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Les yeux sans visage (1960)
For Film Geeks Only
Here I go. I am about to write one of those reviews that gets me endless "Not Helpful" votes because I am about to dare to trash a film that so many hold in such high regard. If there was a "Film Snob Scale" I think I would be about a 7. In my imaginary scale, a 10 is the total snob. This is the guy who talks to you about Jodorowsky and Malick and would never deign to watch something common. A 1 on this scale likes the Adam Sandler movies on Netflix. Why am I making up imaginary scales and rambling on in this review? It's to give you some sense of where I am coming from here. I am not one with common tastes. I enjoy film. I enjoy movies that make me think. With all of that said, I think only the 10s on my snob scale will truly like this film. I think it benefits from "foreign film disease" (yes, I'm making stuff up again). This is a syndrome where a movie that would be considered "good" in English is escalated to the status of greatness because it is in a foreign language. This idea that somehow foreign film makers, and especially French film makers, inherently make better films.
To begin with, the plot of this movie has existed since the dawn of the Poverty Row b-horror film. Whether the villain is interested in obtaining "parts" for his own self, his lover, his family member or anyone else, horror history is littered with the discarded body parts of some mad scientists plan to make someone whole again. So, in the void of anything creative in the plot, one has to ask if the plot we are given is done with anything the audience hasn't seen before. Has the director given us something new and profound. My answer to that is resoundingly "no".
The majority of this movie is so understated as to border on boring. Critics and film snobs alike will want to regale you with diatribes about how this director was seeking a new kind of horror, an intellectual horror, blah blah blah. There is no emotion on anyone's face (except the victims and half the time they can't be bothered). Nothing really happens ever in this movie. Half the run time is slow, lingering shots of some characters' face, endlessly hanging there as if this creates tension or atmosphere. There is nothing to entertain, at all. That is the crux of my problem with the film. I am all for art. I want creativity. I want thought. BUT I WANT ENTERTAINMENT. I have to end the movie thinking "yeah, that was good". If it is good and it, also, gives me something artistic, that's what creates a great movie. If it ends and I have to go looking for things to praise like cinematography, camera angles, or directive style. If I need to have completed a four year degree in film studies from UCLA to "appreciate" the movie, then it's not a good movie. It fails at its' primary purpose, which is to entertain.
In the end this is all sound and fury signifying nothing. It's a film snob's dream and a movie that the average joe will fall asleep on within 30 minutes. Unless you would consider yourself a "10" on the film snob scale, skip it.
A Dark Song (2016)
Your Patience will be Rewarded
It seems like horror fans are being blessed with a wave of amazing indie horror films from exciting new directors in the past year. I have been wowed by, recently, by TRAIN TO BUSAN and THE DEVIL'S CANDY, and now we get A DARK SONG, though I am going to say right off the bat that this is probably not a movie that is going to appeal to everyone, or even to every horror fan. The majesty of this film lies in the careful crafting of its' spell, both figuratively and literally, weaving an intricate pattern of subtle nuance that builds power as it goes, until the spell is ready to unleash its' true nature.
Okay, enough with the hyperbole and bad metaphors. The plot summary pretty much sums this up for you. A woman seeks out a man who is skilled in the "dark arts", asking him to help her craft a spell that will give them each their one, true desire. This is true occultism, too, real Aleister Crowley, mid-90s issue of HELLBLAZER type of stuff. We are not talking about the weird goth in your class who calls herself Wiccan. This isn't THE CRAFT or some other teenage understanding of bookstore wizardry, not is it the red cloaks and devil head ceremonies of a movie like THE DEVIL RIDES OUT. No, this feels real right from the beginning. The spells they are seeking, the methods they choose to obtain it. All of it feels real. It's very important to the nature of the film because the entire setup depends on this spell.
This is where the patience is required. Many scenes have little action to them, but we are building towards something. We are learning about our characters, who they are and the lengths they will go to achieve their ends. We are learning about the spell, the sacrifice it requires of each of them and the dedication to it. Horror fans love to talk about the "slow burn" and this definitely fits that description, but many films pigeon holed into that category are interminably slow, with a five minute payout. This movie starts to reap rewards sooner and have them last longer. There is a creeping edge to this movie that lingers under your skin. The anticipation of what is coming, of what lurks in the shadows, draws the viewer in so stealthily that there were scenes that I was, quite literally, waiting with baited breath to see what was going to happen, tensed at the fear of what I was about to see.
The final twist, like any twist, will either agitate viewers or enrapture them, but in my opinion is a fitting coda to everything that preceded it. The movie is about the dedication to achieving what we truly want. Sometimes, we don't really understand what it is that we want. Sometimes, we are surprised by our truest desires.
This is a smart, well-crafted movie that not all horror fans, or film fans will enjoy. If you are willing to give it the space to breathe and the time to tell its' tale, and seek it with an open mind, it really is worth the investment.
Alucarda, la hija de las tinieblas (1977)
Like a Surreal, Mexican, Religious Twist on CARRIE
I am going to make a few assumptions here with this review. I would guess that most of us, like myself, come to the reviews section on this site to see if people with similar tastes liked the movie or not. Maybe we're trying to get some sense of whether we will like the movie. I am going to make an assumption that you, as a reader/ viewer already have some interest or affinity for the genre or the style. You MUST have a tolerance for low budget, 70s, art-house horror. To say that this is low budget is an understatement. I have seen student films that looked better. I am, also, going to make the assumption that you have some familiarity with Mexican cinema and, especially, Mexican horror. If this is your first Mexican film, then you could do worse, but you could also do better as for an introductory point. As with the cinema of any country, there are usually some underlying similarities (I hate to paint with too broad a brush). There is a style to Italian horror, Korean horror, Japanese horror, etc, and there is most certainly a style to Mexican horror. The 5 cent introduction is that you have to understand the pervading influence of Catholic culture and it helps to have an appreciation or understanding of the artistic concepts of surrealism and magic realism.
This is, most definitely, a bizarre film, but one that is carried by some intriguing imagery and ideas. It plays, rather well, with the borders between fantasy and reality and between good and evil. One is never sure if the events are really happening and which events are being skewed heavily by the viewpoint of an "unreliable narrator". Just when you are sure that certain events are "true" and others are dream images, or fantasies, those dream images have an effect on the "true events" and vice versa. Eventually, one must accept that all the events are "true" in the sense of the film itself and just sort of accept it all as true. The fact that the same person plays both the faun-like gypsy who initiates the young girls into evil, as well as the doctor who represents the "sane voice" of science and logic is not a mistake, but furthers the ideas that everything and nothing is as it seems.
As stated earlier, the lines between good and evil are blurred as well. The young girls are portrayed as innocents, seduced into a world of satanism. They are our heroines, yet Alucarda, especially, is pure evil, a fact that comes to a head in the fiery finale. On the other hand, the clergy and nuns come from a place that is supposed to be good, yet are clearly presented as the backwards, superstitious villains in most cases, all except for a few pure nuns who have the girls best interests at heart, yet even the "best of them" kills a gypsy with a telekinetic prayer assault of some sort.
The movie is held back by some real limitations. Mostly, it is far too short and under-developed. The relationship between Alucarda and Justine is not given enough room to breath and develop before we are to believe that they are willing to sell their souls to the devil together. In turn, the nuns needed more development to let us, as the viewer, get a better feel for who was who and what their roles are meant to be. The version I saw was dubbed (not my preference, but the only one I could find available), so I am not going to judge the acting. On the plus side, there are some great images in this movie, reminiscent of THE DEVILS, with nuns who are so intent on self-punishment that it becomes almost perverse, plenty of unexpected bloodshed, fiery deaths, a Baphomet-like devil creature, bloody reanimated corpses and plenty of mood-inspiring crucifixes.
Plank Face (2016)
Shows a Lot of Promise
It seems like there is horror to be found everywhere nowadays. No, I am not making a comment on the 6:00 news (though there is plenty of horror there as well), I mean the horror genre. Even 15 years ago, most horror fans got their horror at the local theater. If you were lucky enough to live close to a city, there was usually one that showed underground horror. Most often, you picked up a DVD at Blockbuster and hoped it didn't suck. There wasn't any real forum to discuss and share movies and there certainly weren't streaming sites. So much is different now, with the explosion of sites like that offer streaming movies, some even catering specifically to the horror fan. Conventions give indie filmmakers the chance to push their latest film.
Where once you had trouble finding something new and exciting, now it can be hard to wade through the mass of directors promoting their film on your social media feed and trying to decide what is worth your time. FAR too often, most of these indie films are just generic rehashes of things you have seen a hundred times over and offer nothing original, but there are movies that show some real talent and the work of actors and directors who show real promise. This is one of those movies. I am not going to tell you it's perfect, or even great, but it's good and that's more than can be said for most of what I see in the reviews column of your favorite horror magazine anymore.
Director Scott Schirmer's work is picking up a lot of buzz in the horror communities that I hang around and there is good reason for it if this movie is any indication. It's mostly another variation on the Sawney Bean story, which has been done to death in horror and one of the biggest negatives (to me) about this movie. A group of backwoods cannibals murder campers who have encroached on their territory. Only this one is different. We have three women and their man. In our opening murder scene, the man is injured, leaving a gap in the family. The matron of the family must find them another protector, so they kidnap a camper and begin the process of breaking him down and inducting him into their family.
It is this angle on the storyline that makes this unique. Yes, we get a few murders and some campers die along the way. We have plenty of cannibalism, as well. These scenes are not the main focus of the film, though. This is far from being THE HILLS HAVE EYES or WRONG TURN. Instead, the movie plays along an almost psychological edge. The bulk of the movie is about the three women slowly breaking the man down, ridding him of his taboos, breaking him of his dominance and ultimately trying to eliminate his past and his self, as he becomes one of their clan.
I am not going to get on my soapbox and preach about supporting indie horror. I recognize that there are plenty of people who just don't like it and don't get it. If you are going to judge the movie on its' budget limitations, or some occasionally stilted acting, then there's probably another CONJURING clone that you can find to watch. I'm not going to tell you this is a masterpiece, but this is a director who clearly has a good eye for shots and angles and interesting film making technique. These are actors and crew clearly devoted to making a good movie with something different to say. While absolutely not a movie for the squeamish or the prudish, if you dig indie horror, give this a chance.
Curtains (1983)
Forgotten Gems are Sometimes Forgotten for a Reason
There is a trend among fans of genre films to look at some long forgotten film as a "lost treasure". Those of us in the horror community are often so hungry for more horror, that we plumb the depths of the past, digging up forgotten films from the golden ages of horror and hailing them as lost gems, when the reality can often be that the movie was nothing more than average at the time and nothing more than average now. That is clearly the case with CURTAINS, a movie that so many of my horror brethren painted in such beautiful light, but really doesn't hold up to the ratings.
The Dean from ANIMAL HOUSE plays an "auteur", the kind of director that was so popular in Hollywood around the time of this film's making. When we meet him at the beginning of the film, he is developing a movie with his muse, an actress that is destined to play the role and so bent on perfecting it that she gets herself committed to the asylum for research (this is method acting, right?). Only her plans don't go so well. The director conveniently forgets about her and sets up a casting call at his mansion, where he invites 6 women to come audition for the role. From there, we get pretty much yet another twist on TEN LITTLE INDIANS (if you don't know the reference, go look it up. Half the thrillers you have ever seen in your life were stolen from this plot line). Actresses start dying one by one and the movie is a mystery to guess whodunit.
I think that the one thing that this movie does have going for it is its' influences. While very much an 80s slasher film, it is much more highly influenced by the giallo genre, than by the American teen killer films. As such, we mostly avoid gratuitous nudity and the sort of creative kills that were so popular in the wake of Friday THE 13th. Instead, we get a lot of the hallmarks of the giallo, some technique with lighting and color, the use of adult cast, rather than generic teenage stereotypes, a doll that exists for no real plot reason and a killer with a creepy mask and a trademark weapon. We're really just missing the black gloves and a plot that makes no sense.
They may have been better off with killing kids in this movie, than the six "beautiful women". None of these girls are given any real personality, nor developed in any way. Being that they are auditioning for the same role, they even all fit into a particular look, so it can be difficult for the viewer to even tell the difference between these women at times. In that way, it starts to become obvious who the killer is in this movie because she's the only one that the movie has taken any time to develop into a real character, with a real personality.
The killer is kind of cool, with an old hag's mask and a thresher in hand, the killer starts dispatching the women, most of whom are taking up a little too much of the director's attention. The film tries to play a red herring and throws the viewer a little bit of a twist, but there is really nothing clever in the writing and the movie lacks any signature "kill scene" that fans of the slasher genre are usually looking for in these movies.
This isn't a bad film in any way. It's not a good film in any way. In the history of horror, from the silent era to the indie films that appear on streaming sites today, there have always been plenty of movies that were just sort of there. Average films that tried to hit on the successful formula of others and that's about all that CURTAINS aspires to be.
The Devil's Candy (2015)
I Wish Byrne Would Make More Horror
Way back in 2009, a young director from the land Down Under made a debut horror film called THE LOVED ONES. While not the most original of stories, the movie was an impressive debut, showcasing the talents of the young director. Fans of the film have waited, patiently, for a follow up from the director, Sean Byrne. It took him six years to make another movie, but my god what a movie it is.
THE DEVIL'S CANDY is a haunted house movie, it's a possession movie, it's a serial killer movie, it's a metal movie and it's an artistic psychothriller all wrapped up in one canvas. There are so many things about this film that could have gone so wrong, but Byrne makes so many good choices along the way that it all ends up working incredibly.
We open with a little bit of backstory, an odd man, of the Baby Huey variety, hears some very demonic voices. His method of drowning them out is to fill the air with the sweet sound of reverb guitar, blasted through his Marshall amp on a Flying V (those will both play integral roles to come). Mommy doesn't like the noise this late at night, though, but our disturbed rocker doesn't like to be told what to do. Fast forward to a family looking to buy the home. Dad is an artist, wishing to create art that reflects his dark interests, but stuck making butterfly commissions to pay the bills. His daughter is a little protégé rocker and Mom plays that role of the one stuck being the responsible one in the trio.
Very early on, we start to see that all is not right in the house. Dad starts zoning out, awash in visions, which are resulting in some very dark and disturbing art that is also some of the best work he's done. The distractions are causing him to lose his tight relationship with his daughter, who is struggling at school and has become the fascination of our Baby Huey, which is where the plot strands start to tie together.
The movie is an exploration of family, with a great cast who are not your typical Brady Bunch, but have their own tight bonds. This is, also, very much a rumination on evil. We look right into the eye of evil throughout the film (in literal ways) and the movie plays with the ideas of Satan and the devil, without ever resorting to the sort of cheesy pentagram lore that ruins so many indie horror flicks with lesser writers and directors. We have human evil, in the form of a child killer. We have symbolic evil in the name of the art dealer. We have very supernatural evil taking place within the house. All are forms of the devil. The movie culminates into a tightly woven finale that pits our family against the killer and plays cleverly with an idea that even something that might have seemed evil can be used for good in the right hands.
The direction by Byrne is superb, using some broodingly dark images that could have seemed totally cheesy in the wrong hands, but work to craft a uniformly consistent aesthetic here. Ethan Embry is someone who has never really shown me much before, but does a great job of playing a father who starts unraveling and losing control. The soundtrack is excellent, using metal music in a way that doesn't feel like a tacked on 90s soundtrack, but makes the metal part of the core of the film, including some great ambient noise by the group Sunn O))))).
I heard so many good things after this screened at HorrorHound and was pleasantly surprised that it met all of those expectations.
I Am Not a Serial Killer (2016)
I Was a Teenage Dexter
I was actually pleasantly surprised by this little indie horror/ thriller/offbeat combo. At first very cynical that this was a plot and a character that I was going to hate, I found myself hooked by both the plot and the character by the time the move resolves.
Our "hero" is a teenage sociopath. His father left when he was young and he lives with his mom and (I think) her lesbian lover (never clear) in their family funeral parlor. All of it has combined to make him an emotionless weird kid, picked on at school and mostly isolated. When we first meet him, I was sure he would annoy the heck out of me. He's basically a ripoff of Dexter, right down to a code of rules he follows to make sure that he "stays good". He's obsessed with serial killers, mouths off to bullies, and mostly has all the traits that Hollywood loves to imbue in the weird kid role in their movies.
His proximity to death, in the funeral parlor, brings him very close to a series of local murders, which begin to entangle the hero more and more. We meet Christopher Lloyd, his neighbor, who first seems like the nice old guy next door, but we start realizing that he may have quite a lot to do with the deaths in the town and, even more, may be more than meets the eye. From there, the movie takes a good turn, slowing developing a tense, tight plot line that ratchets up the suspense and deftly introduces many elements. At its' very core, it's a thriller, with twists and turns and plenty of suspense. There is a lot of horror, as well, with violent, grisly murders. There is an offbeat sense of humor to the whole movie, especially from our teenage hero. We even get some magic realism, or modern folklore, as the real truth of what the murderer really is plays with many aspects of old folklore.
This movie could have been a disaster in the wrong hands. The kid could have come off as completely annoying. The low budget effects may have thrown everything off the rails. The odd sense of playful gallows humor could have prevented the movie from gathering any suspense. But this is one of those rare indie films that gets most everything right. Is it ground breaking? No, certainly not, but it's an entertaining movie that will appease horror fans and anyone looking for something a little different.
The Devils (1971)
Terrible Beauty
Ken Russell's 1971 movie was released in a year that saw the directors of the counter culture movement bringing intense violent imagery to the screen that caused massive controversy. While its' brethren from that year, A CLOCKWORK ORANGE and STRAW DOGS have been re-assessed and come to be adored by film fans, THE DEVILS has remained an embarrassment for the studio that released it, almost impossible to find on DVD in the US and still having only been shown uncut on a handful of occasions. The reason for that is probably not due to any of the often violent images in the movie, or for the copious nudity or masturbatory fantasies, it is mostly because the movie ticked off the wrong entity, the Catholic church.
The movie is the story of Father Grandier, a priest of the people who holds great power in his town of Loudun. He is, also, not your typical priest, as he is more than willing to let loose his lustful cravings. He's, also, not a bad looking guy and that combination of those looks and that lust ends up in his ultimate downfall, as women who want him, or come to despise him end up playing a big part in tearing him down. Seems that a Cardinal is trying to gain power by sitting at the right hand of the king. The cardinal wants to bring an end to local power, but Grandier stands in his way by refusing to allow the walls of Loudun to be torn down. So, like many a leader in history, they use religion to tear those walls down. The accusal of witchcraft and possession from a nun who is clearly crazy sets the wheels in motion and from there bedlam breaks loose. A maniacal witch hunter whips the convent into a frenzy, a convent that just happens to be full of nubile, young women, who gladly unleash their sexual repression to display the work of the devil. Eventually, we get a farce of a trial and a horrifying execution.
Forgetting the obvious subjects for a moment, the movie is beautiful and stylistic. This is the kind of movie that you could watch on mute, knowing nothing of what is being said, and still come away with a profound admiration of the movie because the imagery is that remarkable. Ken Russell said that he wanted to play with the idea of modernity. Though the movie is hundreds of years ago, the people in the movie think they are the height of modern times and the movie feels that way. The sets, such as the stark white nunnery, the striking walls of Loudun itself and the statue garden look of Grandier's home all seem like places from another world and time. The costumes are remarkable as well, from Grandier's flowing priest robes, to the frightening visage of the court judges and executioner and the rock star garb of the witch hunter. To contrast all of that are some of the images that really stick with the viewer, whether they are the horrific images of rotting protestants hanging on wheels or Grandier's burning, bubbled skin in the execution scene, or the sexually explicit images of naked nuns doing obscene things with candles and crucifixes or diabolic douches. People will be drawn to the movie because of the controversy and some will love it for the nature of the images, but it's the artistry of the film that sunk in for me.
The acting is, also, incredible. Oliver Reed leads the show as Grandier. He is charismatic when needed, sensual in other scenes and movingly dramatic. He carries a power in his role that heightens the movie greatly. Vanessa Redgrave is, also, captivating, as a deformed nun who obsesses over Grandier. She teeters on the edge of madness and, perhaps, falls right off the edge. From the beginning, it is evident that she's not quite all there, but as she unravels, Redgrave plays the role as a woman that we never quite feel any sympathy for, yet do not see as a villain either. She is a complex character with a pivotal role. Perhaps my favorite character, though, is Michael Gothard as Father Barre, the witch hunter. He is a rock star of his time. He looks like it, he carries himself like it. He has an almost cartoonish quality, so over the top and animated, yet so intense. He is a maelstrom of wicked belief, so devout in his religion, so in love with his power.
I guess that you can't review this movie without speaking of the controversy to some degree. Frankly, the movie is far more tame than I expected. Maybe that says something about me. Maybe that says something about how much times have changed since this movie's release. The version I have has the "Grandier's Bone" scene and the "Rape of Christ" scene as bonus features, not spliced in. Other than that, it is the full length BFI version that (to my novice knowledge) is the most complete version available for home release. While the movie certainly has its' share of shocking images and pushed the envelope in violence and sexuality, I don't think the movie would carry anything more than an "R" rating in today's world.
I have seen a lot of controversial movies, in my time, that flat out suck. Movies like CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST or I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE would have disappeared into the dustbins of forgotten history a long time ago were it not for the controversy they stirred up. This movie is the polar opposite, in some ways. It is an absolute shame that this movie isn't celebrated. Controversy has allowed this movie to be not lost, but locked up, and it's time that it gets its' proper respect.
Lady in White (1988)
There are Monsters in the Closet
This is one of my wife's favorite 80s horror memories, but somehow the movie had escaped my notice for decades. While rifling through bootleg selections at a recent horror con, my wife was elated to find a copy and share this treasure with me. My immediate reaction, though, is maybe you have to have been there.
Lucas Haas was all over 80s movies and this was the film that introduced him. The tale of a young Italian boy, living with his father, brother and grandparents after the loss of his mother. The movie definitely plays out the theme of loss in many different ways. The boy is trapped in a coat room as a prank and comes to find horrors, both spectral and real. He sets in motion a chain of events that will bring to attention a dozen murdered children, a family of ghostly women and a murder surrounding a molester.
The things that I am going to hold most against this movie are not fair to hold against it. I admit that readily, yet cannot pretend that they don't skew my view of the movie towards the negative, mostly the budget, which brings a harsh light on the quality of the effects available at this time in cinema. I am not against indie horror, in any way. I love it, in fact, but when going back 30 years to watch a low budget horror, it does make the budget all the more noticeable. The movie feels blatantly 80s. While that should never be held against a movie, the best films feel timeless. Yes, Universal's monsters have bad effects that are signatures of their time, but they transcend those limitations to create movies that don't feel so much like products of their time. This movie, though, has many trappings of the 80s. This plays out a LOT in the effects used for the ghosts. They have that cheap, see-though quality that probably looked hokey at the time and looks downright terrible now. At one point I swear you see wires. Lovers of the film will shout that I am being a modernist here, but it removes the viewer from the picture too much to see a blatant look behind the curtains of the effects.
The budget limitations also reflect on a lot of the other aspects of "film making" here, such as the score and the camera-work. They feel empty and do nothing to help heighten the tension or mood of the picture. On the other hand, though, the acting is pretty good for a movie of this caliber. The child actors are never cloying. The grandparents are funny and the adults in the movie, though never given that much to do, play their roles well.
Many movies have the same limitations, though, some that I love and adore. One thing that can help a movie rise above those limitations, though, is a quality script and I think that's what this movie is missing more than anything. I don't feel that the movie ever quite knew what it wanted to be. There are plenty of tame, family-friendly horror films that don't need blood and gore and focus on child characters and end up being greatly successful at creating a good film. This movie, though, seems like it wanted to hide from that moniker of the child movie, creating some moments that are far too dark for the average kid-friendly spook and never hints at the pure magic that helps kids and adults alike love a movie of that tone. The movie never truly succeeds as a ghost story, either. It spends too much of its' time on a half-baked racial injustice angle and the mystery of the molester to ever give its' frights enough buildup and mood to be effective. Though the kids frequently tell tales of the Lady in White, we only ever get one real scene of an actual terror involving the specter and its' played almost more for laughs than scares.
If you want a good ghost story, I can names dozens that are better. If you want a family-friendly frightener, I can name you plenty that are better. This movie isn't terrible by any stretch, but it's painfully average and really not worth your time.
Busanhaeng (2016)
Full Bore Zombie Frenzy
I know. I know. If you are anything like me, you are sick to death of zombie movies. Many will rise to defend the sub-genre of horror. After all, there are only so many tropes and monsters that you can explore. In the same breath, one could say you are tired of vampire movies or ghost movies, but the fact is that I would say I am tired of all three. Maybe "tired" isn't the right word. I am skeptical. I have seen the originals that created the structures, the next wave of zombie films that re-defined what you could do with it, then every twist on the genre directors could come up with, from comedies like SHAUN OF THE DEAD to dramatic presentations like MAGGIE. Mostly, I am tired of every indie film maker with no better idea then to do a zombie flick devoid of imagination. So, it really takes a lot to impress me at this point, which makes it all the more surprising that TRAIN TO BUSAN is able to do just that.
There are two major things that make this movie work incredibly well, the action and the characters. The action elements of this movie is what will get it attention from the largest segment of audience. The fact that this is the first live-action film for the director is even more impressive. He cut his teeth in animation and it definitely shows. The movie has a kinetic sense of action and pacing that is straight out of an action cartoon. The movie feels almost like a comic book or cartoon come to life, in many ways. I could make many bad train puns here, but the movie feel like a ride on a steam train. It starts off slow and plodding, setting up the story, the characters and the angles and the movie slowly picks up more and more speed, until arriving at a fever pitch towards the end. That action is gripping and once it hooks you in, it doesn't let go. You will be on the edge of your seat as the movie takes you for a ride.
I said, earlier, that the action would hook the largest audience. Plenty of people just want an action-packed film and there is nothing wrong with that, but I know my friends in the horror intelligentsia will want a little something more on their plates, and this movie does not fail to deliver in character. The plot is pretty straight forward, zombies on a train, but what makes the movie really special is the characters. The plot revolves around a workaholic dad who agrees to take his young daughter to see his ex- wife. We see that the two have a very strained relationship, which naturally evolves through the course of the film. Along the way, we pick up additional characters. There is the drifter that portends the action and plays a pivotal part. The tough bruiser and his pregnant wife, who are important pieces in the relationships that will develop and prove to be much deeper than they appear in the surface. There is an a*hole businessman, who will sacrifice anyone to save himself. To a less defined degree, the baseball player and the girl who wants to be his girlfriend, who aren't as fleshed out as other characters, but provide a few interesting scenes.
Many zombie purists will not like the direction of the zombies themselves. At the risk of incurring the endless, tired debate of which are the best zombies, you could argue these aren't zombies, at all. They are "infected". They are much closer to rabid, chaotic horde of the DAWN remake, or more so, WORLD WAR Z, than the shambling undead of the original DAWN OF THE DEAD, or even THE WALKING DEAD. That last comparison is an interesting one. For all the people on social media complaining that the popular show is too slow, too boring, too talkative and there isn't enough focus on the zombies, this is almost the antidote. Full of action and full of zombies.
The movie has two big things going against it for a western audience, it's sub-titled and it's another zombie film. For that reason alone, many will avoid it. They would be doing themselves a big disservice as this movie is one of the best of last year and a great modern zombie flick.
Lemora: A Child's Tale of the Supernatural (1973)
Hit and Miss Horror
This is one of those movies that few people have heard of and even fewer have seen. You'll find people that espouse this movie as being a long lost gem of 70s art horror, or those who saw it as a child and it hits a special nerve with them. For the average horror aficionado, though, I think you will find that this movie is very hit or miss, having some great highs, but a lot of lows, as well.
A young, innocent virgin is a singer in a church, but also the child of a notorious gangster. At the beginning of the movie, the man kills his wife and her lover and goes into hiding in the countryside, where he reaches out to his daughter to come visit him. Eager to do right by her father, the young girl sets out on her own.
What follows is a story that definitely plays on the ideas of sexual repression, lesbianism and the male fascination with underage girls, as every character in this movie seems to leer at our young heroine in sexual longing. The movie starts off rather slow and off, leaving you to wonder just what you are watching, but things start to pick up as her journey begins. The bus ride into the wilderness is fantastic, as a creepy ass driver makes wild faces, while regaling our heroine with stories of why she should fear these swamp marshes, which all leads to our first encounter with monsters. The creature design reminds me a lot of the zombie films of the time, such as CHILDREN SHOULDN"T PLAY WITH DEAD THINGS or LET SLEEPING CORPSES LIE. They are colorful monsters, with oddly heightened tones, rather than being rotting, undead shamblers.
After being imprisoned for a time, we finally meet Lemora, a semi- masculine lady vampire (with a bad acting issue and even worse makeup), who can't quite seem to make up her mind how she feels about the young girl. Is she going to seduce her, love her, destroy her or eat her? It seems to go through all of the gamut. There are times that the bad production values of the movie threaten to destroy it entirely. None of the acting is great, by any stretch. The story meanders a bit here and there. The music has that bad early 70s LAST HOUSE vibe where everything is far too pretty and nice to fit into a horror film and much too indicative of its' time era to be anything but a 70s film. Certain scenes are almost laugh out loud, such as the dancing scene with the children.
Still, the movie has just enough Gothic vibe to keep you engaged, playing with the idea of two rival breeds of vampires, the suave, intelligent brood of Lemora and the bestial monsters that live in the woods around the house and remind me a lot of the beasts in Moreau's island.
This movie is not, at all, going to be for everyone. I love low budget horror. I love 70s horror. I love artsy horror. I found myself slowly drifting my attention away here and there, though, as the movie definitely requires an acquired taste for finding subtle strengths in low budget horror and appreciating theme when story is lacking.
Tales from the Darkside: The Movie (1990)
Tales from the Dull Side
Okay, yes, I started with a bad pun, but there is really nothing memorable about this movie, at all. When you consider the level of talent involved in the creation of this movie, it should almost be an embarrassment that it ended up so painfully mediocre.
Many would tell you that this is the unofficial "Creepshow 3". The plans to create a Creepshow television series eventually resulted in TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE, a second rate TALES FROM THE CRYPT clone. The movie spin off of the series that started as CREEPSHOW and features many of the same people behind the legendary 80s portmanteau resulted in this movie. I am a big of the original CREEPSHOW and this movie doesn't hold a candle to it. Then again, it's not much below the quality of CREEPSHOW 2 which I loved as a kid, but cringe a little now when I revisit and realize how poor some of that movie is, as well.
Like most horror anthologies, we have a wraparound story, here the singer from Blondie overacts in the role of a witch preparing a feast, which is supposed to be Joey's Lawrence's little brother, who is so annoying in the role you wish they would eat him. The setup is that blondie has given the kid a book to occupy his time and he convinces her to allow him the time to read a few sections to her, in an effort to buy himself time.
For the most part, all of these stories follow the same blueprint that has been done over and over in EC Comics, Amicus films, CREEPSHOW and TALES FROM THE CRYPT. Introduce a plot, give us 10 minutes of horror, then pull the rug out from under the audience with a twist ending that usually features some visual pun. When the formula works, it usually works well and allows directors success with the timeframe. More often than not, though, it results in halfway formulated ideas, corny plots and ludicrous ideas, which is essentially what we have here.
The first segment, LOT 249, is a revenge story featuring a mummy. Steve Buscemi has been robbed of some academic award or other when he's cheated by a rich kid at school. Buscemi, also, happens to be a seller of antiquities and his latest acquisition is a mummy. With a scroll, he brings the corpse to live and uses it to enact his revenge. The story features Christian Slater and Julianne Moore and could have been the most terrifying of the lot, except that it can't help but devolve into cheesiness, with bad jokes and Slater hacking the thing apart with an electric meat cleaver.
The second segment is just plain stupid. THE CAT FROM HELL is about a pharmaceutical giant being tortured by a cat, who's apparently been sent on a mission of retribution to right the wrongs of abuse done by the company as it tested its' drugs on cats through the years. The cat has killed the man's wife and friends and he knows his time is next, so let's hire Buster Poindexter, as a hit-man, to off the beast. We get boring recollections of the cat's previous murders, many of which feature ridiculous special effects, the kind where an actor holds a badly designed stuffed cat on their face and wiggles it around to simulate a cat attacking them. Then, the assassin is left on his own, in an old dark house, to kill the cat, which only leads to all too predictable results.
The final segment, LOVER'S VOW, seems to be most reviewers favorite, but it's really not much better. An artist has just found out he's pretty much broke and drinks his sorrows away. Upon leaving the bar with his friend, they are attacked by a gargoyle that looks as if it was designed by high school students, on a public access channel budget. It's bad, especially when I consider the level of regard that I have for KNB Effects. The gargoyle spares him so long as he promises never to tell anyone what he saw. He immediately meets Rae Dawn Chong, they fall in love, his life gets better, they have kids. If you don't see the end of this one coming a mile away, then you are either stupid, or not paying attention.
Then we get the resolution of our wraparound, which sees two people who can't act, playing out a ridiculous situation that crosses that line from being a bad attempt at humor to being insulting to my intelligence.
I am coming off a little harsh, but the movie is not good, at all, and really deserves no more praise than this. There are plenty of other good horror movies around. Go watch one of those instead.
The Legend of Boggy Creek (1972)
Maybe You Had to Be There?
I find that genre cinema is very subjective. A great drama is a great drama from the 30s to the 60s to the current. When we start talking about genres, though, from comedy to horror to sci-fi, they are often very much a product of their time and, quite often, one's opinion of a movie in that genre depends on time and place. There are a lot of bad 80s horror movies that I love. I won't try to tell you that they are good, but they are great to me. I can't help but feel that this is the case with those who love this movie. To be fair, this was a monster hit at the time, but that really only leaves me to wonder if people in 1972 just needed something better to do with their time.
I was in elementary school at the dawn of the 80s and I used to look forward to those days when the teacher would wheel in that reel-to- reel movie projector. The smell of the bulbs and the film, the sounds of the spool, the look of the movies. It's still such a hot-wire memory for me. For those too young to remember, this reference is meaningless, but this movie is exactly the kind of thing I imagine watching on a sunny afternoon, sitting on my rug square, in a 3rd grade class on that projector. That's about the quality of it, too.
Frankly, the film is terrible. The acting is atrocious, because most aren't actors, they are the real life people re-enacting their experiences. The music is cheesy. So many people on here are talking about how great it is. Really? Really??? Bad folk music that was dated two months after it came out and sounds downright hokey now. Wisely, we never really see the monster, but that's also one of the things hurting the movie. Yep, it's a guy in a Halloween store gorilla suit. We probably didn't want to see it much more than we do, but a little more monster would have gone a long, long way in this movie because there's just nothing else here.
I'll break this movie down for you in one paragraph. This guy saw Bigfoot outside his house, there was some weird noise, there was a dark shape. This woman and her kids saw Bigfoot. There is more running, some more noises and some more vague shapes. Repeat this for about a dozen more encounters along the way. That's all you get. Like watching a dryer to see if the red sock will fall a different way this time, it's an endless litany of the same experiences, acted out poorly, hoping something will change with this one. Eventually, you are praying that Bigfoot will shred one of these people just to give you something different.
Okay, it's supposedly a landmark movie. The first pseudo- documentary style horror film. That might be the case, but that doesn't make it interesting or exciting. I think I've only given a rating this low to a handful of movies, but this one deserved it. If you didn't see it at the drive-in in 1972 and it didn't scare you as a kid and you still have some childhood impression of it, then quite simply there is nothing, at all, worth watching here.
Esta Noite Encarnarei no Teu Cadáver (1967)
The Man Just Wants to Spread Himself Around
It's a criminal shame that these movies are as unknown and underrated as they are, even among the horror underground. The fact that 4th- rate garbage flicks on some streaming site have over 100 reviews, while this has 24 at the time of this writing makes me sad. I get it to some degree. I was only lucky enough to discover these movies through the book HIDDEN HORROR, which introduced me to the opening chapter. They're in another language, with subtitles. They're 50 years old, at this point. They are low-budget, underground films. It's not a great surprise that so few have dived into the world of Coffin Joe, but it's still a travesty.
Of course, this is a sequel, so if you are just coming into the movie, start with AT MIDNIGHT I'LL TAKE YOUR SOUL. This movie picks up directly from the events of that fist film. Xe (Coffin Joe) is badly injured and on trial for his crimes, but within the first few minutes of the movie, we put those things aside so that Xe can begin his quest to create a perfect son. See, Xe doesn't believe in good, or god, or much of anything for that matter. To him, the pursuit of his life is to pass his beliefs and his seed on to a son, who can keep his beliefs alive.
He starts this quest by kidnapping 6 women and torturing them in a sort of trial by godless game show, where the winner gets to be subdued by Xe's love. These scenes offer some of the best moments of the film, with some frightening images that masterfully play with the line between sex and violence. Xe comes to find that he needs not force himself upon some unwitting woman, though, as the woman of his nightmares shows up completely willing to turn her back on everything to be Xe's lover and the mother of his child.
From there, the movie takes a few odd twist and turns, most notably with one of the greatest scenes (I'm not even kidding) in any 60s horror movie when Xe goes to Hell. It's a technicolor inferno full of Bosch-like imagery and psychedelic terror. The scene begins to set a tone in the movie where Marins (the director) start to play with the ideas of atheism and to explore Xe's beliefs, in counter to a possibly impending sense of guilt, mingled with his fear of death and leaving behind a legacy of nothing. In AT MIDNIGHT, Maris used his character as a bold, radical villain spitting in the face of the religion and politics that were dominating his country at the time. In THIS NIGHT, he goes a step further, exploring the very nature of Xe's beliefs.
These movies would appeal to so many horror fans. For fans of the old Universal style of film, the look and feel of this movie is right up your alley. Taking some of the more bizarre subject matter aside, these movies would look right at home with Lugosi's Poverty Row films of the 40s. The subject matter is very 60s, full of counter-culture questioning of the standards of society, mixed with the obsession with evil that was so common in 60s horror. This is, almost, where the look and feel of WHITE ZOMBIE meets the kinetic film style of Rob Zombie. This is the kind of movie that you could watch on mute, at a party, with some metal or goth music in the background and still sit and enjoy for the sheer visionary impact of it.
Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things (1972)
It's an EC Comic Come to Life
If I was judging this movie on the final act, it would be one of my favorite horror films ever. Amateurish and a little silly, absolutely, I'll not argue that point, but the look, the music, the style, the subject matter, all of it combines for something that is right up my wheelhouse. That's all the final act, though. The first hour of this movie, though, leaves a lot to be desired and that's what, ultimately, drags the score down for me.
Let's make no mistake, fellow horror fiends, this movie is not going to be for everyone. In fact, I would say that it is not going to be for most people, but I love this style of film. To begin with, there is a very unique niche of movies that filled the early 70s. Horror was really finding its' ways. The days of the Gothic monster movie, crusaded by the House of Hammer, were dying out. Vietnam had brought an end to the innocence of the 60s. Then, Romero released NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD and the game changed. The mix of brutal horror with a social message sent other horror directors searching for something similar. In the wake of that classic came several imitators, such as this movie and LET SLEEPING CORPSES LIE, that each brought their own spin on the newly created zombie sub-genre.
This movie has a lot in common with NOTLD as far as the creative team behind it. This movie was in no way created by professionals. This is, basically, a homemade movie with a group of friends "acting", so it takes a certain patience for bad dialog and bad acting. Many of the lines feel improvised and made up on the spot. The characters are not so much developed and polished as much as being one step above what you and your childhood friends would create when playing "make believe". The main character, played by Alan Ormsby, is probably the most obnoxious part of the movie. He's that guy you went to high school with that was far too impressed with his "acting skill" and thought he was funny, or clever, and by the end of an evening you just wanted to punch him in the face. Yeah, that's him. The rest of the cast is not much better.
All of it is preamble, though, to a fantastic finale. This is the sort of movie that really fits into my personal aesthetic. We each have a style and a taste developed by our unique personal background. For me, born in the mid-70s, growing up on comic books and monster movies and a steady diet of Scooby Doo, this movie is divine. It's an EC Comic book come to life, full of technicolor monsters, hellbent on destroying the fools who have tampered with forces they didn't understand. The makeup is incredible. It's so amateur and homemade, yet so lovable. This isn't Romero's blue tone creepers or Fulci's rotting stalkers. These monsters look like something straight off a comic book page and have a look to them that is so unique to this movie. The scenes of the zombies crawling from their graves, combined with a screeching score, create a nightmarish vision. Admittedly, some sections border on silly. The monsters can be a terrifying force one moment, eviscerating their victims and eating the victuals, the next moment they are reaching blindly for people a foot away from them and being pushed around by 80 pound women. Yet, the horde will not be stopped and, in the end, have their vengeance.
If you like SHOCK WAVES, Fulci's zombie films, or any other pre-80s zombie flicks, then this is required viewing.
The Neon Demon (2016)
An Art Film Short Drawn Out into Two Hours
I love all kinds of horror, from the major studio to crude independent productions, from the gore filled to the psychological, from the blatant to the metaphorical. As I fall deeper down the rabbit hole of the horror genre and discover more styles and more nationalities, I am drawn increasingly to the artistic horror film because I'm looking for something different. These movies, though, can be very hard to judge and are usually very divisive. Those who love them will insult the haters' intelligence, while those that hate them love to throw out words like "pretentious".
Let's get things out of the way, then. There are ways to make artistic horror, with gorgeous imagery and do it well. There are ways to present stylistic moving paintings in your camera shot and still bring the audience a story and a plot that are entertaining. Then, there are movies like this. We can sit here and argue cinematography and camera angles, shot selection and color. The fact is that those things really only matter to an intellectual few who either write reviews for certain zines and blogs, or went to film school and have long since forgotten what made them love movies in the first place.
Yes, this movie is gorgeous to behold. I will not argue that with anyone for a moment. There are stunning shots, including the book end shots of the opening and closing segments, very similar scenes that weave images into a tapestry of visual stimulation. I was so intrigued by that opening shot and really thought that I was in for something spectacular, but this movie is full of empty calories. It looks good, it tastes good, it makes you want to come back and sample a little more, but in the end you find that you're still hungry for something with substance.
Most of the movie watching public wants a plot. We want some action. I have a degree in Literature and a love of horror. I'm fine with metaphor. I'm fine with hidden meaning. I'm fine with symbolism, but much better film makers have been able to do those things and still bring a fantastic movie, from Argento to Bava to Kubrick, there are ways to bring a visual feast and still fill my hunger with something sustaining. Even the little bit of meaning and metaphor that is here is so boring and mundane. The glamorous world of modeling ultimately devours people. The innocent usually fall when pride takes over. Jealousy is a cruel beast that will inflict deadly harm. These story arcs have been done so many times that they're cliché. Yet, I find so many reviews here praising this guy like he's some sort of genius for putting these thoughts on film.
I was really hoping for something like BLACK SWAN mixed with a better version of STARRY EYES. Something that could take that artistic horror spin and use it to really say something or give me something meaningful. This is nothing more than a Calvin Klein television ad, drawn out for two interminable hours, with a brief moment of actual horror tacked on to the end to say that they've given us a denouement.
I rarely give ratings below a 5 on this site because most movies don't deserve them. I really thought to myself that I've seen plenty of "artsy horror" films get bad reviews on this site and I usually like a lot of them myself, but in this case it deserves every nasty review you've seen and more.
The Monster (2016)
Cujo in the Woods
Bertino made a giant splash in the horror scene a decade ago with THE STRANGERS, a movie that was able to take a well-worn plot device and do something memorable and terrifying with it. To me, so much of what made that film successful was Bertino's direction. Let's face it, we've all seen a thousand home invasion horror films. We've all seen villains in plastic Halloween masks. The suspense and pure terror that Bertino was able to create in that movie, though, through some wonderful camera shots and scenes so tense you truly sat at the edge of your seat, made the movie stand out so well from the pack. I've been waiting for him to bring that fine-tuned edge of horror back to hungry fans.
I had read some good reviews of this movie and was honestly hoping for the best. I didn't expect another instant classic like THE STRANGERS. I was just looking for good indie horror. Unfortunately, I was a little bit let down. There is nothing that really stands out about this movie. Essentially, you could make the argument that it's THE STRANGERS all over again. Sure, the kids have been replaced with a mysterious monster and the house has been replaced with a car. In the end, most horror films boil down to a few basic plots with a new coat of paint and this is really just the NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD/ ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 blueprint in a car, with a monster. It's still our main characters trapped in a claustrophobic environment while the invading threat tries to get in. I would argue that it borrow a great deal from CUJO, as well. Much like THE STRANGERS, at the heart of it is another dysfunctional family pairing. In this one, a young girl and her alcoholic, abusive mother.
The two young women playing our starring roles are probably the only good thing about this movie, though both of them started to work on my nerves by the end of the movie. I don't expect Oscar worthy acting in my indie horror, so I'm usually pleasantly surprised when I find someone playing a fully fleshed out character with some style and that's exactly what we get from both. The daughter is very typical of a young woman in an abusive relationship and the mother is like too many people I've known in my life, thrust into parenthood at too young an age and not ready to grow up enough to face the responsibility that comes with it. Both, though, push that edge of annoying. They are not people you would want to spend time with in real life, but you could argue that's a mark of a good performance.
Unfortunately, the relationship plays out in a series of never- ending flashbacks that keep killing any tension that the movie is trying to make. I applaud the script writer for trying to show this relationship in a unique manner, rather than having our characters explain everything to us in bad dialog, or lengthy conversations meant to interject some history. In the end, though, there are just too many flashbacks and they started to feel like a desperate bid to fill run time in the movie.
I liked the decision to keep our monster mostly in shadows. This was probably an effect of the budget, but a choice I'm fine with having come from a love of classic horror. Too many indie horror films make the mistake of showing us too much bad creature makeup. For the first hour of this movie, it does a pretty decent job of building up tension and fear and created a mood of claustrophobic terror. It's hard to build 90 minutes in a car, though, with a monster that's big enough to simply knock out a window, so eventually we leave the car and that's when things start to spin into slightly ridiculous mode and any good will the movie was building with me was killed by a finale with too many forced events thrown into it and a push to take the message of the movie far too seriously.
Blair Witch (2016)
The Jump Scare Project
Adam Wingard is considered by many in the horror community to be one of the best young directors coming up right now. Frankly, I've never much been impressed with his work before this and after seeing this travesty I'm even less impressed. I simply cannot fathom what some of the horror blogs and websites appreciated about this movie when they gave it such rave reviews. I know, as I push past 40 years old, that I am not exactly the target demographic for teenage horror any longer. Being the age that I am, though, makes me also right in the wheelhouse of the generation who adored the original.
I was in my late teens when THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT came out. I saw it on a date, as a matter of fact, and was blown away. Having grown up in the era of the slasher film, I was more used to horror being much more blatant and gory. It had become a mockery of itself by the 90s, though, and we were all so hungry for something fresh to re-kindle horror and this movie took the world by storm. If you are too young to remember, it's release then you really can't understand the impact that it had. Nowadays, indie horror is packed full of found footage, but this was revolutionary to us. Even more, the style of horror was something that my younger, novice horror mind was not yet used to. This was horror that was that was not in your face with a villain or brutal deaths. This was much more psychological, an intense fear-driven journey through into truly frightening territory.
I was excited when it was announced that a sequel/remake was coming. I thought this could legitimately have a chance to be good, but man was I wrong. This movie seems to completely misunderstand everything that made the original terrifying and replace it with dumbed down horror for brainless fans. Then again, when I see the younger reviewers on this site tear apart the original BLAIR WITCH as boring and "unscary", then maybe I get a better understanding of the adderall-fueled legions that this movie was trying to target.
Whether you liked the original film, or not, it definitely starts out with a much more interesting cast. The trio in the original have their annoying habits, but they are likable people with personalities. The characters in this one are as cardboard as it comes. The tragic hero looking for lost loved one. The jock. The weird stoners. All we're missing is the slut. Now, take these boring people and stick them out in the woods with no building sense of dread, at all. Replace that with instant terror that takes almost no time to build right, then endless shots of the characters walking around screaming each others names. Now, replace all of the subtlety of the original for loud noises and witches who have now become X-men villains, capable of ripping tents up out of the ground and knocking over trees. All of it leads to a house in the middle of nowhere, with a camera-shaking chase through random scenes of horror, more loud noises and crashes and tantalizing glimpses of a bad monster that we're probably better off having not seen in its' entirety but since viewers seem to be too unimaginative now to see a movie and have to imagine the monster rather than see it, we have to be given something.
I'm sounding a lot grumpier than I intended to, but this movie makes me mad. It's an all too perfect example of the sort of garbage horror that gets brought to the big screen while terrific movies go almost unnoticed on some streaming site that a few hundred people get to see. It's a reminder that Hollywood is completely afraid to back original horror and this mockery of the original doesn't deserve the Blair Witch name.
Let's Scare Jessica to Death (1971)
Let's Bore Jessica to Death
Yes, that pun was too easy.
We all have our own tastes. It's what makes sites like this fun and keeps the debates raging. It's what allows us to feel superior to others when we like a movie that we're sure is too smart for most people, or when we hate a movie that the "sheep" will flock to love. Often, with these sort of "cult classic" films, they get the moniker for a very good reason. A minority will treasure the movie and consider it to be a 10-star classic, while most are not going to understand the appeal. I have plenty of my own cult classic loves. This just isn't one of them.
I consider myself to be a horror junkie. I love horror dating back to silent classics and up through this year's releases. I love major studio and indie, domestic and foreign. I say this not to feel that my opinion is any more valid than anyone else's but to say that I think my ratings and reviews prove that I'm not narrow minded to one time era or style of horror. I would say, though, that there are few horror movies from the first half of the 70s that really stand out. Romero changed the game, in 69, with NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, introducing an amazing mixture of gut-churning gore and intelligent social messages in horror. It was revolutionary, but it also left horror struggling to figure itself out for a few years. There isn't a straight "style" to horror of this era. Most that I have seen fall into this genre, like LET'S SCARE, of looking low budget, feeling amateurish and trying very hard to inject artistic and social style, while playing for subtle creepiness. It's not an easy mixture to get right.
This film is about a hip young woman who leaves the big city with her musician husband and their hippie pal, setting out for the country to get her mind correct after a breakdown. We get a little bit of DELIVERANCE style scare as the townies don't take kindly to new flower children, driving around in their hearse. They settle into an old farmhouse, on an orchard, that happens to be inhabited by a squatter. The bulk of the picture spends its' time trying to spin a web of chilling frights where we're meant to question whether the events are real or in our heroine's mind. She starts unraveling as events get more terrifying around her until the final nefarious plot is revealed (or was it?).
The problem with the movie is that it's not half as clever as it thinks it is and spends far too much time boring the audience to death. I'm all for psychological horror. Some of my favorite horror films of all time would fall into that realm, but I need something more than a woman who talks to herself. That's basically the movie in a nutshell. Our heroine talking to herself. The two men in the house spend most of their time trying to get into the pants of our squatter, who is only marginally attractive and a little bit creepy. Shallow criticism, for sure, but if the whole plot is that I'm supposed to believe these men are falling over themselves to do her bidding, I'm not buying.
There is no atmosphere built and the movie is begging for it. Use the orchard. Use the creepy attic. Use some fog and the lake that surrounds their island home. Use some dreamlike cinematography. There are so many missed opportunities in this movie, that I just can't recommend it for most people. I see all these 10 star reviews and just can't understand it, at all, but to each his own. I rarely give movies a rating this low. I find that most movies fall into an medium of mediocrity that gets them an average rating, but I was so bored by this one and just waiting for it to end.
31 (2016)
I'm About to Give Up on Rob Zombie
I should have trusted the reviews, but then again, I wouldn't have mattered if it averaged a 1 score, I would have watched it for myself. I would have told you that I am a giant fan of Rob Zombie. I am not saying he can do no wrong. I think he, personally, is a d- bag. I hate his music. I think his HALLOWEEN remake is tolerable, at best, and the sequel is completely forgettable. On the other hand, I think that his two movies of the Firefly clan, HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES and DEVIL'S REJECTS are modern horror masterpieces and LORDS OF SALEM was good, as well, so I anticipated that despite bad reviews, I would still like this movie. How wrong I was.
I'm honestly struggling to come up with much positive to say but boy do I have a list of negatives. Let's start with his wife. She is the worst thing about most of his movies. While she fit her character as Baby and was pretty enough to tolerate, she was a big reason the HALLOWEEN sequel sucks. She is the main reason that LORDS OF SALEM is not better than it could have been, because of her lack of acting skills, then we get to this. I could have predicted, within the first 15 minutes, that she was our "final girl" that was going to survive all of this. I could have predicated that she would be the one to become a bada** for no reasonable explanation, other than the director's obsession with his wife. The girl can't act. In fact, she borders on being annoying and her voice is like nails on a chalkboard at times. Hire another actress for crying out loud, Rob, who might be able to make the audience have a little empathy for the character.
Now, let's get to the plot. The second that EG Daily shows up at the gas station, any idiot knows that she is the "scout" and things are about to go wrong. From there, Rob starts stealing material from every movie known to man and even stealing his own material repeatedly, starting with a scene in the middle of the road that is basically Otis on the cross stopping the tourists in HOUSE all over again. Our heroes wake up in a strange place to realize that they are now in THE RUNNING MAN, only King's story and the Arnold movie version are at least fun and let the audience have a some excitement with their violence. This movie just starts repeating itself over and over.
Rob must really like greasepaint. The clown look fit Captain Spaulding well in his first movies, but now we have a cast full of evil clown villains because, hey, that's not about the most overdone cliché in horror now, is it? The characters are barely unique from each other. It's basically here's a clown. He's dead. Here's two clowns. They're dead, let's bring out two more. None of them develop anything memorable or frightening, in any way. That is, until we get to our final villain, but more on him later.
The movie sets itself up to be a violent spectacle in gore. Zombie loves to spread the red stuff and I fully expected that here, but the movie is so short on real gore as to be disappointing. I'm not some sicko who wants blood and brains everywhere, but I do have some expectations. Basically, prepare yourself for stabbings, stabbings and more stabbings. That's about all you'll get here. It's a crazed maze full of psychotic villains who just want to stab people.
The worst part may be the directing, itself. I am not one of the legion who hated Zombie's style in his early films. It was manic. It was very MTV. Those things worked so well in the context of those movies, though. I thought the inter-spliced scenes and vintage film styling added a lot to the movies. Here, though, it's almost as if Zombie gets exposed without the budget to play with in this movie. Once he can't go nuts with the effects and the movie relies on his actual skill as a film maker, it falls apart. Freeze frame, wipe shot with snapshot of heroes, freeze frame, back to action. Repeat that throughout the movie. At a certain point, I found myself wondering if I really enjoyed his earlier movies as much as I thought because this is so bad it can't be the same guy.
The one positive is Doom Head. It's probably the same things most viewers would say. However, the fact is that there's nothing about his villain that is any different from thousands of other horror villains before him. He's a psycho. He's violent. He's got a chillingly cold apathy towards the destruction that he's inflicting on his victims. He's "not a clown" as the beginning is very clear to tell us. The fact is that people latch on to him because the rest of the movie is so bad that he becomes a breath of fresh air, but he's so far from the level of Otis or Captain Spaulding as far as great horror villains go. He's just the best thing in a bad movie.
So, I guess my opinion of Zombie is 2 great movies, 2 bad movies and one in the middle. Let's hope his next one tips the scales in a good way instead of bad.
The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953)
It's a Great Movie but Won't Be for Everyone
I love classic horror films. I watch a lot of them, so I have grown an appreciation for them. I can tolerate older styles of acting and film making that I recognize a lot of newer fans will not appreciate. That doesn't make their tastes any better or worse than mine, just different. There are some classic movies that I would recommend to anyone and everyone. A movie like FRANKENSTEIN or THE THING is just so classic and timeless that anyone should love it. There are the bottom end classic horrors, like the Universal sequels that I would acknowledge are really for lovers of the genre only and wouldn't expect Joe Public to like, at all. This movie fits somewhere in the middle of those two categories. It is not going to be loved by everyone. That's okay. On the other hand, there is a lot that's really enjoyable about this movie that makes me believe it is not just for the drive-in junkies either.
Of course, what will always get talked about the most with this movie is the special effects. That may be a good or a bad thing. I cannot imagine my 17-year old nephew, for example, looking at this movie and thinking "those effects kick butt". For those who can appreciate the history of a genre, though. For those who can look at a movie like this and see the landmark effect that it had on things to come, there is a lot to love here.
The movie reminds me a great deal of THE THING at the beginning. A group of scientists at work in the arctic, testing weaponry. The massive explosions that they set off have the undesired effect of unlocking a prehistoric monster from its' frozen hibernation (we'll ask you to ignore what you know of cold-blooded physiology and the fact that the animal would never wake up again. That's not relevant if you suspend belief). Naturally, nobody believes the first person who sees the monster, even after leaves the arctic and sinks a ship. Seems nobody will believe our hero until the giant lizard shows up in the Big Apple ready to destroy some stuff.
The movie definitely shows its' 50sness (yes, I made up a word). We get a lot of scientific mumbo jumbo and scenes of theorizing that attempt to make the plot seem possible for the audience. Seemed every 50s film from CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON to MOLE PEOPLE shares this trait. It's the kind of a movie where military men will suddenly take orders from a random scientist and his involve his secretary girlfriend in their plans for no other reason than because they are the main stars of the movie.
None of that is important, though, if you can have some imagination. What is really important, here, are the effects. Harryhausen took what he learned from his early age, working on KING KONG, and applied it to created a monster that is far superior to most of what you'll see in 50s monster movies. The monster moves fairly believably. It looks great and it blends in with the background scenery as well as can be expected for its' era. The movie was a monumental impact on the creation of GOJIRA a year later and the entire kaiju genre. For us monster junkies, that in itself, makes this movie legendary.
The Howling (1981)
One of the Best of the 80s
I am a horror connoisseur. I watch a whole lot of horror movies. My favorite mini-genre of horror is the werewolf film. I have been obsessed with werewolves since I was a little guy. Unfortunately, I probably can't even come up with 20 great werewolf movies. Though Hollywood has glutted us with vampire and zombie flicks, the werewolf remains a rarity. I believe part of that is the struggle people seem to have to craft a unique werewolf story. The other part is the challenge of presenting a believable werewolf makeup that looks good. Joe Dante was able to accomplish both of these things (with help from Rob Bottin, of course).
Dee Wallace (who is gorgeous in this movie) is a news reporter who has been receiving phone calls from a serial killer named Eddie Quist. She helps the police to set up a sting operation to try to capture Quist, but it doesn't go as planned and she is almost killed before the police save the day and kill Quist (or did they?). Now, she has memory blocks and nightmares, so her shrink advises her to go to a new age camp to get the help she needs. Only there is much more to this camp that it seems and it might just be a village full of werewolves.
What Dante does well to begin with, story-wise, is to avoid the origin story. This was a prerequisite of most werewolf movies before this, that all followed the blueprint created in WEREWOLF OF London. Hero gets bit by werewolf, hero becomes werewolf, movie focuses on the tragedy of his/ her situation. Literally, they pretty much all followed that blueprint until THE HOWLING. By bringing us something fresh, Dante brought something new to the formula that has helped it to stand the test of time.
Dante, also, crams this movie full of easter eggs for fans. Beginning with the casting choices. Kenneth Tobey (the hero of THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD) is a cop in the beginning. Patrick Macnee as the doctor. John Carradine as an aging werewolf. Slim Pickens as the sheriff. Even more so are the myriad werewolf references. Go through the list of character names and you will notice that almost all of them are named for directors of classic werewolf pictures. The backgrounds are full of little wolf references, from the books they read to the chili they eat, it's like a Where's Waldo of werewolf lore and so fun for a werewolf nut like myself to dig through each time.
The makeup is maybe my favorite werewolf design of all time. Most early films used the "hairy guy" approach (think WEREWOLF OF London or THE WOLFMAN) where we get a guy on two legs with some extra yak hair. There was the cheap way out of using an actual dog (THE BEAST MUST DIE) or even AN American WEREWOLF IN London uses a creature that is basically just a dog. When I imagine a werewolf in my nightmares, neither are the monster I see. It should be an almost perfect amalgamation of the two creatures and THE HOWLING gives us that. Rob Bottin created something damn near perfect for this movie that I still haven't seen topped (DOG SOLDIERS comes close). If I have one nitpick it is the ears, which are too large, but I'm being too picky now.
The film keeps the action tight and the suspense at a maximum. We start to realize that there are more than one monster in these woods and it adds a terror of not just the werewolf(s) at the door, but the very fact that the heroes are up against an entire colony, adding that one vs all mentality that brings a whole new level to the plot complexion. It all wraps up in one heck of a climax.
There are weak spots, brought about mostly from the limitations of the budget. The animation in the sex scene is really bad. It was bad then and looks even worse now. The claymation used in the final chase is, also, very obvious. It's not EVIL DEAD bad, but it's not good either. Still, these small moments do not take away from the mastery of the special effects on display in this movie.
It's a shame that the movie will, really, forever live in the shadow of AN American WEREWOLF. Being released in the same year as what is, admittedly, a superior movie it never got a fair shake, but this movie remains one of the 5 best werewolf films of all time and one of the greatest horror films released in the 80s.
The Thing from Another World (1951)
The Movie that Spawned a Genre
There is really no doubt about it here, in my opinion. There are some examples of movies that people would qualify as being "sci-fi" prior to this classic. There were movies that co-mingled that idea of sci-fi with horror to some degree. None had the impact that this movie had on Hollywood. It launched the 50s sci-fi boom. It led to a legion of imitators. It created the blueprint for the entire history of sci-fi horror that comes after. Every ALIEN, PREDATOR, etc owes a debt to this film.
Despite the fact that there were so many imitators to follow in the 50s, none of them come close to this film's power. None seemed able to capture what it is that truly made this movie so great. A large part of this begins and ends with Howard Hawks. He is not credited as the director, but I'm not going to retread that familiar territory. Spielberg isn't credited as the director of POLTERGEIST, but we all know who's movie it is. Christian Nyby is forever a historical footnote. The guy who gets no credit for the success of THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD because it is so clearly Hawks film in every way. The hordes of b and c grade films to come after clearly never had that luxury.
I believe that one of the things that keeps this movie so tightly constructed is the co-mingling of military and science. Sure, other movies followed that blueprint, to varying degrees of success. I have seen A LOT of 50s drive-in films and a great portion of them tend to fall to far into one side or the other. The majority of them go too far into the science and forget the action. Too many nerds and not enough heroes, so to speak. We all know those movie I'm talking about where some scientist rambles on and on with big words and terms that almost sound made up, trying to forcibly to inject scientific credibility into its' monster. Too often, the end result reels like an old 60s educational film with made up mumbo jumbo that derails the movie. On the other hand, too much action without the scientific aspect of it, and some of the mystery is missing.
This movie perfectly encapsulates both sides of that formula. The scientists want to preserve and study the monster. They supply us with meaningful explanations of its' origins and the nature of the creature, without ever feeling hokey. The soldiers are perfect heroes, cracking wise while playing brave. They are bent on destroying the creature and act as the duality to the science in a perfect way.
The setting, also, has a lot to do with the success of this film. You feel the cold in a palpable way, especially when the heat goes out in the final act and the heroes have to deal not just with a monster, but with the stark reality of the nature around them. The history of horror and sci-fi has plenty of desert and jungle movies, but because of the natural difficulty in filming in the arctic, the snowy environment has not been done so much and it still feels fresh.
One of the most genius aspects of the movie is that gradual way that it introduces its' monster. The biggest problem with much of 50s sci-fi is that the creature designs left something to be desired, yet the film makers constantly made the poor decision to highlight the monstrosities far too much. The more we see the monster the more ridiculous it looks. We all know the cliché that our imaginations provide much more fear and terror than our eyes can ever conceive. This movie plays with that wisely. We get a quick glimpse at first, then a silhouette. It is not until the finale that we really get a chance to breathe in the monster in full glory and that makes this movie all the more impactful and terrifying. When we do get to see the monster, it is a great design, simple yet effective. Something more than human, but reminiscent enough to have added impact.
There are plenty of "classics" that film critics and buffs will tell you that you have to see. This is required viewing, though, an absolute classic that has stood the test of time and still carries terror.
The Fly (1986)
One of My Favorite Horror Films of All Time
This movie should have two things going against it in my book. First, I can't stand remakes. I can name you probably a handful of remakes in horror that I actually enjoy. To me, if a movie is a classic, there is really no reason to remake it. After all, nobody rewrites great novels. Nobody repaint classic works of art. Why are we, as an audience, so willing to accept a remade movie?
The other thing is that I am not, generally, a fan of the work of Cronenberg. He is an artist. He makes good movies. I won't argue with either of those things from a critical point of view. To make a bad analogy, I understand that there are world famous Italian chefs, but I just don't like Italian food. It's just not my style. In the same way, I never got into Cronenberg. His style of "body horror" is too rooted in geeky sci-fi themes for me. It's too cerebral, at times, and doesn't give me enough absolute brutality.
So, should I like a remake made by a director I don't like? I don't like it. I love it. It's such a fantastic piece of horror cinema and full of poetic moments. A huge part of the success of this movie belongs to Jeff Goldblum, who is just so good in this role. You could say that he was perfect for the role, but you could argue that the role is perfect because of him. His style of "my brain is moving faster than my mouth can keep up" acting brings a charm and intelligence to Seth Brundle that makes him such a likable character and so perfect as a scientist. He evinces that obsession that can make the audience truly believe in why he would push himself into the situation that causes this disaster. Once his experiment is completed and the change begins, that same chaotic style of acting makes him a believable proto-human as well.
The special effects still hold really well for a movie that is 30 years old. I will concede that the final creature creation when he metamorphoses completely into a fly feels a little dated, but on the same token even that design still looks better than most of the crappy CGI I see now. It is the gradual transformation that is done so well. Rather than taking the approach of the original and having him instantly a half-fly creature, Seth slowly disintegrates into the fabric of the fly. Those makeup jobs along the way are really well done and so memorable. That scene where he first throws up in his food and an ear falls off is forever classic, mostly due to how believable the makeup is in that scene.
What pushes the whole thing into classic territory is the poetic tragedy of the entire movie. Like the best tragic villains, Seth is struggling against the evil inside himself the entire way. He wants to maintain his humanity, but is slowly losing his touch with it. Goldblum does such a great job at portraying this that we never see him as a "bad guy". Even when he is scaring the hell out of the other characters, we are still cheering for him to be redeemed. The writing helps this, too. There are lines in this movie, oft quoted, that are just spot on perfect. I mean "I'm an insect who dreamt he was a man and loved it, but now the dream is over....and the insect is awake". There are many of these lines that full of such intelligence.
I can't praise this movie enough. It's Cronenberg's best work. It's one of the greatest remakes ever. It's one of the best horror movies of the 80s. Frankly, it's one of the greatest horror films ever.
Would You Rather (2012)
Jeffrey Combs is Magnificent
I have seen this movie 3 or 4 times now. There are movies that see once and think "that was pretty good". Especially when dealing with low budget horror, there are tons of options out there on streaming sites any more. You get so used to seeing complete garbage on a regular basis, that there are times you encounter something above average and overvalue it, mainly because it was better than you expected. Typically, though, you watch that same movie a second time and find yourself wondering exactly what you saw in it the first time around. This is NOT one of those movies. Even though the initial shock is gone, the surprise of what will happen next is ruined, the movie still keeps you entertained, that's when you know you have a great movie.
Brittany Snow is a young woman taking care of her younger brother, who's dealing with cancer. The movie does a good job of using the introductory moments to introduce us to the woman, her connection with her brother, the reasons she has been left with the burden and the struggles that she is dealing with and it does all of that with an absolute leanness and effectiveness. It leads up to her being introduced to Jeffrey Combs, a rich guy offering a deal. She is invited to a dinner party, where they will play a game. The winner get enough money to eliminate all of their life's problems that the promise that her brother will get his transplant within days.
The party includes Snow and Combs, along with The Penguin from GOTHAM as a spoiled rich kid son of Combs. Crabman from MY NAME IS EARL is one of the participants, along with the dad from HOME ALONE, June Squib in a wheelchair, one of the TRAILER PARK BOYS as a gambler, a war vet, a goth girl with a bad attitude and a generic "good guy". The party starts off intriguingly, with Combs offering a vegetarian cash to eat meat and an alcoholic money to drink booze. We see that he's getting people to make choices and decide how much they are willing to give up on their ethics and morals for the promise of the almighty dollar. Then, the game gets serious and our participants realize that they have made a deal with the devil.
Of course, the real game is "would you rather", a children's game we've all played. Only in this version, the participants needs to actually act on their choices and those choices become ever more violent and gruesome. Often they are left with the choice to hurt another or to take punishment on themselves. Combs has brought along a squad of former torture agents to ensure that the participants follow through on those actions, as well.
It may sounds somewhat silly as a premise from the outside, but the movie is done so well, that every decision of full of tension and each punishment is harder and harder for the audience to watch. I hate the term "torture porn". I think it's usually used by people who don't understand horror, or appreciate enough, but this is far from what anyone would call "torture porn" anyways. Yes, there are elements of torture, there is serious bodily harm and there of moments that will make the audience wince, but this is not, in any way, the "point of the movie". All of the focus is on these actors, who do a great job of portraying the agonizing choices they each must make along the way.
Leading that cadre of actors, though, is Jeffrey Combs, who is absolutely magnificent. Full of gracious courtesy at the beginning, he is the typical dinner party host, offering wonders to his guests. Even as the he begins inflicting serious harm upon the guests, he plays the role with such finesse that he never truly comes across as malevolent. He encourages the guests when they do well, while at the same time enjoying their pain. The is not here to hurt so much as to play game show host to a murderous game. There are these subtle moments when he shows ironic sympathy for his guests that give his character such great duality.
If I have one complaint about the movie it is the ending. I don't want to say too much. I am usually the kind of guy defending bleak endings and I think it fit the the tone of the film, but it just felt so unfair.