't give a fuck about holidays"), but the initial portion of the film is also the most aggravating because it's full of club scenes and driving scenes and it's shot with every shitty unnecessary camera technique and trendy lens you've seen in every video with people waving money over ridiculous cars ever. Also, the Equal Opportunity laws for crews in France must be pretty rigid because this gang of kids includes one of everything except that they forgot an Eskimo. Too bad they all pretty much dress and act the same way! It's like every race has its very own Kevin Federline.

Once they get to the sticks, the camera stops having so many seizures and they meet the best thing about this movie, Vincent Cassel as Joseph, a creepily endearing caretaker guy. Cassel's just so exuberant and persistent that it makes you want to like the movie more. But it mostly unfolds the way you'd expect, the way that all films which are fifteenth-generation TEXAS CHAINSAW children do, with city folks being picked off by the backwoods mutants. It tries oh so very hard! to include oddball humor including hillbilly racisms, but ultimately I laughed out loud this many times: .

HIGH TENSION happened, so this also has a few twists, of course. Overall, it feels very French in a bad way, more like the showier side of IRREVERSIBLE than something that's taut and well-crafted like INSIDE or IN MY SKIN. Those of you who like metal have heard that new Morbid Angel thing. Imagine the creative sessions when they were writing "Too Extreme" and congratulating themselves ahead of time on cutting edges and how it would take listeners aback. And then it ended up being received like, "Oh, yeah, this sort of sounds like things we've heard before, in the nineties." Yes, pretty much, this is like that. Skip.

HALLOWEENAGE #23: THE HYPNOTIC EYE (1960)

2011-10-26T19:28:00.000-07:00

No matter how you weigh it, THE HYPNOTIC EYE is quite a treat. Remarkably brutal for 1960 (a full three years before BLOOD FEAST upped the ante), the film centers around a string of self-mutilations performed by beautiful girls. Oh, those trendy and silly women, splashing their faces with sulfuric acid and using straight razors instead of lipstick! We don't see it all, but we see enough and the lurid detail really shocks, given conventional wisdom about the bleedover period from the fifties into the sixties.

So you can probably guess that all of the self-mutilators have attended the same hypnosis show, starring the EU-accented Desmond. If you're thinking that this sounds a lot like H.G. Lewis's WIZARD OF GORE, you are absolutely correct, although HYPNOTIC EYE is far more restrained and lacks the trademark Lewis boatloads of gore. This movie has its own rewards, though. I think I've mentioned how much I prefer whining German accents (like Kier's in BLOOD FOR DRACULA) over yelling ones. Thanks to HYPNOTIC EYE, I've decided that I will pass on "you are getting sleeepy, sleepy" hypnotists for ones that bark orders and mock their subjects. Desmond seems very impatient and constantly harangues the hypnotized to "Put your fingers together! Try to do it! Try harder! You're not trying hard enough! PUT YOUR FINGERS TOGETHER!!!" I hope you also find this entertaining because at least ten minutes of the finale are devoted to it.

It doesn't stop being weird when Desmond leaves the screen. There's a whole baffling section in the middle of the film devoted to mocking beatniks (perhaps culling inspiration from 1959's BUCKET OF BLOOD). PS The beatnik who stands up and announces that, "I've just written a poem!" is Lawrence "King of the Beatniks" Lipton, FATHER OF JAMES "INSIDE THE ACTORS STUDIO" LIPTON.

Guess who else is in this? Allison Hayes from the original, good ATTACK OF THE 50-FOOT WOMAN! And I'd mark this as her most queen-size performance, as her sneering portrayal of Desmond's wicked assistant is a major highlight of the film. When he asks her how long they have to keep on doing [something, no spoiler], she says, "As long as there are faces like this" and it's like movie gold. Also, there are lines that probably have very innocent explanations for the time, but which are very jarring now like, "She put her face into a ceiling fan because she thought it was a vibrator." Uh.

It has mutilation + demanding hypnotist + bitch goddess Allison Hayes - boring stretches and ergo = worth a watch. I would not mind more evil-hypnotist movies. They have to be cheaper to make than even the cheapest vampire film because hypnotists don't sparkle or need fangs and really just need eyes, which most actors have. A+++.

HALLOWEENAGE #22: THE STONE TAPE (1972)

2011-10-26T17:10:00.000-07:00

I know people who met a famous Discovery Channel "ghost investigator". He drunkenly complained that every person he encounters wants to tell him their ghost story and that he doesn't give a shit, he doesn't do this for the art of ghost hunting, he does it because it's lucrative. The next day, he gave a presentation on demonology that included such authoritative sources as this priest he knows and contained stats like "only one out of every investigation actually has anything goin' on." Watching THE STONE TAPE made me realize how far the craft of ghost hunting has fallen. This is far less reliant on gimmicky tricks than your average Discovery broadcast. It's not even particularly horrific for most of its running time. It's about very logical and scientifically-bent people encountering something unknown.

Great genre TV is something mostly unknown, although Britain has a better track record than most countries (THREADS, GHOSTWATCH, etc.). THE STONE TAPE was written by Nigel Kneale, author of THE ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN and THE QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT. This maintains the intellectual slow-burn of those efforts and Kneale's deft plot twists and interesting characterizations lift what could have been a far lesser work. Because this is a TV production, the budgetary shortfalls are naked for the world to see and some of the acting is a little uneven. But the script carries it.

This story that is most important involves a research team from an electronics/appliances firm who occupy an ancient edifice in England to work on projects involving magnetic tape and stuff. While there, some of them perceive the image of a woman on a set of ruined stairs, shrieking, that same image appearing over and over again. Pressured by the company to produce results with commercial potential, their manager soon forces them to abandon their deliberate studies and go full bore, with pretty bad results. I don't want to spoil a good time, but this is notable as much for what it doesn't explain as what it does. Our modern writers haven't learned that lesson, which is why every sequel franchise will eventually get overanalyzed into tedium. But THE STONE TAPE works, with just enough exposition, and it sticks with you after viewing is done.

I am glad that I have horror movies to get me through bad days and bad weeks, and that there are still things like this that remind me that I haven't seen it all.

HALLOWEENAGE #21: INVASION OF THE BEE GIRLS (1973)

2011-10-25T20:04:00.000-07:00

I think I might have expected too much from this one, given its moderate cult rep and colorful title (appropriated by Jewel Shepard for her book). It's all right, but nothing that will rock your world.

The men of this one town are dying in droves because they're exerting too much energy during sex (while the women lie there like narcoleptic sacks, typical). So the government sends one guy to investigate. You'd probably bet that this means that INVASION is full to bursting with sex. And your poor betting skills are why America is suffering the worst economy since the thirties, because this has some sex, but not a lot. You know what it has instead? Lots of talking and lots of walking around. (NOTE: I have been informed that the DVD uses the cut TV version of this, which doesn't make sense because it has SOME nudity, but maybe my opinion would change if I saw an uncut version?)

Turns out that all this sex-death is the fault of the titular bee girls, who can convert Earth women into bee girls by smearing them with white modeling clay and blasting them with energy rays. The end! It's not terrible, but it's probably nothing that I'll ever watch again. How many times will I believe seventies trash cinema's fraudulent promises?

HALLOWEENAGE #20: PURANA MANDIR (1984)

2011-10-24T19:03:00.000-07:00

Unless I'm forgetting something, this is the first Bollywood horror film I've ever seen, although I did catch and love the maniacal sci-fi epic ENDHIRAN (ROBOT) last year. And I'm pleased to report that, though PURANA MANDIR doesn't maintain the consistent level of nutso-cuckooery of that film, its highs are as high as ROBOT on maybe a twentieth of the budget. And there are surprises!

Like that a film produced in an essentially conservative culture like India's would be so rife with fun sleaze. And fun colloquial exchanges, like that one down there.

It was not shocking that this is festooned with chipper song and dance numbers, nor that it has a bloated, sprawling running time. And, to be honest, it does drag a little as you wind your way down to 144 or so minutes. But, thank Shiva, the movie is constantly throwing new things at you to keep the boggy parts from being so boggy. Oh yeah, it has a plot, too.

So lower-class Sanjay is deeply in love with upper-class Suman. But there is a bigger problem than financial inequity, because Suman's family has been afflicted with the curse of death-in-childbirth by the monstrous Samri, who was executed by Suman's ancestor for assorted crimes. So Suman, Sanjay, and their buddies set off on a road trip to prove this a superstition only to discover that it isn't and also Samri is now a legitimate monster, sort of like a vampire, I guess.

Along the way, they encounter apparently primitive tribes who specialize in low comedy and adherents of Kali. And there is a dance number during a blood sacrifice. And a comic relief sexual assaulter. And a "jungle slut", as Suman observes.

Don't enter expecting a gorefest. PURANA MANDIR seems more about lots of light entertainment and fun than any serious bloodletting or heavy messages. It's pop cinema, man. And there's nothing wrong with that.

I think I might actually make 31 this month after all, even if I end up feeling like this on the inside...

HALLOWEENAGE #19: ELVES (1989)

2011-10-23T11:33:00.000-07:00

Listen, there are bad movies that are bad/boring and bad movies that are amusing/good and then there are bad movies like ELVES that were seemingly not created in this universe. Right from the outset, you realize that this is something far different from the norm, as a trio of ladies take to the woods for an "anti-Christmas ritual" and spout lines like, "We're girls, remember? We're the master race!" One of them cuts herself and her blood seeps into the ground and reawakens an elf (despite the title, there's only one).

Kirsten has other problems besides bleeding all over buried elves. Her mom hates her so much that she punishes her for minor misbehavior by closing her savings account(!) and drowning her cat in the toilet(!!). Her little brother...well, this happens...

WILLY: I'm not a pervert! I like seeing naked girls!

KIRSTEN: I'm your fucking sister!

WILLY: Yeah, and you've got big tits and I'm gonna tell everybody I saw 'em!

She also gets felt up by a department-store Santa at a store named GOLEM'S(!) before meeting chain-smoking ex-detective Mike (Dan Haggarty from the "Grizzly Adams" TV show), who is also given impeccable lines like, "Life's a bitch, first you're Santa and then you die."

This movie knows what it is. Mike chain-smokes to a ridiculous degree, even while brushing his teeth, and there is dialogue like, "When there's no more room in hell, the elves will walk the Earth". A Christmas dinner with small children is interrupted so a professor in a bow tie can explain how elves mate with virgins on Christmas Eve. By the time someone says, "I want to know the connection between the elves and the Nazis!", you don't even think, "Oh, that's weird" anymore.

The effects in this are totally shoddy, which totally works in this movie's favor. The elf is obviously some kind of rigid puppet, but cosmetic defects like that are bandaged by the inane dialogue, the ridiculous science and academia, the nudity of Deanna ("Land of the Giants") Lund, and the twirling absurdity of the plot. How could anyone hate this? It's trying so very hard to entertain you! Not better than BLACK CHRISTMAS, but more watchable than almost every other Christmas-themed horror film including IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE.

HALLOWEENAGE #18: BREEDERS (1997)

2011-10-23T06:42:00.000-07:00

This BREEDERS (1997) derives from that BREEDERS (1986) and you can tell by the box covers how the focal point has shifted. I probably rented the original BREEDERS forty times or more, although I mostly forgot the walking-in-hallways scenes and talking scenes and remember it as being a movie about naked 80s punk rock girls wallowing in vats of alien sperm.

This more refined, gentle BREEDERS is more about the romance between art professor Ashley (Todd Jensen) and salacious student Louise (Samantha Janus). A meteor lands on the campus of their Boston college, prompting someone to mention how insurance will cover the damage (meteor insurance?). College girls, being moronic trend-followers generally, collect bits of the damaged stone to wear as pendants or something, but are unaware that a monster that looks pretty much like the one they saw in ALIEN/ALIENS is hiding downstairs, waiting to lay its eggs in female hosts. BREEDERS!

I know you'd expect nonstop nudity, given the premise, but, guess what, you're wrong. Because this has one shower scene and Samantha Janus sans bra on the side of the see-saw that sits in the clouds, while the other side is weighted down with tons and tons of badly-lit walking scenes and years of dialogue. A good case could be made that the 90s were the worst decade for horror (at least until BLAIR WITCH came along), since so many people were recycling the old formulas, but forsaking gore and sex for whatever reason. Too busy buying flannel and reading Nietzsche.

The budget for this was probably at least triple that of the original and I seem to remember it being aired alongside those cable-produced Corman remakes of the 90s (like the original PIRANHA remake). Not sure if it was part of the same series, but (if so) that explains the mawkishness, since cable financiers tended to be gun-shy about going all-in for exploitation (remember the HUMANOIDS FROM THE DEEP remake?).

I'm sure my fond memories of the original wouldn't stand up to repeat viewing, but I would be really surprised if it weren't at least a little better than this BREEDERS.

HALLOWEENAGE #17: HORROR HOTEL (1960)

2011-10-22T20:04:00.000-07:00

Guess what, I had a terrible day of work at this book festival, so I will probably be getting more drunk and less angry as this night progresses.

This is an old Christopher Lee vehicle, the sort of film that they don't make anymore until Rob Zombie resurrects and ruins it forever. It begins in 1692 Massachusetts, home of witch-burnings, with the burning of a real witch! So this is a far cry from WITCHFINDER GENERAL, in which overzealous Christians were the heavies. Witches are the villains of this film. Eminent Wiccans, like ones that correct people who say, "Sam-HAIN", will be mortified. Too bad we can't still burn them, right, gang?

Motivated historian-heroine (historiane?) Nan Barlow travels to rustic Whitewood, MA, home of that burning, to study witchery and devil worship. Unfortunately, she doesn't reckon on olde Satanic residents being reincarnated and the entire town being pretty much a hotbed of iniquity. Girls can get into two kinds of trouble and Nan gets into the kind that doesn't require a trip to a special doctor.

From there, this becomes your usual sixties gently-paced and not-too-extreme fright film. It's well-done and uses the standard fog and shadows very well. It's a treat to see Satanists depicted as these menacing cloaked figures because many of us know Satanists now who are more like dorky Randroids or vampire nerds, so this has a certain nostalgic value as well. Plus there's a Misfits song called "Horror Hotel" that isn't even remotely about this movie. So maybe Danzig should STOP EATING and see it and maybe you should too.

HALLOWEENAGE #16: THE LAST HORROR FILM (1982)

2011-10-22T15:09:00.000-07:00

Because in this oddball science-fiction flight of fancy, horror scream queens can easily best serious actresses who turn out scads of Oscar bait. This is actually a slasher of sorts, set at the Cannes Film Festival, and starring Hammer hottie Caroline Munro (whom I have hugged) and MANIAC star Joe Spinnell (whom I have not). Munro plays best actress Jana Bates and Spinnell plays an obsessed loser film geek who follows her to Cannes to convince her to star in his masterpiece.

I thought the Lloyd Kaufman intro on this was touching, especially "We don't want there to be a last horror film" (we don't!) and offered a lot of insight into the background of the director (danced for Bernstein before making this?!?). The film itself is not especially that great, sorry, but a lot of that is due to the confusing tone of it. Spinnell's character is obviously a loser, so LAST HORROR FILM seems to be aiming barbs at horror fandom, but Munro's character later defends horror movies with the same arguments you've heard untold times before. BUT then Spinnell goes to see a violent horror movie and reprimands the director for his sick filmmaking choices and also the whole fake-sexy-cool thing of movie celebrity and film festivals gets skewered. So, huh?

Robin Leach is also very confused.

But there are some nice scenes and inventive choices amidst the turgid stuff. Spinnell is very good at playing creepy, of course, and Munro is a good and good-looking actress. Some of the shots are ambitious and the movie isn't BAD, per se, just pretty flawed. The same director has had a huge body of work since then, including the epic-sounding THRASHIN' aka SKATE GANG.

HALLOWEENAGE #15: DEATH BED: THE BED THAT EATS (1977)

2011-10-21T14:03:00.000-07:00

I would bet that most people who have heard of this oddity were first informed via the Patton Oswalt bit above. His description of DEATH BED's plot is accurate, but not complete. What really happens is this. A demon who lives in a tree falls in "love" with a woman, turns into a breeze, then turns into a man and makes a bed so he can seduce her. He seduces her, but she is a human and can't handle demon sex and dies. The demon is so upset that his demon eyes that are full of blood crack and he cries blood onto the bed. Then he goes back to the tree. The bed absorbs power from the demon blood-tears and uses that power to eat any people who happen to lay upon it. Also, the bed kills a guy ill with consumption, but resurrects him/spits him out and keeps his behind a painting. The guy can only communicate with people on the other side of the painting once the demon sleeps every ten years.

I know that this sounds like fun, but you should keep in mind that we only learn about all this after a long, long stretch of very little happening. It's obvious that DEATH BED knows what kind of movie it is (look at the screenshots), but admitting that you are making something awful doesn't get you off the hook for making something awful. A lot of this bad movie is bad in the boring way, not the inept-and-entertaining way. Lots of shots of people walking, shots of the bed not eating, etc.

The effects reflect the limitations of the budget. People devoured by the bed float around in this bubbly orange soda, like Slice. There are some mutilation effects, but mostly of the Halloween-store variety. The dialogue is generally delivered via voiceovers and interior monologues, probably to save on sound equipment while filming. Granted, it's likely that no one would make a killer-bed movie if they had lots of money for better monsters, but budgetary limitations are REALLY apparent here.

So a bed is probably the worst monster conceivable. It can't move or stalk people and basically has to wait for people to lie on it in order to eat them. So DEATH BED comes up with all kinds of extravagant strategies to make this happen, my favorite being the use of the bed as an outdoor platform for orgies for people suffering from impotence.

There is some middling attempt at plotting and character here, but, despite the whole bizarre premise and execution, this feels a lot like other grindhouse/zero-budget films: crazy scenario and alluring title, but very few thrills delivered. Good for director George Barry for laboring on it for decades, I guess, but I can't really recommend going out of your way to see it.

HALLOWEENAGE #14: AMSTERDAMNED (1988)

2011-10-21T10:06:00.000-07:00

Though it's more of a thriller/mystery than a slasher movie, it's probably easiest to describe AMSTERDAMNED as the MY BLOODY VALENTINE of scuba diving.

Set in Amsterdam (of course) and taking full advantage of the city's many canals, AMSTERDAMNED is the story of a murderous scuba diver using said canals to slash and set adrift his victims. The movie's quite a lot better than the premise would suggest, as director Dick Maas is obviously a talented pro and fills the film with lots of cool scenes, unusual lighting (love those blues and reds), and glorious action sequences.

The chase scenes in this are probably the show's stars, especially the unbelievable speedboat chase. If you adore things running into or flying over other things (including an orchestra practicing in a gondola on the water), these scenes will win your heart. They are expertly shot and edited and scored with magnificent 80s synth-heavy songs.

It's not like the other scenes are throwaways, though. AMSTERDAMNED boasts a solid cast and a director who knows how to keep it surprising and interesting (see below). People who watch this after a marathon of torture-porn stuff might be a little gutted that the violence is mostly restrained, but the execution and the seldom-scene setting more than make up for it. Not my genre of choice, really, but this is one of the best examples.

HALLOWEENAGE #13: PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 3 (2011)

2011-10-21T07:39:00.000-07:00

Thanks to this (now-) series's approach of revisiting ever-earlier times with each new sequel, it's likely that this will be the last PARANORMAL ACTIVITY to feature sisters Katie and Kristy unless the next one is all ultrasound footage. Thankfully, PA3 is a big improvement over the tepid PA2 and makes a fine goodbye to this demon-haunted family.

Don't expect to see this in the movie

One really cool thing about this film is that it uses approximately none of the scenes featured in the trailer! I'm not sure if this might mean there are alternate versions of the film a la the multiple endings of the original (and I vote for this idea, please). Obviously, the plot isn't going to veer wildly away from your expectations. Katie and Kristy are little girls in this entry, caught on VHS camcorders as they get paranormal-activitied for the very first time. There are some fun subtleties to be enjoyed, like when adult Kristy tells adult Katie, "No one ever gives me anything" in the wraparound or the discussion of BACK TO THE FUTURE once the 80s-dated material begins. But overall...

BOOM! and THINGS THAT WERE JUST HERE HAVE NOW MOVED!! Which is fine with me, since it's been established that this is what PARANORMAL ACTIVITY is. Complaining about it is like complaining that a FINAL DESTINATION sequel is nothing but preposterous deaths. It is what it is. One thing that is noticeable is how much busier the demon is here in the second prequel. The exhausted older demon of the original PARANORMAL ACTIVITY would only clomp up the stairs or sort of move a door every night, but this young demon (named "Toby" by young Kristy) moves all the furniture and throws shit around like an angry tweaker woman. Take everything in the original PA and exponent it, like PARANORMAL ACTIVITY³ (except the tank tops), and you will have a good idea of what to expect here.

I really liked the way that directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman made use of the whole frame in this one. Although the movie is still sort of limited by the whole camera gimmick, they manage to get some trucking shots using a house fan and even the stationary shots have a LOT of space, so the viewer has a lot to ghost-spotting ground to cover. The writing seems a lot more taut compared to the last go-round as well, which is a tough thing to nail in a film like this that doesn't have tons of special effects or an obtrusive STRINGED INSTRUMENTS! score to carry the weaker scenes. I also thought that the acting was pretty good, ESPECIALLY the child actors (Chloe Csengary and Jessica Tyler Brown). Child actors always make me uneasy, since they almost never pull off convincing performances, but the two girls here did an excellent job.

In short, worth your time, even at theater costs. Fun aside: there were more teenage girls at this than at STEP UP 3D and TWILIGHT: ECLIPSE combined.

HALLOWEENAGE #12: KRUG AND COMPANY (1972)

2011-10-19T18:49:00.000-07:00

The whole thing about this thing is that October is devoted to horror movies I haven't seen before. So this alternate cut of LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT is bending the rules, but it is an alternate cut and of course David Hess died recently, so I felt like watching it. As far as I know, it can only be found on the 3-disc "ultimate edition" released in the UK. Ironic, given that LAST HOUSE was banned from release in England during the video-nasty years.

Everything that could be written about LAST HOUSE has been written. It's one of the most important films in horror because it was one of a group of movies that drove horror out of foggy vampire castles and into real life. It forsook old tropes and traded them in for modern intensity. That's because it's perhaps the ultimate "great-on-accident" film. When Wes Craven directed it, he had no idea what a horror movie was, having been raised extremely Christian. So a lot of the disconcerting things that drive people away from this film—the goofy comedy bleeding into horrifying sexual humiliation and bloody violence—exist because Wes Craven didn't know The Way to make a horror movie yet. There is so much comedy here, peppered throughout the film. Some of it is laugh out loud material, like when the exasperated Sheriff says, "Sometimes I wish I could be something else", and his dull-witted deputy answers, "Like a duck?" Some is awkwardly placed and would not have happened if Craven knew the rules, like when Weasel is chasing Phyllis after her torture in the woods and wheezes, "I gotta quit smokin'!"

This would be a much less notable film without all that business, but it was also fortunate that David Hess was involved in this movie. I like a lot of the performances on the bad-guy side, but Hess is definitely the stealer of the show as Krug. A lesser actor would have stuck to one note, but Hess delivered scenes of real menace and scenes of weird comedy with the same energy (the first time Krug is on screen, he pops a kid's balloon with his cigar). David Hess is also responsible for another essential component of LAST HOUSE/KRUG -- the music.

David Hess started off his career as a musician prior to becoming an actor, writing songs for Elvis Presley and Pat Boone(!) among others. He stated in interviews that he considered himself a musician first and tended to see his roles in terms of the music that might be played on the soundtrack. Without David Hess, this movie would not have the haunting "Wait for the Rain" or the bizarre "Baddies' Theme". It just wouldn't be the same thing.

The KRUG AND COMPANY cut actually varies very little from the LAST HOUSE that you've seen. There's an additional brief scene of Sadie "tormenting" the girls and a scene in which Mari's parents find her alive (I prefer the standard version). The print on the disc is pretty trashed with lots of scratches and pops. But it's still worth a watch if you are refined enough to love this movie. And the documentaries and stories on the Ultimate Edition make it well worth the purchase and postage. RIP David Hess.

HALLOWEENAGE #11: COLD HEARTS (1999)

2011-10-19T15:38:00.000-07:00

That is Amy Jo Johnson, mostly known as the Pink Power Ranger (one of the US boxes also says, "Star of Felicity!"). It's tempting to think of COLD HEARTS as part of the whole slew of films made by former child stars when they wanted to shed their innocent images. Like Drew Barrymore slutting her way through POISON IVY or Alyssa Milano in the Cinemax naked vampire thing EMBRACE OF THE VAMPIRE. Maybe that was Amy Jo's motivation for doing this film, but, if so, she chose unwisely. Because: her character is basically the Pink Ranger, only a vampire; she's a pretty minor character in the film, no matter what the box says; and COLD HEARTS is so bereft of adult content that it could have aired a few hours after POWER RANGERS if you cut some of the swears out of it.

Good vampires vs. bad vampires on the Jersey shore sounds ridiculous now, of course, but it's hard to imagine a time when such an idea would have been considered not laughable. Essentially, COLD HEARTS takes LOST BOYS and moves it to the East Coast and enlists even less menacing vampires, the leader of which is named Chaz, for real. White Hanes shirt and leather jacket Chaz. Opposing Chaz are the tandem of Viki, a tough-girl-with-a-good-vampire-heart; Alicia, the most Emily Dickinsonian of the vamps; and Darius, who is blatantly identified as gay, but does not act human-torch flaming like the current crop of gay caricatures on cable TV. So bonus points for that.

Very little in this film will surprise anyone who has seen a movie before, but there are a few highlights. Johnson's Alicia isn't that compelling of a character (she's kind of a Mary Jane), but the part she plays in the plot is pretty entertaining. I also enjoyed the massacre at the waterpark, including a choice waterslide vampire stalk. Some of the camerawork is also enjoyable.

Unfortunately for me, COLD HEARTS has pretty unimpressive effects and keeps the vampire mayhem restrained enough for its probable intended audience of young teens to endure. Even the "massacre" feels tepid, though I did enjoy the bloody wet T-shirt. Overall, this feels more like MELROSE PLACE or 90210, only with vampires, and not really any sort of horror movie. You would also be stunned at how much this anticipates many things about TWILIGHT. It's not godawful and if this is the worst thing I see this month, I will count myself lucky, but I wouldn't go out of your way to see it unless you're a huge Amy Jo Johnson fan or something.

HALLOWEENAGE #10: MANIAC (1934)

2011-10-18T13:15:00.000-07:00

It's baffling that anyone could hate this ludicrous and slender piece of grindhouse history. It's only 51 minutes long and at least half of that running time is cackling. In true grindhouse/roadside spirit, it was cobbled together with exploitable elements and, in a move that was the forerunner of today's test screenings, it was re-edited after a dire initial release with lots of ladies, in underwear and out of it.

Fear thought is most dangerous when it parades as forethought.

The plot, if that's what you want to call it, concerns a mad scientist experimenting with re-animation and his assistant, who finally gets to live out his dreams of impersonating people. Later, a cat gets its eyeball plucked (changing its breed and color over the course of the scene), one of four women in bedroom wear uses a weird exercise machine, and two ladies fight each other with giant hypodermic needles. Needless to say, don't go into this expecting some wonderfully-realized piece of plot craftsmanship. This is pure proto-psychedelia.

You? Actor?! HA HA HA HA!

The performances are universally SHRIEKED AND SCREAMED, with actors usually filmed lurking behind test tubes and lab equipment or filmed in the most blurry fashion possible. The dialogue that is not hollered is incomprehensibly mumbled, apparently by drunks, making the convoluted story even more impossible to understand.

To my notion, those that monkeys with what they got no business to gets queer sooner or later!

Plus, my copy of this is 1/50th of one of those terrible Brentwood box sets, so the print is extra-tarnished and awful, which actually works in MANIAC's favor. If you were to open an insane person's skull and connect her cerebellum to a coaxial cable and then connect that to a VCR and record her dreams, then bury the tape in a swamp for a decade, then have it digitized on a Lenovo by archivists' moms, it would be MANIAC.

I think too much of Satan to use cats as experiments!

Those captions are actual lines of dialogue, by the way. It's so weird to think of people in the thirties, who were old when my grandma was young, going to see this. It's more proof that the alleged "good old days" were pretty bad in a fun way.

I must get her out of here, she must have oxygen

Watch it for free at Internet Archive!

HALLOWEENAGE #9: MESSIAH OF EVIL (1973)

2011-10-17T18:50:00.000-07:00

aka DEAD PEOPLE, this has been acquiring a reputation as a cult classic/lost gem after years of being a dismissed and derided obscurity ("the surprising thing is that this abortion was from the same producers as 'American Graffiti'" -- thanks again, Google News Archive). It's easy to see why it riled some people, given that it's obstinately obscure and baffling and includes some pretty jarring-for-the-time transgressions ("a not-too-sexy go of it vomiting up spiders, cockroaches, lizards and maggots").

But here's the thing about corrections. Once the pendulum has swung so far one way, the natural reaction is equal and opposite, so some would have you believe that MESSIAH OF EVIL is one of horror's most sadly-neglected gems. I think it's more accurate to say that this is a good movie, but...

...it's excruciatingly slow in that 70s way at times. If you squirmed during LET'S SCARE JESSICA TO DEATH or LEMORA, you will quake at the long stretches of MESSIAH in which nothing happens. Pacing is a serious issue here and MESSIAH is just way too bloated. But...

...visually, this is probably one of the standouts of the genre. Arletty (Marianna Hill) journeys to Point Dune, a town in which her artist father has disappeared. So the surreal set design is actually tied to the plot, not just to artistic pretensions. Dad's house is full of weird paintings and cutouts and MESSIAH also features a ton of bizarre hypercolorful lighting. In a lot of ways, this anticipates Argento's SUSPIRIA in its usage of high-contrast reds and blues. The linkage of art and death & use of water as a symbol for menace also would play out in Argento's work. But most of Argento's stuff is a little more coherent than this. Really.

Arletty soon discovers that Point Dune harbors terrible secrets and the centennial of the blood moon portends all kinds of madness. The scenes here are the best, with gangs of creepy people in suits stalking victims, a very CARNIVAL OF SOULS-esque blood moon season. There's also a whole Lovecraftian development that emerges late and rocks hard. Equally triumphant and bewildering, some paces behind stuff like HORRORS OF MALFORMED MEN and BLIND BEAST, but still worth a watch for sure. Let's let the writers/directors have the last word...

"But the movie that haunts them is their 1973 horror film, Messiah of Evil. 'It was a real bowwow,' Gloria admits, though Willard adds proudly that 'it appeared on a marquee in a Woody Allen film, and Film Comment called it "one of the top 10 classic, overlooked horror films of all time."'"(cite)

HALLOWEENAGE #8: ABSENTIA (2011)

2011-10-03T16:57:00.000-07:00

This is going to be a little different, so people who arrived via Google Image Search or whatever might want to skip it. Also, I saw this at a con, so I don't have screenshots.

Horror is necessarily generally good at some things and bad at others. Horror movies can evoke a surprisingly wide range of reactions, from the splattery fun of the FINAL DESTINATIONs to the distressing nihilism of something like CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST. One thing horror isn't exceptionally great at doing is creating emotional resonance in the same way that a well-done drama can. You could probably tick off the list of really cathartic, emotionally-wrenching horror movies on a single hand. SESSION 9 is a pretty good example because that last line makes you feel it. FRAILTY, too, lingers with you long after the movie is over. Those kinds of horror movies are very rare and, on the rare moments when the genre does touch that kind of nerve, it's usually not emotionally cleansing in the way a disease-of-the-week tearjerker would be. There is no ray of sunshine even on the day of the funeral. Because horror doesn't offer that kind of resolution. Because it's about dark things: isolation; loss; death.

ABSENTIA is that kind of horror movie. The IMDB synopsis is pretty accurate: "A woman and her sister begin to link a mysterious tunnel to a series of disappearances, including that of her own husband." But that doesn't capture what's special about it. The tone of the film is just suffocatingly mournful and bleak, even from the outset. The woman is Tricia, who's both newly pregnant and just started to get over the disappearance of her husband seven years ago. Her sister is Callie, who's squandered a lot of time and chances on drug habits and bad choices. The detective who's been assigned to her husband's case is interested in Tricia, but relationships of any sort in ABSENTIA are impossible things. Love and affection are so distant from this world of constant discomfort and pain. Then Tricia's husband shows up.

There are supernatural elements and jump scenes and special effects, but the thing that sticks with you about the film is its adept handling of loss. It's so effective that I'd probably recommend holding off on viewing it if you've gone through a recent death. It's just so suffused in sadness, more akin to something like IN THE BEDROOM in a lot of ways than your average rubber-suit monster movie. It wouldn't work as well if the directing, editing, and performances weren't top notch, but (of course) they are. I doubt that I will see a better horror film this year and will be very disappointed if ABSENTIA doesn't get the chance to attract the audience it deserves.

http://absentiamovie.com/

HALLOWEENAGE #7: THE BLACK CAT (1981)

2011-10-02T17:59:00.000-07:00

After a score of films featuring close-ups and zooms of human eyes, maestro director Lucio Fulci branched out with this, which is 60% comprised of close-ups of cat eyes. Not kidding.

"Freely adapted", as the credits forthrightly claim, from some story that a drunk wrote or something, Fulci's black cat is a very active killer. Granted, cats aren't very good at killing prey as large as people, so it must devise elaborate, Rube Goldberg-esque death scenarios except when it also uses hypnosis to make folks suicide. Hypnosis requires EYES! WIN WIN WIN!

The psychic in this film says that you can't give a cat orders and that is probably true. The black cat of the film sometimes looks bored or bewildered, not really that menacing. How many cats do you think Fulci strangled because they wouldn't perform as he wanted? It's the same problem that I had with the sharks in THE REEF. Animals don't care what you need for your film. They just want to eat, or sleep. Plus I like cats, so even when this one claws a guy's hands so he falls onto a pallet of spikes, I'm just like, "Awww, mischief-maker!"

This is pretty star-studded, kind of. David Warbeck and Mimsy Farmer show up, along with a moustachioed Al Cliver and Patrick Magee of TALES FROM THE CRYPT and BARRY LYNDON fame. Ultimately, it's a Fulci film, so character isn't a super-huge priority, but everybody does a professional job, at least. As per usual, it's well-shot and has fairly impressive music. But, overall, this is leagues away in quality from some of Fulci's more magical efforts. People who love Fulci for gore won't be too impressed, as (again) cats don't have arms and can't carry power tools and THE BLACK CAT is far less wet than some of the director's splashier entries.

Watching this right after the original PSYCHO on the big screen was probably one of my worst ideas, but, even so, I can't ever see myself caring all that much about it in any situation.

HALLOWEENAGE #6: THE CAT AND THE CANARY (1927)

2011-10-02T07:40:00.000-07:00

Silent horror is perhaps the most shunned house in the horror neighborhood. Even foreign horror about little girl hair is more palatable to Joe/Jane Average modern horror consumer, because who wants to go to a movie to read or alternately to parse exaggerated Roman-theater grimaces buried under greasepaint? Silent films often seem so distant from modern sensibilities. Nothing blows up, there are no sex scenes, and the horror, as such, often seems arch and awkward. Well, smart aleck, perhaps you should watch THE CAT AND THE CANARY before you renounce a whole period of genre fare.

Because nothing could be LESS pretentious or alien. More than anything, CAT feels like a spitting-image ancestor of the William Castle films. FUN. Reclusive, rich eccentric Cyrus West up and dies and leaves a will to be opened twenty years later. Awesomely, he disses his family in the will, saying that they circled his fortune like cats around a canary (TITLE!). He leaves the entirety to his most distant relative named West, provided that she can spend the night in the house and be verified as sane by a doctor. If INsane, the fortune reverts to the name written in the mysterious second envelope. You can guess what happens next!

If you've seen Tod Browning's THE OLD DARK HOUSE, you'll know what to expect: a creepy servant (hilariously named Mammy Pleasant), some comical antics, revolving bookshelves, and such like that. It's pretty standard fare, probably, but the movie makes really effective use of its bag of tricks and it's unfair to blame it and its brethren for being copied by later works. I loved the creative usage of weird animated title cards! And the bizarre expressionist-flavored superimpositions!

Love it! All CATs have claws and also flaws, and this one is kind of bloated (80 minutes a little too long for this kind of thing and apparently there's a 101 minute version, which sounds like sheer madness). BUT it's well worth your investment should you want to delve into a light, fun example of twenties frightdom. Remade in 1939 with Bob Hope!

HALLOWEENAGE #5: WE ARE THE NIGHT (2010)

2011-10-01T09:29:00.000-07:00

No monster has been bullied and abused more of late than vampires. Once the suave aristocrats of the monster world, of late they have been reduced to swoony white knights chasing hillbilly waitress or teenage girl tail. So anyone should be commended for attempting to make a serious vampire film in the 2000s and some should even be hugged for their achievements (THIRST, 30 DAYS OF NIGHT, LET THE RIGHT ONE IN). Others, like WE ARE THE NIGHT, should be given an encouraging pat on the shoulder and told, "You'll do better next time."

In many ways, this film holds true to the best semi-recent vampire canon. Its camp of all-girl vamps and lesbian underpinnings recalls seventies stuff like VAMPYRES and DAUGHTERS OF DARKNESS. Thematically, it's very NEAR DARKish, as lead Teutonic vamp Louise turns erstwhile street urchin Lena, who must then find a way to fit into the existing undead gang while dealing with the romance-advances of a cop named Tom. Unfortunately, WE ARE THE NIGHT also cops a lot of bad ideas from work like INTERVIEW WITH A VAMPIRE. That is to say, party vampires.

THIS IS THE FACE OF THE UNDEAD

The ladies apparently have a TECHNO CLUB. There are lots of dancing scenes. One would think that immortal monsters would have more to do than follow silly trends, since, as people age, they tend to lose interest in such fluff. But keeping these scenes in allows for sexy times, as the music itself literally declares. If I were tasked with writing this film, I would made the techno club something that Louise purchased JUST to interest/draw in Lena, like a stalkery kind of thing. That would make sense in the same way that guys often pretend to be interested in hot-girl poetry or girls interested in hot-guy football or whatever. But the techno scenes do allow free reign for the most annoying of the vampires, anime-haired and super-enthusiastic Nora.

VAMPIRE GIRLS NIGHT OUT

The group of vampires is pretty sitcom-esque, in that each is essentially a type: Louise is the leader, the Leonardo of the group; Nora is Michaelangelo, a party chick who mostly squanders her immortality on the most banal junk; and Charlotte is Raphael, sullen and impassive. One wonders if Lena would have done machines had things turned out better for all involved. The movie desperately needed LESS Nora and MORE Charlotte. The Charlotte scenes were the most interesting and effective and redolent of the vampires I like. Gloomy and dour, she spends her time buried in books or watching old films of herself from her silent-movie-starlet days. One Charlotte scene comes closest to genuine emotion and a feeling of loss as well. The rest of this is just sort of shallow. If you're going to make a good movie about neo-vampires (instead of the NOSFERATU or SALEM'S LOT animal variety), you HAVE TO make character a priority.

In the film's defense, it's filmed well and acted well. It just doesn't do enough to differentiate itself or enagage the viewer. And, again, I know it's very hard to mount a serious movie about vampires after the likes of TWILIGHT and TRUE BLOOD have deflated all the mystique. But one must make monsters more interesting, not just blood-drinking versions of office girls who can live through shotgun blasts. I wouldn't go out of my way to see this.

HALLOWEENAGE #4: THE VAGRANT (1992)

2011-09-29T17:22:00.000-07:00

I think I've mentioned before that my work involves an unsettling amount of interaction with the homeless. Not the homeless that live in sentimental imaginations, struggling and waiting heroically for but one open slot in productive society, flinging tears to the wind as they hop trains into the sunset. Nope, my homeless screech across the room about how they found a new Facebook game and they want fifteen more minutes to finish it and try to set the building on fire when they can't have it OR whip out their iPhones when it's raining and tell someone, "There are gonna be lots of people at the shelter tonight, so I'm just gonna get a room at the Marriott". There are almost certainly some of the tragically homeless of emo lore out there, but I don't know any since all my homeless are homeless because they've alienated or abused all of their friends with homes and cash.

Not since Russ Meyer has a sex scene been this ridiculous.

So this is a movie called THE VAGRANT, about a yuppie-ish white collar guy named Graham who's menaced by a monstrous bum. "Menaced" is probably too strong a word, as initially the vagrant, apart from showing up IN Graham's new home, doesn't really do anything. He sits in a vacant lot across the street, munching on rancid-looking dead things. But Graham freaks out and overreacts, right, and lays out megabucks to install an absurdly complicated security system (it plays music when you're not home to fool people. I mean, really.). But soon bodies start piling up! Sort of! There is one body! And Graham must effect an escape from the vagrant that may or may not be responsible.

This is not really a horror film, although it has horror elements. It's much more akin to the black comedy films that briefly proliferated in the late 80s/early 90s (think THE 'BURBS and THE DARK BACKWARD). The plot is pretty loosey-goosey, as Graham departs his swank new digs for trailer parks and life on the road, meeting all sorts of quirky characters along the way. Thankfully, THE VAGRANT isn't annoying like modern quirkers of the JUNO stripe. Director Chris (THE FLY II) Walas keeps it nice and dark, bustling with schadenfreude, and Bill Paxton as Graham, Michael Ironside as a cop named Barfuss(!), and Marshall "The Vagrant" Bell all acquit themselves mighty finely. The minor players give their all, too, especially Patrika Darbo's lusty shut-in Doattie, purveyor of that cake up there, who makes the best upsetting squealing sounds.

Worth your time for sure, as I laughed out loud a couple of times and was pretty consistently amused. Good luck finding it, though, as it's not on DVD anywhere in the world to my knowledge. Check pawn shops for VHS or, failing that, you can buy the full movie on IMDB. Or maybe dig in a dumpster for a copy. Or harass people until they buy it FOR you!

HALLOWEENAGE #3: THE VICTIM (2011)

2011-09-28T15:44:00.000-07:00

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1684564/

Another Scarefest scrapbook memory. This is one instance in which watching the film in a banquet room AT A FEST boosted the experience b/c director Michael Biehn and starlets Danielle Harris and Jennifer Blanc were in attendance and like totally charming. Biehn is hilarious and Harris and Blanc apparently need those impressive breasts to contain such large, sweet hearts.

THE VICTIM is, as Biehn said, basically a grindhouse thriller. Two strippers go on a fun double date with two cops and sample their cop-coke. In the midst of Danielle Harris doing her best Asia Argento impersonation, something unfortunate happens and the remainder of the film is a chase scene, peppered with flashbacks. Flashbacks aside, this is pretty straightforward and feels like genuine grindhouse. Illogic is present and also gratuitous shrieking and lots of shots of driving. The driving scenes would be symptomatic of my main complaint, the bone I pick with lots of movies, namely that this could use some paring down and editing. Since this was shot super-quickly, I'm sure it was tempting to use most of what was shot, but I think a tighter VICTIM would be a stronger VICTIM.

It's already a pretty strong VICTIM in a lot of ways, though. You can really tell that this was produced and performed by professionals (especially when you watch it just before Kentucky's own BUNKER OF BLOOD!) and it really does capture a lot of what makes grindhouse worthwhile: sex, drugs, violence. I don't think it's going to change the world and the current IMDB rating is insane in the membrane to say the least (sorry, this isn't better than BLAIR WITCH PROJECT and CREEPSHOW, are you guys on Rick Perry's salvia?). But it is a good time and makes me eager to see more from the fabulously-named Blancbiehn Productions.

I love you, IMDB comment: "WTF people?! It's supposed to be bad, it's a fucking Grindhouse movie!....and it's got Danielle Harris in it!, and tons of violence and shit, so what more do you want?!"

HALLOWEENAGE #2: THE SHADOW PEOPLE (2011)

2011-09-25T09:42:00.000-07:00

Prologue: My friend and I had dinner at this Indian restaurant before seeing this film and his Bengali girlfriend harangued us via text about choosing "Indian food for shada [white] people". Shada? Shadow? So there followed dreaming about how SHADOW PEOPLE might be an anti-Caucasian propaganda film, like a Bengali TRIUMPH OF THE WILL. But it wasn't. It was...something else.

I wish I could just play you the exchange of baffled reactions and laughter as we walked to the car. I think the easiest approach is just a straight retelling with GIMP art because I can't get screenshots from a horror con movie. So.

Movie begins with handheld shots that will remind you of PARANORMAL ACT, etc., but the acting here is pretty decent! A van full of youngs encounter something that looks like a wendigo, then stop at a bonfire and are attacked by a bunch of shirtless men ("almost like a gathering!"), all sporting horrid triangle tattoos on their shirtless backs. MAIN TITLE/CREDITS. Now we switch to proper film. The aspect ratio at the screening was all screwed, which made every automobile look like this—

—which made me laugh hard, every single time a car was on the screen. Anyway, the girl who owned the camera was the sole survivor of the shirtless-man attack and emerged from a coma nine months later. Turns out she's been SLEEPWALKING during her coma! Or SLEPTWALKING, as the movie would have it. After a montage of doctors being jerks (a nurse JOKES that she might go into another coma if she goes to sleep, LOLOLOLOL), Bethany, the girl, is released to the care of her grandpa, the former mayor.

That is a fair beard portrayal. He tells Bethany that he's invited this kid James to live with them because his parents died and he's working at an antiques store and blah blah, et al. You can check the art below, but, if you want a solid visual, just watch an episode of The Mighty Boosh and look for Vince Noir. That's James!

Bethany dislikes him at first, until he takes her to his antique job, whence she is yelled at by some dolls and plates, then he takes her to lunch and keeps reminding her that she was in a coma. Between the antiques screaming at her and the nightmares, Bethany's worried, so she visits the local gypsy named Yurim who lives in an attic. Yurim informs Bethany that, according to the Book of Satan, she's set to be the mother of the Antichrist. There are three ways to prevent this from occurring: the mom can die; she can get pregnant with a normal human baby first; or another way, which the movie never gets around to telling us about.

DOES THIS SOUND LIKE A LOT OF PLOT? It isn't, really, when you consider that SHADOW PEOPLE is almost TWO AND ONE HALF HOURS LONG.

And now Bethany gets physically attacked, IN A COLLEGE BUILDING with class in session, by a man wearing a pillowcase and wielding a chain, in a chase scene that has to span at least 5 kilometers. AND NO ONE IS AROUND! The girl who has been in a coma for nine months has the cardiovascular endurance to sprint down every hall in the Psychology building! Which are devoid of even one single student. Words fail.

I am starting to develop a brain tumor, but let me add that the tape Bethany used to document the shirtless man attack is found at a Catholic church by a policeman who happens to attend mass, SO that means that no one has attended mass during the nine months of her coma? Who knows, but now we have to watch Bethany and her friends get kidnapped by kidnappers playing dubstep in a HEARSE, followed by an escape and 10K more of running! And there's a Bethany monologue that sounds like a the Moby Dick of Hallmark cards and a conclusion that doesn't really resolve ANYTHING. Perfecto.

This was oh so much fun. It's flawed and overlong, obv, but, if a judicious editor put most of the running and the stair scenes on the cutting room floor, this would make a fine night of insanity for you and several friends. IMDB says that it was filmed for $2000!!!, so that in itself is quite an achievement. It was easily the crown jewel of the Saturday Scarefest screenings. Beautiful insanity.

HALLOWEENAGE #1: DEVIL TIMES FIVE (1974)

2011-09-25T08:24:00.000-07:00

*Full disclosure: I am starting this super-early this year and renaming (or "re-branding") it to keep it together, since I am going to be taking the plane of white wealth to Seattle mid-month, so that October will be more like Octseattletober. Also, since I am so busy and important, there might be more or less than 31 of these. This blog is going to festooned with suspense and viewable through screens crystal-cleared b/c bated breath.*

Children! We all know and hate them. So, theoretically, they should make amazing horror movie villains. But there's a problem and its name is child actors and their stubby legs and weak muscles and often too-cutesy approach to the craft. Although. It seems unbelievable, but, if you ponder it, we are actually living in the golden age of killer-kid movies. The Children. Home Movie. Orphan. All far better than the majority of their kiddie-horror predecessors, unfortunately including DEVIL TIMES FIVE.

This explains a lot.

Some seventies stuff was so amazing that it cast a glossy finish over the entire decade. DEVIL TIMES FIVE (aka PEOPLETOYS aka THE HORRIBLE HOUSE ON THE HILL) is, if nothing else, a grim reminder that there was lots of blasé, tepid, TV-movie-like horror even during that decade we all love. It's not like Kevin Williamson invented mediocre horror movies! D*5 is tepid in a confused, awkward way, like the film version of an AM radio switching from piano-driven AM gold to dippy aimless psychedelia and back again. Film begins with a hilarious van accident and five young'uns tumbling out of the wreckage. One of them plays soldier THROUGH THE ENTIRE FILM, spouting dialogue like "Affirmative!" and "What time is chow?" Is your adorableness sensor going off? Does this sound like sitcom fare? How about when the kids go to the horrible house of Papa Doc (really) and he says, "I was 14 when I first slopped a mop down in Copperhaven's cruddy halls!"? How about now? Are you vomiting now?

Big axe.

Little axe.

This movie. Takes forever. To kick into gear. Kids arrive and recite the van-accident story, but none of the grown-ups bother calling the police. They are too busy getting into incredibly athletic bathrobe catfights, drinking J&B, and sharing comedic antics with the comically-retarded manor slave Ralph. The tempo and performances genuinely feel like TV movie fare, so much so that it's a shock when a breast or hideous unclothed male behind pops up. Once the kills really start, some are okay (the bathtub is pretty fun and BEARTRAPS EVERYWHERE should really be in a better movie), but DEVIL fails to climb the mountain that confronts most kid movies: kids are small, not that bright, and also much weaker than adults. This movie goes the extra mile to overcome it by using size-changing hatchets and elaborate swinging death machines, but still falls short. Stick with our modern 2.0 entries if you need additional reasons to dislike children.

MEH times five.

N-SECURE (2010)

2011-07-16T19:48:00.000-07:00

I have learned that it is okay to let myself go and not fulfill all the demands that Society makes of me. Like, even though I am a man, sometimes I do not have to fix every broken car that I see. Also, I can occasionally eat at restaurants that are not Hooters, like Applebees and TGI Fridays, in spite of having a penis. On holidays, I can even let the ladies do the math. It feels so liberating to shirk the crushing pressures of the Patriarchy and its gender roles that I had to drop my cross-stitch & Amish romance paperback and come crow about it immediately on my genre blog.

But what does that word mean, "genre"? Obviously, the scope of this thing includes cheap-ass horror and sleazy-ass women in prison fare and laughable action from the Atlantic Ocean. But why wouldn't something like THE ROOM, although meant to be a romantic drama (despite what my Facebook friend Tommy Wiseau now says), be included if it hits all the same nerves, albeit accidentally? It's outrageous, it subverts standard movie expectations, etc. And, if THE ROOM fits under the umbrella, why not THE black ROOM, which is how N-SECURE was pitched to me? Whatever, I am reviewing it. If I go from four to three followers because of this controversy, so be it. Vaya con dios, RACISTS.

When it opened with a piano-based song and a woman complimenting "Your cologne, your hair, your style, your intelligence", hope sprang eternal. Right from the start, this movie wants you to know that David Washington is a time-obsessed man. He sets his alarm for 6:38 (TEN MINUTES LATER THAN HARD-WORKING AMERICAN TOMMY WISEAU) and rigorously eyes the clock whilst electric-toothbrushing and hilariously plucking nose hairs. He yells at his lady, Robyn (Essence Atkins), "It's 7:08! Are you going to sleep all day?" The movie also wants me to view David Washington as a COLOSSAL douchebag, although I'm not sure if that's intentional. But this sequence -- Hummer -> Energy drink -> Power Point slide -- can't be meant any other way, right? David works at some computer-based job which involves Power Point charts. Not sure exactly what he does, but he gets to say, "Shut up and listen! Have you re-routed all authenticated data queries through the primary domain control?!"

When he's not working, his hobbies included being cuckolded on his wedding day with the boyfriend of friend Jill (Tempestt Bledsoe from The Cosby Show, you guys!). David freaks out and slugs the male adulterer. But that's not enough to sate his scandalous-ho-scarred heart! He drops Robyn like she's hot, but ends up spooning with his secretary's cousin (the also-beautiful Denise Boutte). But his jealousy and N-SECURity wreck the day, and also his cutting of brake lines wreck some cars.

This really isn't THE black ROOM because it's not as consistently fun in a deranged way, but it really is fun to watch. It's shot pretty well, with sumptuous sets and scenes bleeding into one another. Bledsoe acquits herself nicely, the two main dishes are hot, and Cordell Moore is lots of fun as David Washington. Since some of the players have been involved in his movies, I will say that I'd MUCH rather watch this than anything Tyler Perry has shat out. The MADEA movies are a vomitous abomination and the last one was one of the most seriously misogynistic things I have ever seen. I never get my feelings hurt by movies (I enjoy BLOODSUCKING FREAKS and TEENAGE HITCH-HIKERS, man), but the constant woman-baiting and "SLAP-A-HO" """jokes""" rattled even me. It pisses me off EVEN MORE that no one else seemed to care. N-SECURE, despite featuring a protagonist who n-securely abuses his women, seems less hateful. If it never reaches the bizarro heights of THE ROOM or TROLL 2, it's at least good for a night's watch.

I would probably rank this with BIRDEMIC in terms of kicks. You really won't be able to watch it every weekend, even if you love its Memphis setting, as I do, but the best scenes will live in your heart and your conversations with hipster friends forever. Remember, don't EVER disrespect me by disrespecting my time!

THE GREAT SILENCE (1968)

2011-07-02T18:03:00.000-07:00

From one of the most unmemorable Spaghetti westerns to one of the best and most analyzable ever, a movie that is unequivocally not about someone finishing library school. IL GRANDE SILENZIO is perhaps Sergio (DJANGO) Corbucci's greatest effort, with only 1970's COMPANEROS coming close. This film encapsulates all the depth and contradictions of Spaghetti westerns while directly addressing the old-school Westerns which birthed the genre and treating philosophical issues of morality and prejudice with appropriate gravitas.

Who is going to pay for all this broken ground? Becuz GREAT SILENCE breaks a ton of it, from interracial relations (it's a '68 film, the same year that Star Trek premiered interracial kissing on TV) to cheerleading for the welfare state (albeit in wagon-town scale), the film shatters the past and its taboos all over the place. This isn't some subtle housequake, either, as the dialogue makes it quite explicit (the governor actually says, "The Old West is dead" at one point). And yet it flirts with the old memes and themes of your dad's and my dad's Westerns! Only to break your heart and that antique rational world all the fuck apart...

This is the tale of Silence (Jean-Louis Trintignant), a mute gunfighter who "avenges our wrongs". It's not clear how Silence manages to live with no job beyond killing baddies. It's even less clear whether he might be some spectral supernatural type. More later. Opposing Silence is Loco (Klaus my god and yours Kinski), a bounty hunter who thrives on killing wanted men in order to produce "irrefutable proof of identity", as required by the law. The law and its relation to the taking of lives is a MAJOR theme for this film. Silence's jail-free existence is contingent upon making his victims strike first, so that he can claim "self-defense" in capping them. The Sheriff (Frank Wolff) also takes shelter in the law, stating, "When the law kills, it's not murder, it's punishment." And yet, initially, the Sheriff arrives aiming to clean up town and dispel the vulpine bounty hunters and end their preying on a poor religious sect that ends up EATING HIS HORSE.

The sect are pretty transparently meant to be Mormons (the Utah setting is a dead giveaway). Sympathy to Mormons might not gel well with progressive leanings these days, but here's our villain Loco: "Those are dangerous men, Sheriff. They're enemies of God and man. The things they preach...what if one had his say in court and got acquitted?" What, indeed. Loco and his fellow bounty hunters have free reign to shoot and cash in the corpses until Silence comes to town, spurred by a request from unbelievably gorgeous African-American Pauline (Vonetta McGee).

Almost everything about this film sets it apart, from the snowy setting to the major roles afforded women and black people to Ennio Morricone's moody and eerily-subdued score. It's not at all straightforward, even to the extent that characters can be recognized as human (in an extremely strange juxtaposition, Silence makes it from Pauline's house to a saloon in a matter of seconds and later survives an almost-def fatal wounding; PLUS almost every character is wearing very untreated animal hides). And, famously, unfolded events don't do much to settle one's stomach about the America to come. This was so controversial that Corbucci was forced to shoot an alternate happy ending for the US and Asian markets; thankfully, the original ending has been restored on Netflix's DVD and the version that is (presumably) available in a store near you. I loved the hell out of this. For a film from 1968, it's incredibly meta (like making a metal album about the death of metal). Even today, I can't see anyone being able to smugly and easily claim it as their own...there are certainly touchpoints for altruists and white knights, but the pro-Mormon sentiment and deliberate Christ iconography make THE GREAT SILENCE a bitter, and thus worthwhile, pill to swallow. And law and order cons will choke on the treatment of law as an easy excuse for cowardly killing and crony capitalism. It's a challenging film, surprisingly so given its age, and well worth your time. Pure classic. <3

BLOOD AT SUNDOWN (1966)

2011-06-27T14:46:00.000-07:00

Confusingly followed by an unrelated 1967 Spanish Western also called BLOOD AT SUNDOWN (and also starring Anthony Steffen!), this 1966 Alberto Cardone entry has garnered a modest rep over the years. In terms of content, it's probably best classed with the old-timey goodie-vs.-baddie Westerns of the pre-60s, as it seems quite far away from something like MANNAJA. There's not a lot of ambiguity to be had, my son or daughter. After serving twelve years in prison (a compromise sentence between a total pardon and hanging, lawl!), Johnny Liston returns to his town to settle a score with his no-goodnik brother Sartana, who has spent the past twelve years marrying/raping Johnny's sweetheart and racking up a pretty impressive tally of gunshot-murder victims.

BLOOD isn't that distinctive in terms of look or plot, but it's important for the genre for one surprising reason, which you will find at the end of this paragraph. So Johnny returns to find his brother terrorizing the town, including a mute named Jerry, and eventually meets up with Mom Liston. Mom is easily the movie's most compelling character, a fierce drunk who forces the town's ladies to literally kneel and beg for help from her. Also along for the ride are a fairly fun cast of minor characters, which makes the sameyness of the plot and unimpressive shot-on-a-Rome-lot visuals easier to swallow. Ditto for the pretty novel native-Mexican ruins which serve as Sartana's lair. All of this goodness is simply backdrop for the not-too-engaging brother-vs.-brother feud around which the film pivots. It resolves itself in the way that you would most expect. What you wouldn't expect is that the character who had one of the longest lifespans in Spaghetti western history would be the bland villain SARTANA! This movie set Gianni Garko up for life, as he'd go on to turn into the hero of such films as IF YOU MEET SARTANA PRAY FOR YOUR DEATH and LIGHT THE FUSE...SARTANA IS COMING! Sartana was the fucking Punisher of his day. I am personally disappointed that the villain named Ralph didn't show up in sequel properties, but so it goes...

I'm mostly ambivalent about BLOOD AT SUNDOWN. I didn't curse the gods that I devoted some time to it, but neither is it my new favorite thing. The minor characters and some fetching dialogue ("And this finishes your career as a pain in the neck, brother dear!", "They only believe you and your clever handlin' of the law and the marvelous manners you have!") help to alleviate the tedium of some parts, and I'd wager that this is almost no one's most loved film. But it's not TERRIBLE. Just not as good as many other things.

I think I shall try another film with a mute character next. Mystery abounds!

DJANGO (1966)

2011-06-26T14:16:00.000-07:00

I've glutted myself on Fragasso and the only remedy is spaghetti...Westerns, that is! Put that comedy gold in your college fund. Even though the genre has received a bit of renewed interest over the last decade or so, it still lags behind the gialli, cannibal films, blaxploitation, teen vampire horror, and other specialty cinema in terms of fan interest, so it seems like a good idea to look over some entries for a spell, both the more acclaimed and the more obscure. And starting off with something I didn't originally enjoy seems counterproductive and dumb, but it happened. So sup, DJANGO.

When I initially saw DJANGO, I was disappointed that it lacked the crazy pace of COMPANEROS or the depth of the Sergio Leone films. Upon rewatch, the first half or so is indeed slow going and full of muddy roads. A preliminary burst of action involves a woman being bullwhipped by a band of Mexicans, only to be "saved" by a band of religious zealots who intend to crucify her into sinlessness. Then Django arrives, pulling a coffin, and half-heartedly saves her yet again. He invites her to accompany him on a grand adventure! So they go to the dullest whorehouse in the world, where garishly-painted ladies sit around knitting and yawning in fancy dresses. Turns out that the whorehouse is sort of a demilitarized zone between the Mexicans and the army of Major Jackson, whose racial creed leads to things like Mexicans-as-clay-pigeons on the shooting range. The Spaghetti West is a whole lot more willing to tackle social issues than the Western Westerns that inspired it. Racism is a pivotal point in this film (although kind of clumsily developed) and other S-Westerns would incorporate social ills in even more brazen ways (cf. the IRA bomb maker as hero in Leone's DUCK YOU SUCKER).

Because this kind of film emerged in the late sixties and seventies, there is a notable absence of white-horse heroes. Protags in Spaghetti westerns tend to be less John Wayne and more John Wayne Gacy. If they're not wanton killers, at the very least they are primarily concerned with their own well-being and very rarely rush to the aid of burning orphans and whipped women without solid financial or vengeful reasons. Django in this film is essentially a big dickbag. He's greedy and abrasive and normally only wins fights when underhandness is involved. Viewers who are used to the grindhouse and exploitation films of this era should recognize the sort of gray-shaded characterization at work here. Practically NOBODY in DJANGO is heroic in the traditional sense. The racist guys are racist louts, but the Mexicans are also brutish and disgusting, Django is too sketchy to like, and the women are ciphers who only exist to need rescuing, then fall in love with assholes. The viewer doesn't really have a point of reference in the film and, when that works well, it's awesome. But I'm not convinced that it really works here, with events unfolding and me not invested and thus me not caring.

Thankfully, there are some plot-aside points that make DJANGO enjoyable. If anyone in the film deserves an award for achievement, it is the music. The title song is one of the best ever for this kind of movie (kudos, Luis Bacalov). You will remember it long after the film's events have been replaced in your mind with grocery lists and pics of Silvia Saint. BUT music is well-handled throughout DJANGO. When the Mexican insurgency is riding, there is this utterly amazing piece of lumbering, sinister mariachi music that is unlike anything I've ever heard. If Gorecki wrote mariachi music, it would sound like this. Those people who want to keep housemaids and farmhands from stealing America's greatest jobs should totally steal it for their commercials. There's also a great scene in which music from a party bleeds into simple guitar music from outside a house. Little things like that make the endless frames full of tree-free brown mud tolerable. There are also some good visuals, particularly the creepy red-Klan racist army. Director Sergio Corbucci was too damn good to leave tons of mud on one side of the visual see-saw without balancing it out with some beautiful shots. So, yeah.

I didn't despise DJANGO as much this time. It's nothing great, to say the least, but it at least contains the essential ingredients which would pop up in other Spaghetti westerns. And it inspired a computer code, a disappointing Japanese film, and a Johnny Depp movie about a sheriff lizard or something. That is more than most of us can boast.

MONSTER DOG (1984)

2011-05-09T17:35:00.000-07:00

And the hits just keep on not coming as Fragassopalooza sluggishly wends its way to completion. Yes, that is Alice Cooper right there and this is a review of MONSTER DOG, with which I have had a more complicated relationship than with any monster girlfriend. I saw it (via big box VHS at the HARDWARE STORE that was the first place in town to rent movies) when I was maybe nine or so and adored it because I was young and innocent and obviously not too sharp. Then I grew old enough to realize that it was quite faily. Then I grew even older still and went back to loving it again, primarily because of its inane inept dialogue and terrible effects. Now I am very near death and hate most of it except for the first twenty minutes or so and the music. Going with the girlfriend analogy, it is like I really like MONSTER DOG's hair and the way it touches my neck, but it spends way too much of its time lying on the couch eating fudge, plus it has urinary tract infections constantly and like why is that.

Alice Cooper plays Vincent Raven, a rock singer who is shipped back to his hometown full of five people and packs of mad dogs running everywhere and killing. The record company thinks it will inspire him to produce art even greater than his hit "Identity Crisises". We open with said video, lip-synched (natch), which is ironic, considering that Cooper's dialogue here is overdubbed by the same actor who has dubbed shit-tons of z-grade Italian horror fare. It gets even more meta as the gang are watching the video (ON VHS, please believe) whilst en route to said town. Raven is unimpressed—"It stinks! The next one we do has gotta have more punch." I know that Lady Gaga and Marilyn Manson have done and said exactly this and nothing will change my mind. They run smack into two obese redneck cops in orange ponchos who make "a whole big deal about these mad dogs". I know, right?

Anyway, they reach the house and this is where MONSTER DOG gets exceedingly tedious and full of lowlights. There are some oases of Fragasso insanity—"Well, I guess you must be the werewolf's sweetheart! Ain't that right!!"—but way too much of it is devoted to the kind of action content and chase scenes that Claudio just can't handle. He's best at outrageous and ridiculous scenarios, not at assembling hella-tight and heart-stopping thrill scenes. MONSTER DOG simpers along for a while before it sort of ends well, with a backseat werewolf and shotgun death. I'd rank this below ZOMBIE 4 and actually rate it the least of the Claudio Fragasso films I've seen. In his defense, it was his first real spin in the director's seat, plus this was a cast comprised of Spaniards, dogs, and Alice Cooper, all of whom are difficult to manage.

Cooper fans might want to see this because it includes two very good and hard-to-obtain songs, or you could just watch these here videos of them:

EMANUELLE IN PRISON (1983)

2011-04-08T05:29:00.000-07:00

AKA Blade Violent AKA Emanuelle Escapes from Hell AKA Women's Prison Massacre AKA A Bunch of Bastards, the funniest pseudonym by far. Directed by Bruno Mattei with screenplayer Fragasso handling second unit (and, if my instincts are right, it shows when some of the shots get more adventurous). One of very many Laura Gemser Emanuelle movies, most of which are quite full of fucking. This one isn't. When weighted against other EMANUELLE films or other women in prison films, EMANUELLE IN PRISON seems tepid and tame with nary a hungry torture rat in sight and paltry shower footage. When judged as a part of the Fragrasso oeuvre, it fits and is kind of okay. Ish.

So here's the deal with Emanuelle: she's basically the world's sluttiest woman. But being a slut doesn't pay the bills unless you go pro, so she works as a reporter. But slutting is really safer than reporting, because she ends up crossing the wrong drug-smugglingly corrupt politico and gets framed and taken to jail. All this happens prior to this film, which opens with a PERFORMANCE ART SHOW. In the jail. With dialog like, "Poor fools! How stupid they look, smiling at a woman, the one they've betrayed, as they sit astride her!" Thankfully, Albina, who is albino-esque shows up and says, "I represent the captive audience watching this shit!" META! Then she hits Emanuelle with a tomato.

As usual, Fragasso delivers the goods when it comes to words. The first 60% or so of EMANUELLE IN PRISON is brain-scrambingly great. I implore you, hear this exchange:

ALBINA: That'll be the day! Take my advice and die!

OTHER WOMAN: I'd like to bite your nipples off...and I'll do it!

This is followed by an Albina threat for the ages: "I'll put a stop to your arrogance, you haughty hottentot!" The first portion of the film compensates for its lack of sleaze with this sort of lunacy (and catfights). Unfortunately, a quartet of rapist/murderers show up, each one of a different nationality, like the Miss Universe Pageant of Rape/Murder. They turn the tables on their captors (resulting in the brilliant line, "The car's dead, it's been shot and so have I!") and eventually sex their way through the women's prison and its inmates.

They do so by force, but also by using suave sexytalk like, "Your skin's so exciting!" Alas, the guffaws are in short supply in the second part of our tale. Fragasso movies live or die by inane dialog and too much of EMANUELLE IN PRISON is devoted to no-talking very low-budget action scenes filmed exclusively in corridors or very tight corners. The sex scenes are there, but aren't especially alluring even by low-budget Euro women-in-prison standards (see screenshot below). Weirdest of sex-related things is how different this movie's Emanuelle is from the free-spirited, widely-stanced version found in the older films. There's only one sex scene involving Gemser's character and it's an ineptly ugly forced molestation kind of thing. I dunno if Fragasso understood that people would buy sex-crazed, happy-go-lucky Emanuelle as a heroine (even though it worked in the many previous films), so he turned her into a victim-angel. Bad decision.

This is not an utterly amazing film. However, it is better than ZOMBIE 4: AFTER DEATH. There is some fruit waiting to be plucked from the fun tree, torn off like a bad wig full of entertainments. Laura Gemser would cross the wide Fragasso sea again, costume-designing her way into history on TROLL 2, then disappearing into obscurity, much missed in her absence.

Next stop: MONSTER DOG.

ZOMBIE 4: AFTER DEATH (1989)

2011-03-15T06:47:00.000-07:00

So I am feeling a little better and a little more in the mood to attend my blog business. Thanks(?) to Netflix, I have seen lots of newish horror and genre stuff lately, none of it good, so the best course of action was obviously immersing myself in the work of Claudio Fragasso. It's the right time, since TROLL 2 fever is rocking the world thanks(!) to Michael Paul Stevenson's doc BEST WORST MOVIE. But Fragasso is more than Utah goblins in burlap sacks and it's time you learned.

I'm starting with ZOMBIE 4 because I feel like it. Fragasso worked with the ailing Lucio Fulci on ZOMBIE 3, which was such a financial success that his producer demanded another zombie outing. Fulci, of course, made ZOMBI 2, which was an unofficial sequel to ZOMBI, which is what Italians call George Romero's DAWN OF THE DEAD. ZOMBI 2 has since been retitled ZOMBIE. It is a complicated world. ZOMBIE 4 was originally called AFTER DEATH, but the ZOMBIE series was a money-printing machine at this time, kind of like the Fed now, so the title was appropriated for this essentially unrelated thing. Like 3, 4 was lensed in the Philippines on a tight budget and tight shooting schedule.

Like 3, this also kind of has a plot. And, like 3, it also boasts pretty ripping synth pop. After you've danced off some excess energy, the movie unfolds with a black voodoo priest with uninspired Satanic makeup. Seems a bunch of "scientists—experts in chemistry, biology, and physics, students of alchemy and of the arcane principles that govern the very equilibrium of our universe!" have come to this island to conquer death, but failed to save voodoo priest's daughter from cancer. So he unleashes spells that cause the dead to return to life, eat the living, the usual. Claudio Fragasso movies live or die by nutty dialogue and ridiculous situations and this prologue is promising. The scientists skulk down into this grotto wielding absurd-looking automatic weapons and very highly-placed pants. There are lines like "You wanted to defy hell...and now hell has accepted the challenge!" and "Come back to life now if you can, BASTARD!" But this is a zombie movie, so the good-guy gun-freak scientists are mostly mutilated, although one couple sends their toddler daughter away and she runs more awkwardly than Matt Damon to safety.

The next scene is 20 YEARS LATER, although the movie doesn't indicate this in any way because it is not going to hold your hand and walk you through life. Two chicks and a guy in mall clothes and a bunch of bizarre-looking gun freaks with meth teeth zip down a river. There's a black guy, too, and he smokes pot while one of the gun freaks cheers, "Way to go!" Fun fact: the blonde lady (Candice Daly) is the toddler from 5 minutes/20 years ago and has a charm necklace that can close the door to hell. If the boat kept working, there wouldn't be a movie and so the gang decamps onto the "typical deserted island". LOTS of walking ensues, only broken by mall clothes guy's unprovoked pursuit and attack of a zombie that attempts to run away! This has to be a first.

At this point, there is a ton of walking because we are introduced to another group who are seeking evidence of the science colony that vanished 20 years/10 minutes ago. So ZOMBIE 4 becomes, at this point, walking porn of sorts, with gun/blonde group and mystery-solving group all walking through well-lit jungles. One of the mystery solvers is gay porn's own Jeff Stryker, billed here as Chuck Peyton. He is the one who refuses to button his shirt all the way and exposes his boy cleavage throughout the film.

You have certain expectations for a film called ZOMBIE 4 and they are somewhat met. The zombies here are lucha zombies/fast zombies, giving the lie to the fib that such things are of recent origin (see ZOMBIE 3 for additional proof). The fight scenes are actually pretty swell, making me wish that Fragasso did more straight action, but they and the wacky dialogue aren't present enough to balance out the long stretches of inaction.

I haven't seen ZOMBIE 5: KILLING BIRDS (I love the Voivod-ish subtitle, though), but ZOMBIE 4 is my least-favorite of the ZOMBIEs to date and one of my least-loved Fragasso films. I wouldn't say it's excruciating and there are bright spots, but it's not outrageous enough to sport the Fragasso magic as found in TROLL 2, MONSTER DOG, or ZOMBIE 3.

Jeff Stryker went back to gay porn after this and is, according to IMDB, a frequent subject of Margaret Cho's comedy routines. Fragasso followed this with HOUSE 5 and then, of course, TROLL 2. Makeup vet Franco di Girolamo, who worked on ZOMBIE 4 after a long stretch on stuff like NIGHTMARE CITY and NEW YORK RIPPER, had a fairly busy decade in the nineties with work on SHOCKING DARK/TERMINATOR II/ALIENS II (lol Italy). And Candice Daly later starred in one of my favorite Skinemax entries LIQUID DREAMS before meeting a very unfortunate end.

I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE (2010)

2011-02-11T19:28:00.000-08:00

It is my birthday and I am drinking and writing about rape-revenge movies on the Internet.

I can say that I have never liked any rape-revenge movie (*I don't consider LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT a rape-revenge film and, yes, I love it), but I have never understood why until I saw this film.

Rape-revenge is a close cousin, an atrophied limb, of slasher movies. With the same slasher weaknesses. No characters. Formulaic.

The woman in this remake, like the original, is a writer who sometimes drinks wine AND THAT IS ALL WE KNOW. Her assailants are interchangeable redneck rapists AND THAT IS ALL WE KNOW. One of them is retarded, one is the Sheriff of Rapingham, but otherwise there is zero character development.

These movies are factory-issued with cues and blueprints corresponding to a path long found. Woman raped, then splatter. The fishhooks and lye were promising gore touches, but the other touches were barely capitalized upon. I imagined, while watching this, that I was writing the screenplay and making the main male assailant a real character, just rebounding from a wretched breakup, or that the rape was the result of drug-escalated male frenzy, or that the female lead went overboard and sacrificed the innocent relatives of her assaulters.

But that would fall outside the proscribed limits. This is not a genre, so much as a rite. The roles are set. It is the film's responsibility to color inside the lines. And this is shot well and so what. And the lead actress gives a gutsy, powerful performance, but (FUCK!) look at what this is. Like the professional-but-cadaverous AND SOON THE DARKNESS, it seems so pointless. It's a riff on HOSTEL, on any number of "rural folk and their rapery" exercises.

These are like fetish films. You don't expect to know why the lady in the bondage movie yearns to strap on the last set of restraints and you don't know how the lady in this movie survives post-rape in the wilderness with a Cher-esque array of changed costumes, but who cares? The situation matters, not the details. Would you watch a sequel with her returning to "civilization" and picking up her life? Why not?

The whole thing adds to the sadness of my day, rather than distracting, as I'd wish. It doesn't make me feel bad in an edifying way, like CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST or INSIDE, just numb and doubtful that what we're doing with our lives isn't that different from Adam Sandler crap. All planned out and professionally executed sans spirit. Rape scenes directed by guys who look like assistant managers at Wendy's, all ties and short sleeves.

Boring. I want to turn away from an obviously grotesque, weak world, instead of being immersed in it. The people who need this will find it. Everyone else can move on to HOUSE OF THE DEVIL or LET ME IN or any number of alternate queens of horrordom. I hated the original. I hate this. Hate me if you wish. It's still a free country.

666: BEWARE THE END IS AT HAND (2007)

2010-10-31T18:50:00.000-07:00

I ask you, imaginary reader of these words, is there a better way to wind up Pumpkin Month than this way, with this zero-budget CGI-fest Nigerian Christian apocalypse THING?

666 commits a grievous movie sin by opening with its most powerful scene: a rendering of hell as sort of a sparsely-decorated cable access show with CGI flames and lots of cackling. I may complain about many trends, but I would never complain about hot African women with horns and 666 inked on their heads who cackle. Nor would I complain about their bearded, weird-eyebrowed leader, Lucifer, holding forth glorious orations in maddeningly indecipherable African accents. I worked with Africans (from The Gambia, not Nigeria, but) even I could not parse some of this babble.

So, basically, the cackling goes down, then we cut to our presumed protagonist, a preacher who bloviates of the coming of Jesus to empty streets and cafes full of people on dates. The Christians spend LOTS of time talking about church finances and budgets (this is the bad movie portion of this bad movie) while Satan and his harem cackle and assorted mortals fall into terrible sin. Want to see a hooker lick a guy's seeping leg wound? Look above. I could not and would not cap the hyperaggressive lesbians nor the gay dude/male demon coupling, but the aftermath is just below. Warning: this is what gays during mating season really look like.

Okay, so Satan is pissed because the end is at hand, like the title says, so he sends one of his assistant-manager demons to incarnate on Earth and turn the tide of battle. So this becomes a Nigerian THE OMEN. Thankfully, the movie fast-forwards us to the kid at eight or so and we skip all the gurgling and lying around that babies in other action movies have already portrayed.

Meanwhile, the preacher appears not one day older! And repeatedly draws from a swank all-leather Bible the words of wisdom, including comparing Christ to a "thief in the night" on a bunch of different occasions. And, yes, I know it's from Thes. (growing up Baptist has its advantages), but it's still a rad centerpiece around which to construct a film.

So the demon is this pudgy, kind of goofy kid who talks in a hilarious fake-low death metal voice and hits portly women with branches. But when he tries to SHARE RICE with two other kids, the preacher will have none of it and there is a perhaps three-minute exchange of Commodore 64-level CGI firepower, then the end really is at hand. At least until the sequel, which is really a thing that exists! This is alternately fascinatingly psychotic and dull and draggy, but it was nice to watch a genuine bad movie delivered with deadly earnestness for a good cause. Good on accident. Oh, and they found a brass-blast orchestra sample that gets used in all the wrong places, like EVERY sex scene.

#31 of 31, NIGHT THIEF JESUS BE PRAISED!

PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 2 (2010)

2010-10-31T14:32:00.000-07:00

Some years ago, a movie emerged that utilized a fairly inventive camcorder POV technique and creepily deliberate pacing to deliver solid shocks and draw record crowds to what was essentially an old-school spookshow horror film. And its name was THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT. Later, PARANORMAL ACTIVITY happened also.

And now it's a sequel! Sort of! Actually, most of PA2 is a PREQUEL, which worried me when I realized what was happening. Since sequels (or prequels) tend to jettison what worked in the preceding entry in favor of explaining the day away. And that usually sucks, especially in this kind of movie. No one needs to know that the demon is upset because his mom was a stripper or have a movie read the legal statutes incumbent in a curse. Although PA2 does explain a bit more about the PA mythos, it's presented in a way that makes sense AND that can be disregarded if you disagree. Because a maid and the Internet are not authoritative sources.

PA2 is necessarily and unnecessarily less effective than PA1. For one thing, this movie relies upon the structure and tropes set into place by the first film, so since you're expecting loud noises and cabinets banging and shit, you're not as susceptible to them by this point. There's one way effective jump scene in this one and one that comes off like a Rob Zombie remake of the better scene in the first movie.

As far as unnecessary uneffectivity, PA1 wasn't exactly a bonanza of character development, but Katie Featherston's character at least drew audience sympathy. And guess what? She's STILL the most sympathetic character in PA2, even though she's in it for perhaps ten whole minutes tops (unfortunately not tank tops, which are sorely missed [but there is a pool scene, so don't cry!]). This entry centers around Katie's family, who are mostly annoying Californians, the dog and possibly the baby excepted. All is well and good by the second half, when the movie kicks into loud banging and flying cookware overdrive, but...

The first half is REALLY tedious and ponderous and talky. Pacing is a big issue with this one...I really feel it could have been tightened up A LOT (and emphasis distributed to events much more competently...one character goes from die-hard nonbeliever to believer in record time).

I assume that we'll get a second sequel, given some of the questions raised (like why are these cursed women always ending with such inept men). I'll probably see it and enjoy it, if it's at least as good as this one. If you loved the first one, you'll like this.

#30 of 31 ZOMG!!!

CASTING THE RUNES (1979)

2010-10-30T16:44:00.000-07:00

A fair-enough BBC adaptation of the famous M.R. James story (which you can hear below) suffers by comparison with the masterful 1957 rendition NIGHT OF THE DEMON. But it's still watchable, with Jan Francis as a TV-industry occultism-debunker who debunks the wrong occultist. He takes revenge by planting a cursed slip of runes and things escalate, in a very unalarmed sort of British way, from there. Definitely shows its TV origins, as some of this is filmed on cheap-looking one-room sets, but it's not even an hour, so why the big fuss? Middling but not terrible.

#29 of 31.

HAUSU (1977)

2010-10-29T19:16:00.000-07:00

More madness from the Orient, but although VAMPIRE GIRL was wacky and off-the-wall, it at least stuck stubbornly to one genre. HAUSU is essentially not that different from MAS NEGRO QUE LA NOCHE: a bunch of girls trip away to a haunted house and encounter all sorts of crazy goings-on. But, despite the plot similarities, HAUSU and MAS NEGRO couldn't be more different in ambition, tone, and execution. MAS was mas dull and professional; HAUSU is like someone recorded the dreams of insane people through coaxial cables in the lower brain. It jumps from horror to comedy to animation to martial arts and every single frame bubbles with garish weirdness.

So, these girls all have names which reference character traits, like in Pilgrim's Progress. Kung Fu is a martial artist, Mac derives from "Stomach" b/c she eats a lot, Melody is musically-inclined, etc. Oshare ("gorgeous") is sort of the lever that puts the plot into motion, since it's her aunt's house that they visit. Said aunt is (initially) wheelchair-bound, a spinster still pining over a love lost in WWII. There's also a beautiful fluffy white cat named Snowflake who ends up being central to the story. But what else happens?

A flying head bites a girl in the ass. A piano eats someone. A melon vendor is so offended by someone enjoying bananas that he turns into a skeleton. A girl is attacked by sheets and mattresses. A bear in clothes helps to make noodles at a restaurant. Lamps bite people.

And all of this is conveyed through rapid-fire editing, brassy colors, and wonky shifts in mood and tempo. This is probably the most crazed film ever. Yeah, you could pull a Lynch and throw a bunch of psycho BS together into a crazy quilt of incoherence, but (as far as maintaining a comprehensible storyline) you're not going to get much more outlandish than this. Highest recommendations.

#28 of 31.

VAMPIRE GIRL VS. FRANKENSTEIN GIRL (2009)

2010-10-26T06:59:00.000-07:00

EPIC WIN. Either I am becoming an old softy or the makers of wacky Japanese gore exercises are getting quite good at their endeavors. Whereas THE MACHINE GIRL was a dire drag, as scintillating as a simple machine like a lever or pulley, VAMPIRE GIRL is a full-on, ripping, smoke-gushing killdozer of a smile-bringing machine.

Leave it to the Japanese to adopt material that TWILIGHT left broken in a gutter, tweak the gender roles, mix in some eleventy million gallons of blood, and then crib a smidge of LET THE RIGHT ONE IN and make a masterwork. Transfer student Monami gives a chocolate to longhair broody boy Jyugon, but with a surprise at the center! Turns out that Monami is a vampire. Which would be striking in itself, but it also turns out that the nebbish physics teacher is really the mad-scientist heir of Dr. Frankenstein, bent on reanimating dead ~~bodies~~ parts. Vampire blood makes a great lubricant of life. And we now have a movie!

The subplots are a main course in themselves. If you know something of Japanese (sub)cultures, you will have a day in the field with this one. Ganguro girls show up, sure to be mistaken as blackfaced minstrels by Western viewers, especially after the virulent racism on display (one of them carries a spear and they shout, "Yes we can!" while banging on bongos). Racism doesn't start or stop with that scene, of course, as proven by the Chinese teacher with the Fu Manchu mustache and iron lungs from breathing Chinese air pollution (he also devotes an entire class to THE GRUDGE; I have repeat-viewed this scene like ten times; "don't interrupt the lesson or you'll be cursed..."). There are also Lolitas and (cringingly, hilariously) a society of depresso-girls practicing wrist-slashing, leading up to a wrist-cutting competition between schools(!).

Amazingly, in spite of all this madness, VAMPIRE GIRL has compelling characters and is basically a love story at bottom, albeit with the traditional roles reversed (which is pretty striking, given traditional Japanese culture). To be honest, I'd started to think that vampires had been debased beyond all help, but if more depictions like this show up, we might be entering a golden age of golden vampires. TEAM MONAMI!

#27 of 31.

MAS NEGRO QUE LA NOCHE (1975)

2010-10-26T06:56:00.000-07:00

No one would condemn you for venerating the seventies cinema. There is so much that is good there, from roughening horror to blaxploitation to a myriad of TV movies that it's easy to view the seventies as some unfallen, golden age of cinema (which makes all of us weirdos in contrast to the many stateside folks who glorify the sixties as the apex of happenings and wonderfulness). But ten years is a long time and there are a lot of cracks into which mediocrity can settle. Hola, MAS NEGRO QUE LA NOCHE!

A quartet of girls settle into the formerly-aunt-owned mansion which has fallen into one pair of their hands. A catch comes with it in the form of a black cat named Bequr. You can guess what comes next and, as long as you say "Cat dies + hauntings", you would not be incorrect.

This is professionally rendered on both sides of the camera, but MY GOD IT DRAGS. It's reminiscent of TV movies and the dullest of the "old dark house" films. No nudity, little bloodshed, one million yawns. It's not actively, aggressively terrible, but unless you are a die-hard fetishist for slow pans, shadows, and divorcee subplots, you are likely to regret the time you invest in this.

#26 of 31. Almost home.

LIVE ANIMALS (2008)

2010-10-24T16:13:00.001-07:00

I am not including screenshots. Use your magical imagination, you will be better-served. Imagine that someone had watched SAW and only SAW for years, and that SAW had been this person's only friend, aside from the urine-colored lighting that showed up once a week or so to deliver Fig Newtons and epsom salt and other essentials. Now imagine that person grown into an adult, given the opportunity to make a standout horror film, but instead delivering a film about a bunch of interchangeable people kidnapped by a Santa/Gunnar Hansen tribute artist and made to endure horsey-type breaking for some unknown end. This is torture PORN. PORN because no effort is made to establish characters (aside from "hey, she's his sister") or motivation (aside from "brothels", because there is clearly a shortage of willing women workers for brothels of the world).

Most of this is LOUD NOISE horror, insisting upon its importance with camera quivers and shrieky sounds. None of it is especially compelling. It's shot with too much sharpness to make good grindhouse and lacks any reason for me as a viewer to care about any of those people. Hey, they're getting drunk! I've been drunk before and, in fact, am schwasted right now! But it's not enough to convince me to donate my precious concern to their plight, adorned as these girls and boys are in horsey restraints. If this were a documentary, I could not care less.

#25 of 31.

MASTERS OF HORROR: CIGARETTE BURNS (2005)

2010-10-24T15:04:00.000-07:00

It is hard not to get excited upon seeing this John Carpenter thing, following such things as VAMPIRES and GHOSTS OF MARS, as it does. CIGARETTE BURNS excites by displaying new reconnections with genre roots, as well as themes left untouched since IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS. So reminiscent is this of that, that it almost functions as a companion piece, a revised volume. And it had Udo Kier, skreeeee~~!@!!

Udo Kier is a serious film enthusiast, one who not only presumably attends conventions, but lays out dollars for prints as well as props. He enlists the help of Norman Reedus (as Kirby,) a guilt-ridden, perhaps-heroin-addicted cineaste, to locate a fabled super-extreme film called LE FIN ABSOLUE DE MONDE (THE ABSOLUTE END OF THE WORLD). At its last screening, it spurred several murders and a riot, and forward motion in this film centers around its deleterious lures. Like I've said about religious horror, even if you don't take "horror as corruptive element" that seriously, it works on a primal level and should absolutely be mined as such.

This is a really visually-rich film. It's great to see Carpenter working on tight schedules with small casts again. I truly feel that it brings out the very best in him. Thematically, this rubs shoulders with the aforementioned MOUTH as well as Lieberman's SATAN'S LITTLE HELPER in terms of an aesthetic conservatism, a worry for the degrading influence of art. And why not? Any fear that may be exploited should be exploited, as far gone as horror as a genre is lately. It's a fantastic genre, so claiming the most fantastic and far-fetched of concerns should not be a super-big deal. Even Carpenter dismisses the "film as a weapon" concept on the extras here, but it has a tremendously long lineage, stretching back from MOUTH and VIDEODROME to Plato and beyond.

There's no fluff or fat. This is a spare story, delivered well by competent actors and well-planned reveals. It's just too bad to hear (from all corners of the Internet) that Carpenter's latest fails to live up to the promise of this shorter effort. No one should fault anyone for having a job (I fail to make HALLOWEENs and PRINCE OF DARKNESSs at my job every day), but people who love film (and, judging by this, Carpenter is one of them) can weep without fear at one of the format's titans going a bit astray. No one would mind if it weren't apparent that he has a LOT more to say. Here's hoping that the next project is an ASSAULT or THEY LIVE-level triumph and not a craven CURSED-esque time-filler. Until then, console yourself with this.

#24 of 31.

ISLAND OF LOST SOULS (1932)

2010-10-23T22:19:00.000-07:00

So that thing I said before about expectations working in a film's favor cuts both ways. I was less than a teenager when I read a glowing review of this film in Fangoria when it briefly popped up on VHS. Like a Tiffany-stalker love letter-level glowing review. Fast forward some twenty years (and I am 100 years old, yes) and I finally get to see it! And it's...pretty good.

Charles Laughton is FAT from scenery-chewing and easily delivers the film's standout performance as Moreau. You all know the story. Scientist takes animals and makes them people, of sorts. Leading protag Richard Arlen lands on the island and takes a shine to Panther Woman Kathleen Burke (I love her look here...she's almost a physical relic of the more expressionist actresses of the silent film days, plus you guys know what a big fan of cavewomen/primitive girls I am). Laughton, Burke, and Bela Lugosi as one of Moreau's animal people are the film's leading lights. Arlen and his fiancee (Leila Hyams) are pretty drab by comparison, a prom king and queen plopped in the middle of Freakshow Island.

It's easy to see why this was shocking to audiences of the time. ISLAND doesn't really hold back from displaying human/animal hybrids in all their hairy-backed glory and it goes full throttle for shock scenes, never deigning to consider audiences of fainting ladies. It's not as transgressive as something like FREAKS nor is it as accomplished/innovative as the Whale FRANKENSTEINs, but it's definitely pretty solid. And now I'm going to bed.

#23 of 31.

13 GHOSTS (1960)

2010-10-23T22:05:00.000-07:00

William Castle movies, man. Always entertaining, never great, but never the source of ruing time wasted. I hadn't seen this original or the allegedly dumb and dumbly-entitled THIR13EEN GHOSTS, so my expectations were a frivolous little fun thing and expectations were met. In Illusion-O.

A profligate paleontologist (yes, really) moves with his family into an inherited house formerly owned by his uncle the ghost researcher. Said uncle collected ghosts from around the world! and they appear sporadically throughout the film. I'm not sure how this plays on DVD, sans Illusion-O! but the visuals in the theater were pretty choice. The ghosts are pretty darn ghoulish for 1960 (though the ghost wardrobe is, of course, quite dated). My fave ghosts are the ghost chef with his poncy ghost mustache and the ghost magician, who reminds me of certain disproportionate GWAR stage characters.

Anywhore, this is a Castle flick, so there's a subplot about money and rakish behavior. It's all pretty inoffensive and slight, but 13 GHOSTS moves really quickly (another Castle staple) and blends frights with laughs in pretty masterful fashion. Not much more to say and I have a ton of these things to burn through (film fest, left 1/4 of the way through because it was crowded and fat horror fans smell like leeks and cigarettes, but still saw a lot). Recommended.

#22 of 31.

THE KEEP (1983)

2010-10-21T16:31:00.001-07:00

Diminished expectations can be a great blessing. Once upon a time, I heard about THE KEEP, namely that it was far inferior to the F. Paul Wilson book that spawned it, that it had a very inappropriate bleeping and blooping Tangerine Dream soundtrack, and its monster looked too dumb to live. Then I promptly forgot about it, since I had Shannon Tweed business to attend to! Thankfully, a post on io9 and the friend who read it and emailed me reminded me. And I also remembered that I had a copy, presumably sourced from the Japanese laserdisc. This is like the NOTEBOOK of Nilbog Milk posts!

Directed by Michael Mann way before MIAMI VICE, but it bears all his best scars. Stylish like that GLEE GQ, THE KEEP is replete with beautiful Romanian landscapes, gorgeous lighting, stellar photography, and solid acting (courtesy of name talent like Jurgen Prochnow, Gabriel Byrne, and a barely-recognizable Ian McKellen). But is it a good movie? Um, sort of.

A bunch of Nazis invade and occupy a keep (castle-esque ancient structure) in Romania. Unfortunately, they start getting picked off almost immediately and must enlist the aid of a Jewish Romanian history scholar. Oh, happenstance! Lest you think this is a wacky buddy comedy, it soon unfolds that there is something ancient and supernatural in the keep. And that's most of the comprehensible plot. The last half or so of this thing is a master's thesis in disorientation. Another supernatural guy shows up, ostensibly to cockblock the monster in the keep. He also beds the scholar's daughter. Then neon lasers are exchanged. This is an eighties movie about the forties and also about a vampire, sort of.

I don't know how to proceed. Oh, let's address the complaints. A) The monster looks dumb. Well, perhaps. He obviously could have been better-designed, but it wasn't RAWHEAD REX-level distracting. He sort of looked like Darkseid in leather armor and coal dust. Plus the movie showed him sparingly, but I've screenshot him in his full glory below should you wish to judge. B) The music is inappropriate. It's Tangerine Dream and it's all electronic ambient stuff, but it sometimes works. In a movie about fantastic things like ancient evil creatures, it amps up the surrealistic atmosphere to see WWII costumes and hear keyboard squonks. But it does kind of work to the movie's detriment by the end, when the two rivals are panging pink and NEON GREEN lasers at one another. Then the mood evades the viewer and this starts to feel like an SCA version of TRON or something. C) This is far worse than the book. It's been a while since I read The Keep, but I do remember being disappointed by the end, although I think the film disappointed me in other ways. For one thing, it feels REALLY rushed. The first half builds slowly and with a great creeping sense of menace, but the second half feels like they threw everything into it at a slapdash pace and got the F outta Romania. Worth seeing and very surprising that it hasn't been released domestically, since there are far, FAR worse things out on DVD here. It's probably a failure, all told, but an interesting one.

#21 of 31.

NIGHT OF THE DEMONS (2009)

2010-10-20T18:58:00.000-07:00

The remake society and its enemies have been addressed in an earlier entry, but I found the remake blowback for this one more entertaining than average. Because NIGHT OF THE DEMONS (1988) is certainly a fun movie, but hardly merits the sort of shock and outrage that went around certain circles. Turns out you guys could've saved your breath and bile, since this remake better captures the spirit of the original film to a much higher degree than usual. Opening with a TOTALLY bitchin' sepia-toned intro (an homage to THE BEYOND, given its NOLA setting?), the film quickly shifts into the sort of rapid-fire party-horror that Earth 1 NIGHT OF THE DEMONS captured so well.

It's New Orleans and Halloween, and you know what that means: dancing! And wine, drugs, and boobs! All are on display at Angela Feld's H-ween house party, attended by Maddy (Monica Keena) and her two well-chested friends. But, uh oh, the NOLA police show up and you know this is a far-fetched movie when they don't billyclub the participants or take their drugs (also none of the cops are either morbidly portly or angry jocks). So everybody except the name actors leaves and the name actors explore the house until they find snapping skeletons. From here on out, demon possession is a sexually-transmitted disease.

NIGHT moves along at a ferocious clip, its merriment bolstered by some good b-movie writing ("What kind of demons get kicked out of hell?" "THESE ONES!"). There are a few drawbacks: the demon makeup gets progressively shoddier as the film progresses (especially Angela, jesus christ, your star player shouldn't look like something out of the Morningview Baptist Hell House); also, Edward Furlong looks terrible and is terribly miscast as Keena's love interest.; and the last third or so gets repetitious But, like, who cares? People who are trashing this movie as some egregious sin should eat a bowl of fuck. The movie itself proclaims that things "don't make sense", so what's your problem? I am repetitious, but I will never defame a horror movie for not explaining everything under the sun.

It moves quickly, has a killer soundtrack (Type O and Concrete Blonde, ooh la la), Linnea and her ass (assuming it is not a stunt ass), and most of the players deliver performances appropriate to this sort of film. Throw in the comedy and the gore and you've got prime fright fest shindig goods. Even morons who love SAW will enjoy one particular scene. People who are anti-remake zealots or didn't get the original won't dig it, but I will stand up for flawed but fun with my words and dollars.

#20 of 31. Are you getting excited/relieved?

HOLY VIRGIN VS. THE EVIL DEAD (1991)

2010-10-18T19:11:00.000-07:00

Genre-bending madness from pre-China takeover Hong Kong! HOLY VIRGIN couldn't possibly live up to its rad title and it doesn't, but it offers a fun, if baffling, blend of horror, martial arts, gunplay, and comedy. And complete insanity.Let me try to translate the plot into Earth language. A professor is out on a camping adventure with his students when they're attacked and somewhat killed by a flying longhair. Turns out that this is all due to some ancient cult and our group of protagonists end up in Cambodia, where they enlist the help of the princess of some local tribe. They soon learn that the monster is Moon Monster, affiliated with a goddess with a mustache, and that he must have sex with one specific lady in order to regain his power. Needless to say, this whole movie makes approximately zero fucking sense whatsoever, but makes up for it (somewhat) with rapidly-edited fight scenes and ridiculous elements. The lady cop who dreams of beating suspects and abruptly leaves the film to be a movie star is maybe my fave.

This is a spectacle film and such weirdness needs to get in and begone quickly. Unfortunately, HOLY VIRGIN overstays its welcome a bit and tends to lag. It's still fun and probably a nice reminder that Asian genre stuff isn't all kids crawling out of televisions and underlit corridors. Just don't expect miracles or the "all time losers" speech from GOLDEN QUEENS COMMANDO.

#19 of 31.

NOSFERATU THE VAMPYRE (1979)

2010-10-17T16:26:00.000-07:00

It's easy to get cynical these days. About banks, and also celebrity couples and especially remakes (thanks, Rob Zombie and Sherri Moon Zombie!). But how many times has Shakespeare been performed? If they'd stopped after the classic Olivia Hussey ROMEO AND JULIET, we would have been robbed of the Clair Danes version. We all wish that remakers would focus on material that is promising, yet flawed in its original incarnation. But. Sometimes, even a great work works well with a little remodeling. This is a review of NOSFERATU.

Not the silent version, which I haven't seen in forever and a day, so keep your comparison expectations limited. This is the '79 Werner Herzog version with Klaus Kinski. It's tough to imagine that a modern remake could surpass a German expressionist film in arcane atmosphere. But this IS a Herzog film and it IS a pressurized bag of weird. You all know the Dracula story, I should hope, so there won't be too many surprises. But certain choices that are made do give the viewer pause. NOSFERATU never hides the fact that Count Dracula is a monster, for one thing. Even upon Jonathan Harker's arrival, Kinski's Count is the very vision of a pasty rat-thing, although the rather dull Harker hardly seems to note it. The Lucy here is far feistier than previous lady protags, as well, and offers some very defiant, almost Nietzschean dialog for a movie in which crucifixes repel evil ("nothing in this world, not even God" can change her love for Jonathan).

Herzog is notoriously good at composing visuals, panning over gigantic landscapes and honing in with gorgeous close-ups. NOSFERATU doesn't buck the trend and there are some stunning images here. One interesting thing among many is the way in which this film, though a talkie, is reminiscent of silent movies. Not only in the somewhat elaborate acting and in the direct homages to some famous Murnau NOSFERATU scenes (especially the end), but in the placement of dialog and action. Actors say obvious, title-card things like, "Lucy is in danger! I must save her!", then start walking out of the frame to save her.

Acting is solid, with Kinski turning in a typically great performance and Isabelle Adjani delivering perhaps the definitive Lucy Harker. Also memorable is Roland Topor as a Renfield who seems possessed by a giggly, laughing-gassed Peter Lorre. There's a lot to love in NOSFERATU. NOSFERATU fever—catch it!

#18 of 31.

CASE 39 (2010)

2010-10-17T14:57:00.000-07:00

Fancy-nancy former mainstream success Renée Zellweger comes crawling back to horror in this, her first genre outing since the just smashing RETURN OF THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE! This is one of those killer-kid movies that appeared to be all the rage two or so years ago, so it's a bit late to glom onto the trend, but perhaps killer-kid nostalgia will flare up anytime soon and CASE 39 can catch that bus to stardom.

Renée Zellweger, her icky dismissal of horrordom notwithstanding, is really not a great actress. Here, she sort of plays a social worker who becomes attached to a presumably-abused little girl named LILITH (sorry, we used up all the subtlety in cases 1-38). The first half of this film is excruciatingly unenjoyable, thanks mostly to Zellweger's attempts to will some sort of human emotion across her rictused face. The role of the social worker could have been played by a robot or the same little girl who plays the little girl in a dual role and I would have been more satisfied.

Which brings up another issue with this movie—the pacing. The whole boring first half of the film is devoted to the "happy family" scenes that will set up the eventual brimstone turn, but they go on FOREVER. Then, when Lilith starts to demonstrate malevolent leanings, the turn comes out of NOWHERE! Some portion of this movie might have been excised, but it sure feels like the makers suddenly remembered, "Oh, shit! Lilith is supposed to be evil!" And it doesn't take any time at all for some of the major characters to go from "aww, cute" to "DEMON! BURN IT!" I've always thought it would be funny to put some child-hater into one of these films who IMMEDIATELY accepts that the kid is evil and must be destroyed. "Demon, you say? Sounds great! You hold her down, I'll get the axe!" But I really don't think that was the intention with CASE 39.

I am leveling lots of critiques at this thing, but there are upsides. It's shot well and has some really fab, trippy scenes once hell breaks loose. Little girl Jodelle Ferland exudes some menace as Lilith and her seedy, crackers mom and dad (Callum Keith Rennie and Kerry O'Malley) really excel in meaty roles. But, given the similar competition (ORPHAN, THE CHILDREN, and HOME MOVIE all squash this handily), CASE 39 comes off as a little unnecessary.

#17 of 31.

SOLE SURVIVOR (1983)

2010-10-15T14:29:00.000-07:00

Often cited as a precursor to the FINAL DESTINATION films (even by its own video box cover—"no one thinks I'm special!!"), SOLE SURVIVOR is a modestly rewarding slow-burner. The film's pacing recalls the post-crash that opens our tale, with lots of confused stumbling around and things being uncovered so lackadaisically that you'd have to speed up to stop. Despite the image below (admittedly pretty radical), this is not your movie if you are in a gore mood.

Aging actress Karla Davis (Caren Larkey) has a premonition of a plane crash in which TV producer-esque person Denise Watson (Anita Skinner) is the only survivor. And so it happens! Denise becomes romantically entangled with a handsome doctor (Kurt Johnson), then becomes postmortally entangled with dead people, who show up everywhere—in the road, at her house, on a loading dock. Seems Death didn't take too kindly to her sole surviving ways and has sent his/her emissaries to collect her.

I won't lie to you, Internet friends, parts of this film are quite bad. Some of the acting would be a disappointment in your average sixth grade Christmas play, much less in a serious film. And the tempo is just brain-killingly slow at times. But there are bright spots. Anita Skinner is one of the brightest and it's sort of weird that she apparently only did this film and 1978's GIRLFRIENDS. She handles the light comedic moments of this movie with appropriate zest (kinda reminds me of a less bony Shelley Long, actually) and does well at scream-queening, too. She's LOTS of fun to watch. SOLE SURVIVOR's humor is obviously less abrasive and punk rawk than FINAL DEST, but I really enjoyed the weirdo moments like the scene below.

In a way, this movie is a hybrid of two other films—FINAL D, of course, and CARNIVAL OF SOULS—and both of them accomplish their goals far better than SOLE SURVIVOR. It's competent, but outclassed and overshadowed by its antecedent and descendant. The John Tyler of post-disaster movies.

#16 of 31.

HUNCHBACK OF THE MORGUE (1973)

2010-10-15T10:37:00.000-07:00

Our journey around the world of cult horror continues as we depart Brazil and head to Spain, land of Castilian werewolves and emo hunchbacks. And, despite Paul Naschy being most famous for his wolfman films, I've decided to acquaint myself with his work through this film, which is sort of the TWILIGHT of its day. Naschy IS the hunchback of the morgue, née Gotho, and lives the sort of life hunchbacks typically live. EVERYONE in town bullies and berates him, from stone-throwing children to medical professionals who call him a "hellish abortion". Only the lovely Ilse (Maria Elena Arpon, who got eaten by the BLIND DEAD) treats him with civility...

So, naturally, she dies! And Gotho is grief-strickened. But he meets doctor Orla, who promises to restore her to life in exchange for the hunchback's help with his mad-science experiments. Ilse sticks around for a bit as a corpse suffused with rats (Spanish JUMPING RATS, presumably the rat equivalent of running zombies). Orla also seeks help from fellow doctor Peter Tauchman, whose honey Frieda is none too pleased with the Frankensteinean goings-on.

This is not a spectacular film. Aside from Naschy's memorably emotional acting and the beauty of eventual love interest Rosanna Yanni, HUNCHBACK doesn't boast too much that isn't done better elsewhere. There's some splatter and the flow of scenes is sort of exciting and unpredictable (Gotho moping is followed by Gotho killing or kidnapping), but overall this is not a new Eurojewel in hiding. It's fine enough and professional enough and I didn't curse fate for making me watch it, but I doubt I'd ever sit through it again.

I will, however, check out additional Naschy work, since he obviously has interesting attributes as an actor. And I will also seek out additional Rosanna Yanni material, since I'm a big fan of hotness. One other thing about this disc...the subtitling is "immperfect," perhaps comparable to a fansub created by drunks ("If there are no news about Marlene when I'll be back, we call the police!"). And sometimes oddly Southern, with dropped-g endins and everythin'.

#15 of 31. I am so very tired.

AT MIDNIGHT I'LL TAKE YOUR SOUL (1963)

2010-10-12T07:14:00.000-07:00

And so begins the saga of Zé do Caixão, known stateside as Coffin Joe. AT MIDNIGHT presents a Zé who is less a horror-movie monster and more like the bully in one million billion Westerns, only this time there really isn't a white-hatted hero to stymie his antisocial behaviors.

Zé is the town undertaker and, though I'd guess that lack of etiquette is a recurring problem in the corpse business, he takes it to a new extreme. When he's not mutilating bystanders or forcing them to eat meat on Catholic vegan holidays (I grew up Baptist, I don't know anything about such business), he's trying to plant meat in assorted townswomen in hopes of creating a son to carry on his bloodline. That's pretty much the WHOLE movie until the conclusion, which taps churchy traditions.

This is a sixties film and looks like one, one with a low budget, too. But it was created in Brazil at a time when few were rolling around in puddles filled with doubloons and it makes up for it with gobs of atmosphere and some fleeting and prescient gore. I'd be interested to learn how its Brazilian origins affected the film's plotting, since it's accepted that Zé is a jerk, but the real moments of audience outrage are timed in tandem with his blasphemies and bloviations of disbelief. Modern-day audiences might be inclined to agree in some instances with the Nietzschean beardo, although many would consider his single-minded pursuit of a son to be hopelessly outdated, like Corey Feldman in a denim jacket.

In some ways (the aforementioned religious undertone), way different from other genre stuff of the sixties, but quite often a solid product of the era, when horror was transitioning from cobwebs and castles into the gruesome modern and its concern with individual vs. society at large. It has psychic gypsies and ghosts and all, but also marks its horror as the challenge of the nonbeliever and the skeptic.

It was a fun watch and I'd not hesitate to delve further into the world of Coffin Joe.

Where, indeed?!?

#14 of 31

VAULT OF HORROR (1973)

2010-10-11T17:44:00.000-07:00

This film was directed by Roy Ward Baker, following the 1972 release of the not-adored-by-me TALES FROM THE CRYPT. Whereas that film had pacing problems and story-selection challenges, VAULT challenges the ennui bubbling up in my mid-October by delivering a solid set of tales that feel true to their EC roots.

First tale, "Midnight Mess", stars Daniel Massey as a guy whose sister stands to split a portion of their inheritance. Said sister lives in a town whose citizens fear to venture out after dark. It's a fun little story and Massey is one of the silver screen's greatest murderers. It's a joy to watch how exuberantly he kills and makes one wish that he could kill people in every movie, since he obviously takes such pride in his job. I am talking entirely too much about music lately, but the score is especially effective in this portion of the film...strings simmering menacingly just in earshot...

And next is "The Neat Job", which is a just fine little macabre piece. It's well-acted and well-shot and really demonstrates what a good handle Baker had on this film. There's no extraneousness nor any feeling of rushing, such as I observed in TALES. This is really the point at which VAULT started to win my heart...
And then came "This Trick'll Kill You" and I was ready to elope with this thing to whatever bastion of liberty would allow us to wed. This was probably my second-fave story in the EC comics and the film adaptation is just about perfect. A magician and his wife travel to India to solicit new tricks for their old and busted act. They encounter a woman who can summon a rope to rise out of a basket, snakelike. It's just the sweetest, most compact little story and the effects in this are pretty admirable, too.

The final two stories are understandably less impressive, following the epic winning of the first three as they do. One is a buried-alive tale and the other riffs off Wilde (but features Tom Baker of DR. WHO acclaim, only with a KRAZY BEARD!!!). Even in this, VAULT is true to the comics, which normally featured one amazing story, one-to-two pretty good ones, and a few unfortunate also-rans.

But, overall, this is a really impressive and fun collection of short horrors! And it's SO well-executed that I am even more saddened by Roy Ward Baker's recent passing. And I fully intend to scope out his other work, based on how enjoyable VAULT was.

#13 of 31

DEVIL (2010)

2010-10-08T18:19:00.000-07:00

M. Night Shyamalan is the albatross slung around this film's neck, so let's get it out of the way: DEVIL is his best effort since SIGNS (and shares thematic skin with that film). Shy contributed the story here and it's fine and fair. A group of five people are trapped in an elevator. Over the course of some blackouts, murders occur. And a security guard, watching via security cam, opines that one of them is the Devil.

So, yes, it's pretty much a TWILIGHT ZONE/TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE story stretched to movie-length. Give director John Erick Dowdle of QUARANTINE/POUGHKEEPSIE TAPES renown the glad hand. He manages to keep the suspense levels at a premium, switching between elevator scenes and quite harrowing moments with other building staff. The religious subtext is there, as it was in SIGNS, but not annoying after the fashion of OMEGA CODE or whatever. "Trinity Car Wash", the forgiveness angle...as long as it takes the better parts of Christianity/general religion, this atheist will have no problem with it. And incorporating the supernatural, outlandish aspects of Christendom is perhaps the only way left to really scare your standard audiences...reach back into their pasts, before they were urban sophisticates with Richard Dawkins hardcovers.

The acting is fine, if nothing stellar. The soundtrack is all low rumbly brass and is appropriately spooky and ooky. I dunno...not much to say about this one, really. It is what it is. If it doesn't aim exceptionally high or exploit its conceits to the max, it also doesn't fail spectacularly and leave the viewer confused and bitter.

#12 of 31

THE OTHER (1972)

2010-10-07T08:12:00.001-07:00

The previews on the disc spoil the plot somewhat: nu-OMEN, original OMEN, and the Macauley Culkin shocker THE GOOD SON. Yes, THE OTHER is a movie about a killer kid. Well, sort of killer.

This is definitely one of the most restrained horror films I've seen in a while. The tone is deliberately mawkish, with events unfolding in the "aw, shucks" simple-life mythland of the immediate post-Depression (I know it wasn't really like that, so don't start). It's h0nestly more like a Disney TV-movie than something seriously intended to unnerve. Although there are a few exceptions...
It's probably a pretty bad sign that I called one of the film's major twists before SEVEN MINUTES had elapsed. The remainder of the running time had a few choice elements (the invalid mom's omnipresent makeup, Uta Hagen's performance as the boy's grandmother, the bored gum-snapping of the magician's assistant), but a lot of it was just tedious and drab and a chore to endure. It looks okay and the performances are fine, but there's no compelling reason for someone well-versed in horror films to sit through this.

I mean, low-impact horror can be very effective (LET'S SCARE JESSICA TO DEATH and LEMORA, please believe), but THE OTHER is just so unmenacing! On the killer-kid movie scale, it's easily trumped by recent fare like THE CHILDREN, THE ORPHAN, and the godly HOME MOVIE. It maybe ties CHILDREN OF THE CORN, but that is nothing to put on a resumé. It is difficult to make children an object of fear. Objects of annoyance, certainly, but fear is tougher. THE OTHER doesn't really pull it off, although it does have one or two great scenes, including the shocking image near the film's end. The score by Jerry Goldsmith, who only scores killer-kid movies BY LAW, is as bland as everything else. For thrills and chills, seek anOTHER option.

#11 of 31

SCREAMERS (1996)

2010-10-05T08:24:00.000-07:00

Oh, please, critics of Rotten Tomatoes. Is your war against joy such serious business that you would deny a fun, thrill-ride horror and action and sci-fi mashup that recalls the equally-insubstantial and bitchin' fare of the eighties, like TOTAL RECALL and THE RUNNING MAN? We are BFFs no more.

The Library of Congress would probably not choose to preserve SCREAMERS instead of Persuasion, unfortunately. Alien races would not, upon seeing SCREAMERS, become afraid and fly away before being annihilated by our obviously totes superior brainpower. And yet! This is a highly entertaining film.

Peter Weller of ROBOCOP renown stars as the commanding officer of a mining outpost in the midst of a war over resources and radiation. An element has been discovered that can solve all of the Earth's energy problems, but (uh oh!) the mine also emits deadly radiation. The company wants money, the miners aren't big cancer fans, so a war has erupted. And, after ten years, it's gotten so bad that the miners (dubbed the Alliance) have created killing robots called Screamers to even the odds against the company store.

These things are ace on the killer robot scale, all buzzing blades and speed. And! They have a burrow beneath the sand in which they build ever-evolving versions of themselves! Now tell me how you could possibly hate this film? It would take a giant of ineptitude to botch this premise.

And director Christian Duguay and writer Dan O'Bannon (YES, THAT ONE) are certainly no

giants. SCREAMERS careens along with appropriate grue and admirable acting from Weller, Jennifer Rubin, and the rest of the gang, never reaching new heights, but never

disappointing (okay, that's a lie, the last third or so is kind of disappointing and the ending could have been tighter, but eh).

I enjoyed this movie quite a bit. Killer evolving

death-robots, economic conflict and mining policy, ugly/scuzzy landscapes, and lots of action. What's not to love? If you have a soft spot for THE TERMINATOR, HARDWARE, and similar fare, this will raise none of your hackles.

#10 of 31.

THEM (2007)

2010-10-05T08:16:00.000-07:00

"Inspired by true events" in that people in the real world have often driven cars and used laptops before, this Bucharest-filmed and -set French thriller bears storyline and stylistic similarities to THE STRANGERS, but didn't impress me the way that that other film modestly did. This is a LOUD NOISES horror movie par excellence, with all of the frights arising via SUDDEN LOUDNESS and jumpy scares.

That aside, this is pretty shallow, plot-wise. A couple (a writer and a French teacher) decamp to the Romanian countryside to a house and are promptly terrorized by a pack of people in hoodies. The movie happens, stuff happens, there's a tweeeest, and then it ends. Hooray!

THEM isn't French horror after the fashion of MARTYRS or whatev. Whilst nu-French gore bores the audience into submission with so many flopped organs that one ceases to care, this one draws the yawns by adhering to its carnival-ride structure with strict rigidity. Seriously, the whole movie is basically loud noises and jump scares. We don't know the two terrorized people, we don't know the terrorizers, and we can only tell that something's important because of the BOOOOOOMMMMMs.

The most interesting thing about it to me is the same thing that was interesting about HOSTEL, i.e. that western Euros like the French tend to regard eastern Euros as putrid redneck mutants worthy only of contempt and fear. Not only is Romania the home of outdated television and telephones, it also houses packs of folks who will kill you for no reason whatsoever~! Not at all like the well-adjusted metropolises like Paris, home of limitless resources and mental stability (and exchange students like Issei Sagawa!). In a way, THEM is the European version of those backwood-kill movies like JUST BEFORE DAWN. Sophisticated city-dwellers make the mistake of hitting the holler and get sliced & diced for their trouble. It's deeply rooted in xenophobia and groupthink.

French horror, you have failed me yet AGAIN. #9 of 31.

THE UH-OH SHOW (2009)

2010-10-03T14:30:00.000-07:00

LAST CINEMA WASTELAND MOVIE good lord.

We met Herschell Gordon Lewis and he could not have been more congenial and memorable. I never imagined that I would one day be discussing Alfred, Lord Tennyson with the Godfather of Gore, but it happened! And he led a bunch of Yankees in a rousing singalong of "Yee Haw! The South's Gone Rise Again" later that night. Suffice it to say that my adoration for H.G. Lewis is cemented forever.

But I'm still going to approach the movie with a critical eye. Lynn Lowry was so sweet that I died of diabetes immediately and yet I still trounced SCHISM. So don't worry.

When one's been away (BLOOD FEAST 2 excepted and that was more of a hired gun thing) as long as H.G. Lewis, it's natural that there would be some skepticism when a new title emerges. And I will admit that UH-OH will never displace 2000 MANIACS or WIZARD OF GORE from my heart. But it's heartening to see just how fun it is!

A blood-soaked game show called Uh-Oh has become America's newest hit. But! Like Videodrome, what is widely perceived to be faked is, in fact, quite real. And it's still not enough for greedy TV executives, who stage a thematic spinoff entitled Grim Fairy Tales.

One area in which UH-OH tops some of Lewis's older stuff is acting. The acting in this movie across the board is right on target. Especially impressive are lead protagonista Nevada Caldwell and the brilliantly vile Joel Wynkoop as our malevolent producer. Whereas the old stuff had undeniably astonishing turns (I'd cite Ray Sager's performance in WIZARD as pretty much flawless for this sort of film), UH-OH delivers acting that is beyond reproach all the way through. Even Lloyd Kaufman drops an Oscar-bait performance. Fun enough, but also pro enough. There are no Connie Masons here.

The gore is reminiscent of the good old days. No MARTYRS-y super-realistic grue, really, just what resembles a mixture of ground meat and yarn, along with kegs of stage blood. And I prefer that, evocative as it is of the staged sections of driver education films. It brings to mind a different time in America, when we didn't outsource our horror to the snooty/angsty French or Asians who use child labor in their ghost roles. DAWN OF THE DEAD-level splatter wouldn't work in this film. It's a fun, ridiculous ride, not some attempt to grasp the nihilistic side of life and death.

And it's SO funny! The sort of gallows humor that made the sixties Blood Trilogy, et al., must-sees for our kind of people.

A worthy addition to the Lewis canon! It should be out on DVD sometime next year and Mr. Lewis said that he has another tale in the works, too. Maybe the NBER is right and things really are turning around. #8 of 31.

THOU SHALT NOT KILL...EXCEPT (1985)

2010-10-03T14:13:00.000-07:00

I remember reading about this film in an issue of Fangoria when I was a tween or teen. As all the Internet probably already knew, THOU SHALT NOT KILL is a product of the EVIL DEAD team, with Bruce Campbell co-responsible for concocting the story and Sam Raimi appearing onscreen as a murderous hippie with presciently bad meth-teeth. The hippie and his cult have a fine time Altamonting up the woods until they cross paths with a bunch of 'Nam vets. A dog is violated, a woman bound to a tree, and then it's hippies vs. the Establishment, like a woodsy re-enactment of the 1968 Democratic convention, only with the sides switched.

It's a pretty fun exploitation flick and one can definitely see elements of the Raimi and Crew style emerging here. The budgetary constraints are naked for the world to view, but, for people who are cool, that will make the achievements of the film that much more impressive. It's paced well, the editing and camerawork is solid, and a lot of the acting ain't bad. I would've liked to have seen more of Sam Raimi and his hammy Manson act, but it was important to establish the relationship with the barmaid, I guess, even though I'd forgotten that she was tied to a tree somewhere by the movie's end.

Given how obscure this is, I wouldn't mind at all to see a well-handled remake. It's always a pleasure to see hippies killed and a modern retelling with Afghani vets blasting patchouli-pots with wheatgrass teeth would be just fine with me. #7 of 31.

OZONE! ATTACK OF THE REDNECK MUTANTS (1986)

2010-10-03T13:45:00.000-07:00

This is one of a bunch that I saw at Cinema Wasteland, so, sorry, no screenshots. This is a hybrid creature. The first half or so is a bad bad-film, as in loose, underedited, and slow. A hole in the ozone layer (lol, the eighties) turns rednecks into mutants. BLACK mutants at that, which makes one wonder what kinds of sociological commentary this film here was shooting for. So, yes, the first part is pretty zero-budget dire with scenes dragging on and on and laughs forced from the audience at gunpoint, the movie equivalent of a drunk uncle.

But the second part gets pretty entertaining. After the plot has been placed before you, the sound effects start getting ridiculous(er), like the high heels that sound like hammers pounding into an anvil. And OZONE! avoids the curse of low-budget SOV by never getting boring. Director Matt Devlen kept the pace of this thing's second portion quite jaunty and indulges the lascivious urges of horrordom with spurts of gore.

Overall, overlong, but yielding rewards to the patient, although (considering how many other things you could be doing) I can't really recommend this. #6 of 31.

HEAD TRAUMA (2005)

2010-09-29T03:31:00.000-07:00

This low-budget thriller seems to be moderately adored, but it did little for me. Chalk it up to my hatred of bums or dislike of twisty psychodramas, but it just never captivated me.

George (Vince Mola) is a bum who returns to his hometown to assume possession of his dead grandmother's house. I can't call him "homeless", considering he has a house and all, but he is 1000% bum. Flask full of rotgut, Salman Rushdie beard, the whole nine yards. He builds a tent inside the house and makes a trap out of string and empty beer bottles. After suffering HEAD TRAUMA! (spoiler), he begins having visions of a ghostly figure in a parka and a hanging woman.
This is filmed in a pretty stylish fashion. I dug the muted colors and cinematography. The acting wasn't really all that choice, but not egregiously bad on the low-budget scale either. What really hardened my heart towards the film was the lack of sympathetic characters. As I said, my personal prejudice might be darkening my perception—I interact with very unsympathetic and unmotivated homeless people everyday, not the ones who would be happy to have a job, but the ones who would happily sell grandma's house for more drink money. The ones who have abused or alienated everyone who might have helped them. George reminds me of those guys. Knowing that there are reasons for his couch-slouch ways doesn't do enough for me in terms of rendering him a charming protagonist. He's not fun to hate after the fashion of CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST or whatever, either. He's just there...a layabout.

The young next-door neighbor who helps George repair the house in penance for giving him HEAD TRAUMA is probably my fave actor (Jamil A.C. Mangan, btw), but we don't spend enough time with his character or George's long-lost love interest to develop any sort of feeling for them. We're mostly stuck with George, in his tent, boozin' and hallucinatin' it up for much of the film's running time.

In the end, not terrible, but nothing that I'll remember much a month from now. #5 of 31.

THE SENDER (1982)

2010-09-29T03:28:00.000-07:00

Fun psychic-phenom film that divided a nation back in 1982. I checked Google News Archive and found hectoring articles from suited journos bewailing "why the moviegoing public is so hung up on this sappy stuff".

Dunno what sap the Toledo Blade means, unless it's fake blood, which shows up in THE SENDER more often than one might expect. The movie doesn't pussyfoot around with prolonged openings, either. It kicks right into gear as Zeljko Ivanek's character (later identified as John Doe #83) wakes up beside a road and promptly tries to drown himself. ("this newcomer is terrific at looking bewildered", lolcats, Toledo Blade!)

He's rescued and taken to the mental hospital of Dr. Gail Farmer (the VERY Sigourney-esque Kathryn Harrold). From thence, we learn that he's a "sender" who can transmit his dreams or nightmares into others' waking existences. Oh yeah, and his perhaps-ghost mom shows up, too!
Suffice it to say that little of this makes a lick of sense. I submitted a plot outline of THE SENDER to several peer-reviewed journals of dream-transmission logic and none of them could make heads nor tails of it. Why can't more movies be the way I want them to be, with dancing scenes such as those of PRIDE & PREJUDICE, only for hours instead of minutes? THE SENDER would be far better if it were about a boy who went to Westhampton instead of a mental hospital, and had lactose intolerance instead of dream-transmission problems.

Love, The Toledo Blade.

For people who don't mind their fantastic films being a little fantastic, THE SENDER offers great kicks. Mental-hospital horror is as underappreciated as farm horror and the best kind incorporate surrealistic touches. SENDER has them in spades, from swarms of rats to bleeding doors. It also has good dialogue, especially in the first part of the film, when we meet the cuckoos at the hospital. A sneering crazy calls John Doe a "rookie" and I'm in love. It's also filmed very well, so you can add director Roger Christian to the list of this film's crew who probably should have had a more storied career (perhaps his most [in]famous film is BATTLEFIELD EARTH).

Is it more ambitious than was probably wise? Yes, indeed. But I'd rather watch an interesting and ambitious failure than some staidly beautiful play-it-safe Oscar bait. And, FYI, confusion and illogic in this kind of film are features, not bugs. Explaining things to death is the curse and flaw of all too much modern horror. If we had more like this (RETURN TO THE SENDER, pls), I'd be a happy camper.

#4 of 31.

FRANKENSTEIN: THE TRUE STORY (1973)

2010-09-27T15:44:00.000-07:00

Another TV movie, this one another version of the old tale, screenwritten by novelist Christopher Isherwood. And, for a small-screen effort, it's quite sprawling and impressive. As in, you will need a whole afternoon to watch the three hours plus of this film.

At the outset, there are warning signs. The first half is not a thrill ride and some of the dialogue is worrisome. When the creature debuts looking like a male model and Dr. Frankenstein proclaims, "Now you shall be the greatest dandy in town!", my stomach turned with fear. Surely this wouldn't be a TWILIGHT-style whitewash job! The usage of solar power rather than lightning also seemed like an all-too-modern alteration. Thankfully, things get more excited midway through...

...once the Creature starts losing his looks. He's so horrified that he runs away, momentarily

befriending the world's best-dressed blind hermit. This series of scenes also leads to the introduction and flourishing of the two awesomest characters, Dr. Polidori and Prima, the lady creature.

Prior to this point, the movie had merely been adequate. The dialogue in particular was no great shakes. But clearly they'd just been saving the WIN for James Mason as Dr. Polidori! He's wonderfully bitchy and boorish ("Violence is unavoidable, but clumsiness is inexcusable!!!"), while still saying the things the audience wishes to say ("You and your SOLAR ENERGY!!"). I was confused as to why the guy who plays a minor character got top billing until I saw this performance. It's so fun and splendid and it's a real shame that you have to wait ninety minutes to really see it.

The other thing that makes the second half oh-so-much-better than the first is Jane Seymour'sportrayal of Prima. I'm not going to bring the curse of Elsa Lanchester down upon myself, but I will say that Seymour is ONE OF the best lady creatures to ever hit the screen. She chokes cats and licks blood out of her claw-wounds and doesn't just scream, but goes full ninja on the creature when they meet.

This is a good film. It's not a revelation that mandates a shifting of favorites, as the Langella DRACULA was, but it's a decent enough entry. The main stumbling block for most is going to be its length. It was aired as a miniseries and tends to drag in places, particular in the first portion of the film. But it's far better to finish strong (as this does) than exhibit promise and taper off (as the creature does).

#3 of 31.

LEFT BANK (2008)

2010-09-24T11:49:00.000-07:00

Recommended by the ever-reliable Emma Blackwood, this Belgian import brings the atmosphere and creepiness, indeed. It's tough to discuss it without giving too much away, but suffice it to say that adorers of WICKER MAN and ROSEMARY'S BABY will have reason to smile.

Elina Kuppens is solid gold as Marie, a young athlete whose burgeoning track career is postponed by exhaustion and injury. Since running had apparently been her life, she chooses to fill the void with another athlete, an archer named Bobby who lives on the Left Bank of Antwerp. After moving into his apartment, Marie uncovers sinister secrets about the apartment's previous tenant and the building itself. And her body starts falling apart even faster.

This is an extremely well-written and well-shot film. The beauty of the Belgian landscape stands in strong contrast to the malevolence at work inside the Left Bank building. Director Pieter Van Hees conjures strong imagery and masterfully mixes scares, surreal episodes, and more conventional scenes. The writing is without flaw, as LEFT BANK builds and builds to its conclusion with no missteps and without resorting to needless jump-scares or other shopworn tricks of the fright trade.

And those actors! I'm definitely going to invest some time into seeing more work from this cast, ESPECIALLY Elina Kuppens. While other actors might play Marie as a little too self-involved, she handles the character perfectly. When she says that, essentially, she won't be happy with second best, it's a moment that could lose audience sympathy. And yet we never dislike Marie and feel more & more apprehensive as she gets dragged deeper into danger.

This is, among other things, a movie about bodies. Not necessarily in the Cronenberg way, although there is some squishiness here, at least for a boy who grew up Baptist like me. But Marie, when we meet her, is living solely on the strength of her body. When that's taken away, she immediately turns to another body (Bobby). Sexuality shows up every day in this film, both in terms of the frequent congress with Bobby as well in his opposite number, the scholarly Dirk (who flubs his shot at physical interaction with Marie).

The Emma Blackwood review pointed at the other major theme that caught my interest: the independence or dependence of women. Marie is clearly a self-sufficient figure, not the typical scream queen who faints at shadows or can't open pickle jars. She's a very gifted athlete who (we're told) rarely socializes. Her major problems begin when she begins a relationship with Bobby. Most of the other women in the film don't have male counterparts: Marie's mom is a divorcee (who said that it didn't work because her husband couldn't stand strong women); the neighbor in Left Bank is apparently raising her daughter solo; and Bobby's grandmother has no grandfather that we see. Relationships, it's hinted, correlate with problems: Dirk's girlfriend vanished under mysterious circumstances. Feminist horror scholars, all two of them, will find many bones to dig in this film.

An exceptional film that would probably be less overlooked if it came out of Britain or France. I'd be very surprised and saddened if word of mouth didn't garner it a reputation. #2 of 31.

DARK NIGHT OF THE SCARECROW (1981)

2010-09-20T17:57:00.001-07:00

DARK NIGHT, originally aired as a made-for-TV film, has garnered quite the cult following over these long years and, truth be told, it is a solid small-screen piece of work. Let's just see if it merits the neglected-classic status that some have deigned to give it...

Larry Drake demonstrates, early in his career, why he went on to feature roles in LA LAW, DARKMAN, and DR. GIGGLES (I suppose). He plays the hell out of Bubba, a mentally-challenged man who befriends a local girl, much to the illogical chagrin of a postal worker, a mechanic, a farmer, and another guy. A mix-up leads to the foursome seeking vengeance (this includes an awesome scene in which Bubba's mom derides Postal Dude's law-enforcement authority). Stuff happens that you'd expect and, after ten or so minutes, we've got the table set for a supernatural revenge soiree.

DARK NIGHT is sort of hampered by its TV-movie origins. Things are paced for commercial interruption. The sets aren't elaborate and the camerawork is a little restrained (no Rob Zombie insane crane shots here) and some of the acting really feels like TV acting.

BUT the setting is great! Farm horror is a sadly neglected subgenre. The setting gives you all you need: isolation; space; ears of corn for the pack animals and actors. It's perfect for low-budget genre stuff because you don't have to build fields of wheat—God already did it for you! Plus farms are quite creepy by nightfall.

AND this is a well-paced film! It might let slip its small-screen origins in places, but it's never boring the way that too many "feature films" are. DARK NIGHT is tight and taut, wasting no time on extraneous scenes, living a lifestyle quite unlike its DARK KNIGHT cousin. If the story is nothing mind-blowing (more or less a TALE FROM THE DARKSIDE writ large), it's handled exceptionally well. It's not an epic vision along the lines of PHANTASM or DAWN OF THE DEAD, but it is a fun campfire tale done right. Not a classic in wider terms of the genre, but arguably a classic on the TV-horror scale.

Worth your time for sure.

PS I'm resuming my tradition of watching 31 horror films that I've not seen before over the course of October. I'm getting a mild jump on it, since I'm quite busy these days. If you want to call it cheating and complain to the Blog Certification Board, be my guest, cretin.

TALES FROM THE CRYPT (1972)

2010-09-06T17:19:00.000-07:00

So I took August off. Fuck you — I had lots of Katherine Paterson to read and needed time to update my Twitters.

Do you enjoy it when people say, "I'm not racist, but", as I do? I would marry it or fan it on Facebook. I'm not monoculturalist, but I'm not certain that the British were the right people to handle a Tales from the Crypt adaptation. I don't know if they have the right sensibilities to transfer the squalidness of the better stories to a screen. This anthology is decent enough, but I can think of many other Crypt tales that I'd rather see and many other anthologies that I'd rather watch. This seems kind of restrained at times.

I had a very Joan Collins weekend, as I watched EMPIRE OF THE ANTS (and blehhh), then noticed that she kicks off this anthology! In the familiar tale of a psycho Santa that was repeated in the TFTC TV series. That Joan Collins sure was pretty (and busy and talented) and there was nothing really wrong with this, but there's nothing there that would be worth crossing the street to see.

The street plays a role in the next sequence, in which our hero, an adulterer, abandons his wife and kid to run off with some harlot. But God will have none of that and summarily crashes their car. More than one twist ending arrives before it ends. So far, the overriding theme of the film is WOMEN ARE EVIL WHORES RUN AWAY.

And now things are looking up because omg it's Peter Cushing! Playing a Cockney garbageman! This one comes closest, I think, to capturing what was most magical about TFTC (likable or hateable character, morality play, ghoulish humor, and such). Plus it's PETER CUSHING in a role that (I think) he only did here (and I don't mean garbageman). He REALLY elevates what is a fine, but not remarkable story. This made me a little sad because I will never see a new Peter Cushing movie.

But I stopped crying, eventually. The next segment is "The Monkey's Paw". Not literally, I mean, but basically that's what it is, even though they reference "The Monkey's Paw" in the dialog. META. This one is fine, too, not exceptionally great and DEATHDREAM shouldn't start grasping at its throne in worry, but executed well enough to be enjoyable. 2 for 4 thus far. PS Never marry a WOMAN! She will just get you killed, then consign you to eternal pain and cry about it because of her FEELINGS.

The last segment has a good, creepy concept (a home for the blind is a fantastic setting for a horror story), but is dragged out a hair too long. This balances the very rapid, terse feeling of the first two tales, but the pendulum swings a bit too far the other way. Waiting and waiting for the payoff.

This has an armada of faithful fans, but I just didn't feel that satisfied by film's end. If I have to convince myself to have fun and spin wild tales (like the Crypt Keeper here is the pre-pubescent version of the series Crypt Keeper) during a TALES FROM THE CRYPT movie, something is wrong. It wasn't a total disappointment, like this review or SHUTTER ISLAND, but I still wanted more. Maybe VAULT OF HORROR, which is disc the second of this set, will give me what I crave. TALES FROM THE CRYPT I have not loved.

BABYSITTER WANTED (2008)

2010-07-29T18:40:00.001-07:00

BABYSITTER WANTED is my HOUSE OF THE DEVIL. It seems to be moderately well-received by horrordom at large and yet y'all are all wrong because it annoyed me to no end almost from the get-go. I was too busy breaking things to get screenshots and I had cross words with my cat! I am considering screening this for people who deny HOUSE OF THE DEVIL and even friends from the blogosphere will have to say goodbye to their man-eating trees long enough to see what a really putrid movie about young stupid girls and rural Satanism is all about.

If you have seen more than five horror movies, you have already seen this movie. A young girl goes off to college, leaving behind a religious mother, but retaining her religious training because that is what character depth is. But! She needs money, so she grabs a "babysitter wanted" tag off of a tag board and we've got a title. From there, things go wrong. There are loud noises! And the girl helpfully says, "I hope it didn't wake the kid!" so that very slow viewers will not be confused. This film is free of any subtlety...or characterization...or second thoughts about pushing the DA-DAHHH!!! button on the soundtrack.

Yes, it's a b-movie and standards are a little more relaxed, but "b" does not stand for "boring", which is what BABYSITTER WANTED is whenever it's not moronic. People complained about HOUSE (and I keep bringing it up because this is the same film, only far inferior), but it at least suffused its non-action scenes with atmosphere. BABYSITTER WANTED plods along until the midway mark, then turns on the goofy gas once the hat comes off. A heretofore snoozefest tries to metamorph into a horror-comedy, which works as well as 98-ish% of all attempts at blending comedy and horror. Ick.

And, of all monsters, who can deny that Satanists have lost the most cred in modern-day horror? Yes, vampires have been stomped like fallen bums outside the frat bars, but can anyone think of any truly menacing Satanists in a recent horror flick? Even HOUSE's Luciferian fam seem more like accessories than main-event antagonists and the rubes in this film are just embarrassing to all fans of the black arts. Maybe it's time to switch to Scientologists, who at least offer genuine litigious threat?

This was a terrible experience and I don't want to think about it anymore. Ugh ugh ugh!