Questionably Intelligent

Fright Night, Fright Night, Tucker and Dale vs. Evil, Black Swan

2011-08-29T15:44:00.000-07:00

Alright internet, lets get this ball rolling. I am finally done being a human pin-cushion, which is nice. I was a test subject in a research project at UMass Amherst, wherein they worked my left leg until it was a useless noodle and then drew six vials of my blood for a week while tracking its healing progress. Needless to say, this kept me exhausted all week. Capping it off I started Seroquel a few days ago, so more reason to be tired. Having been tired for most of my adult life, this isn't too new though I guess.

Well, enough of the personal life updates, lets talk horror movies. A classic, a remake of the that classic, a structural reversal of an American slasher, and a modern blockbuster that took everyone by surprise. Sounds like fun, but I will keep my rambling to a minimum in the interest of catching up still.

Classic horror poster right here!

Fright Night is just one of those iconic 80's horror movies that you either grew up loving or you just missed the boat, so to speak. It has a master Vampire setting up shop next to our intrepid young hero and horror fan, and of course people start to go missing. Our hero begins to become suspicious and draws a bit too much attention to himself and those around him. Cue disaster and epic showdowns.

Its a fun movie, even now years later. Some of its moments are a bit strange, the sexual frustration of our teenage male hero because his teen Girlfriend won't put out is a bit creepy to watch, and more so when the aged vampire makes his advances on her as well. Sure hes an immortal creature of evil, but hes still being a bit of a pedophile at times with that thread. Otherwise the annoying friend, disbelieving parent, and washed up professional character types are timeless and enjoyable to watch.

"Maybe we should wait to have sex..."

It can slide into static moments of nothing going on at times, but tends to get back on task fast enough. The final showdown in a mansion of the undead is intense and very watchable, but toward the final moments can drag on. The master vampire takes a whole lot of abuse before finally falling, and they smash more windows then any basement should reasonably have. Its a classic movie, and any fan of the genre would be remiss to not have seen this at least once.

You can imagine, seeing just how classic it is, that I was a bit hesitant to see the Fright Night remake. I shouldn't have been, because it may actually be better then the original in many ways. The character updates make for a much tighter movie in the end. The annoying friend is no longer annoying, but rather a sympathetic figure who was abandoned by his friend. Our hero is a geek looking to find more social acceptance, and so his friend is shunned and ostracized as sacrifice for the position.

He is so awesome in this, you have no idea.

When his former friend comes to him for help and starts the suspicion for our hero, it actually personalizes the future action so much better. The friends acceptance of the vampires offer is directly the fault of the hero, rather then being merely something that happens. It raises the stakes much more efficiently. All the characters are effectively upgraded really, and unnecessary ones are dropped. Its just a tighter more focused story all around.

The best upgrades through and through are David Tennant and Colin Farrell, as the vampire slayer and the master vampire, respectively. Farrell brings such a smug and powerful presence with him in every scene he is in. He makes for one imposing and hypnotically likable master vampire. As great as he is though, no one compares to Tennant's performance as an egocentric and drunk coward of the occult. He steals every scene he is in with ease, even when all hes doing is complaining about the effects of leather pants on ones balls. Again, the character is improved upon the original by changing his motivation from that of a wash-up to one of a running coward with personal investment in the situation.

Gotta have faith.

If you are a fan or not of the original is irrelevant, this movie is just a damn good time anyone can enjoy. I saw it in 3D, but I also didn't have a choice in the matter. The 3D was fine, not too distracting, and only campy in a few select locations. I still tend to hate 3D, so see whichever you prefer.

Tucker and Dale vs. Evil is a movie I have been consistently excited about for so very long. I think its been close to a year since I first saw previews for this movie, and I'm so happy it finally got some distribution. The wait was worth it, because its every bit as amazing as I had hoped it would be.

Hunt this down and see it, you will thank me.

We have covered a number of movies where some teens enter some backwoods and find terrible fates at the hands of some hillside hicks/mutants. Its basically horror movie Americana, if your in the backwoods, then you are also within five miles of a murderous killer, almost certainly one with a red neck. Tucker and Dale is all about spinning that on its head, reversing the expectations. The backwoods rednecks are the heroes, and they are just trying to enjoy the good life in a summer home by a lake.

Of course the necessary truck full of teens arrives and think they are creepy killers right off the bat. When one of the girls almost drowns, Tucker saves her and brings her back to their cabin, leading the teens to believe they are going to kill her. They then begin hilariously disastrous rescue attempts, which always end in their own deaths. Teens hurl themselves into wood-chippers due to mistimed tackles, impale themselves on branches while running away, and shoot themselves because guns are confusing.

"Officer, these kids have been killin' themselves all over my property!"

It all culminates in a very fun reveal you would expect in a movie like this, "my god, I'm related to the killer!," style moment. The most aggressive teen becomes our disfigured killer in the final moments, and its up to our redneck heroes save the girl. The writing is witty and filled with little nods to the forefathers of the genre, the deaths are all hilarious and well done, and the pacing is spot on.

This movie loves the genre, and it shows. Its a brilliant horror comedy, and its damn well worth your time to watch. Check it out.

More to it then a lesbian sex scene.

Black Swan made a great deal of noise this last award season, and for good reason what with Darren Aronofsky directing it. Tricking everyone by calling itself a psychological thriller instead of a horror film, it took everyone by surprise. First of all, this movie is incredibly beautiful. The cinematography is masterfully done, every scene is composed in just the right ways, and draws exactly what it needs out of you.

On some levels, I love Black Swan as much as I do for personal reasons. The anxiety and paranoia that comes with passion can be terrifying. The need to do one thing perfectly can be all consuming, and the breakdown of reality can be subtle and damaging. Then you add in the outside world, the pressures of family, the scrutiny of those better then you, and the fear of being replaced can tear you apart at the seams. The movies subtle growth from merely unstable to unhinged when it comes to our protagonist is well done to say the least.

Those of you with anxiety and sleep disorders know how scary this can be.

Minor background objects distort at first, and soon you and the star are both unsure if what you just saw was real or not. By the end you don't even know which characters are real, what has actually happened, or just how sick this drive is making our protagonist. With light touches of the surreal and more then a few toes dipped in the outright horror pool with mocking pictures and paintings pushing our heroine deeper into madness, its a trip of a movie.

Of course all this self destruction builds to a head, and we end with the strangest production of swan lake you could imagine. I love Darren Aronofsky, so I of course suggest this to anyone who likes the stranger end of the movie spectrum, where your never quite certain whats going on.

She must be, like, so high.

I will now resume being forever tired and trying to keep my head above the water. For more reviews and the full list of movies: The 150 Days of Halloween.

150 Days of Halloween: C.H.U.D., Creep, End of the Line, Midnight Meat Train

2011-08-22T23:58:00.000-07:00

Spent all weekend doing makeup and effects for a short horror movie, so sorry for the late post. As the guy doing the FX, I didn't exactly have free hands to take any pictures, but once they come online, you can expect to see them! It was a whole lot of tumors, puss, blood, and elephant man style makeup. Good messy times.

Most of us have at least been to a city before, many live in them. What has always fascinated me in whats under the city, the miles of tunnels, pipes, and caverns of decrepit infrastructure. Understandably this makes for a common horror theme, so today we run through four movies that revolve around the hidden lives and deaths that pound in the hidden hearts of cities everywhere. I won't be covering Kontroll because its not very Halloween-ish, but if you ever want to see an incredible subway movie, check it out.

I want to believe this happens.

Anyway, can't rightly mention the terrors under a city without talking about the classic and constantly referenced C.H.U.D. You may have never seen this movie, but you have almost certainly heard it referenced before in a show you like. The Simpsons, Futurama, Castle, and Robot Chicken all come to mind, but many more have made off hand comments to the cannibalistic humanoid underground dwellers that appeared in the 80's.

This has everything you want and need in an 80's horror movie, you get your gore inflicted by men in crazy mutant suites, corrupt government officials you hate, cheesy lines and moments. Hell, this movie even goes and gives you no less then THREE classic hero archetypes to work with. You get the unwilling hero who just wants to do his own thing, the crazy and paranoid guy who was right all along, and the grizzled old cop who can no longer play by the rules. Its like four different awesome 80's movies fell into a blender and out popped this amazing gem of cheesy horror.

"WHAT AM I!?"

Its stuffed to the gills with random things happening, plenty of monsters, and satisfying moments of people getting what they deserve. This is just a must see for B-movie fans. At no point was I not having fun during this movie, which is high praise for a movie.

Then you have Creep. Oh Creep, you could have been a good movie. A woman at a party rebuffs some sleazeballs advances, and the informs her friends that she has word that George Clooney will be at a party later. She intends to seduce and bang Mr. Clooney come hell or high water, and leaves the party in a drunkenly determined manner. She falls asleep on the platform, and when she awakes everything is closed down and locked up. She is trapped, or appears to be, until a train arrives. We see the conductor dead, and know she has some trouble coming her way. Out comes the sleazy guy who attempts to rape her, like a sleazy bastard.

"Sorry about that rape attempt before."

Then a malformed sewer mutant dude pops out and kills him, and spends the rest of the movie trying to kill her, but mostly succeeds in killing anyone she meets in the tunnels. What the movie does well is the killer, we have only the briefest glimpses into what could have been its origins, nothing is ever fully explained. I love that, I like a movie to have a world bigger then I am privy to. What I don't like is for everyone in the movie to be completely devoid of reason and intelligence.

The victims will knock our killer out for a moment, and then drop all weapons and run back into the maze of tunnels they know nothing about. They never take that second swing to finish the deed, and within ten minutes a character will die because of it. This happens SEVERAL TIMES. Hell, even the killer does this sometimes, like it has sadistic killer ADD. Lets the heroes run off so it can brutally kill someone he already has strapped to a chair.

Don't worry, she drops the weapon and extends the movie many times.

When the movie can clearly end, but doesn't because a character is functionally brainless, it ruins the rest of the movie by making it all seem sadly arbitrary. Creep is well done when it comes to atmosphere, makeup, and some of the acting, but the ride itself is underwhelming.

Love this movie.

Then you have a total surprise, like End of the Line. A clever Canadian movie I had never even heard of before that presents the viewers with everything they need to understand the movie fully without question, but doesn't explicitly state any of it. If your an observant viewer, you know exactly whats happening. You know whats real, what imagined, and why. If you don't notice details and pay full attentions, its still functional as a movie, but you just don't know for sure whats real, which is awesome. I love that in a movie, subtle layers.

As per our theme, this takes place in the confines of the man-made underground. Unlike the last two mentioned, this one doesn't involve any monsters or malformed creatures. This is all humanity at play, and that is a very important fact. A cult, upon receiving a mass text from their leader, suddenly draw daggers and swords and begin to cut down everyone around them, trying to save all of their souls. You see, they believe the apocalypse is coming, and can see the signs of demons coming. They are told the only way to save everyone is to kill them, and so the knives come out.

"Nevermind! I'll take a pamphlet!"

Of course for those not in the cult, this isn't totally appealing, and so our survivors work through the subway system trying to get to the surface for help, despite knowing its just as bad above. What makes this more then just a mediocre movie of people running and other people stabbing are those signs. Some of our heroes can see those signs, demons creeping about and hearing voices, casting doubts on whats real and whats not. Again, for the observant viewer, they know exactly whats happening, but for those that miss a few details they enjoy some ambiguity. Either way is an enjoyable and valid experience.

I also have to admit to loving a movie with such a blatant message about the dangers of fundamentalism in society. Hell, one of the heroes is reading Caral Sagan's The Demon Haunted World. It's brilliant.

I love you Vinnie Jones.

Lastly we have one of my guilty pleasures, Midnight Meat Train. Actually, you know what, its not even guilty. I like this movie, I really do. I would argue its one of the best Clive Barker adaptions, possibly even better then Hellraiser. For a movie with a name like Midnight Meat Train, I know that's not exactly expected, but it really is surprisingly competent.

On the surface you have a serial killer who is killing people on the late night trains, and a photographer who manages to find himself obsessed with the idea of it all after a woman he saves from some attackers goes missing. In these early sections the movie effectively pulls off gory kills, some decent scares, and suspense from the imposing Vinnie Jones. As our hero progresses mystery enters the fold, and he begins to question just what it is he is trying to uncover. Soon things turn supernatural and you really know your in a Clive Barker film.

If you love him too, he won't butcher you.

This movie does what it wants to do, and is unapologetic about it, it slides between the various sub-genres of horror when it needs to, and it does it well. Its not a perfect movie, of course not, but when I caught it on late night TV a few years back, I was pleasantly surprised by what I expected would be a terrible movie. Instead I got a movie with a few decent surprises in it, good gore, and a cast and crew that were clearly all in it for the joy of making a horror movie.

Also its on the subway a whole bunch, in case you missed the theme here today.

"After the next picture, I'll help."

A weekend of filming, and now a week of letting some people take my blood and run tests on me. Fun! I will be tired all the time! Here is that link! The 150 Days of Halloween.

150 Days of Halloween: Burke and Hare, The Crazies, Frontier(s), Evil Dead 1 and 2

2011-08-18T16:12:00.000-07:00

One day everything will smooth out, and this will get updated once a day again. I look forward to those days everyone. I really do. I'll be doing some horror movie effects this weekend for a short film, which I will hopefully get to post up here sometime after its done. So that is both exciting and preemptively exhausting for someone who can barely get the energy to watch a movie these days.

Anyway, lets hop right into speed reviewing some movies, shall we?

How can you not want to watch this?

First we have a surprise edit to the list in the form of Burke and Hare. Why did this replace a movie? Because I wanted it to, that's why! Also I couldn't find the movie originally meant to be watched, so whatever. Burke and Hare is John Landis' newest movie, unlike the other adaptation of the duo's story, Landis' version is much more of a black comedy. So not really horror, but still Halloween appropriate. Landis' is of course someone we will be seeing again, since An American Werewolf in London is a personal favorite and is also on the list.

I loved it, to be right up front about it. I have always loved Landis' sense of humor, and its here in all its blacker aspects for us to enjoy. Death and dismemberment are served up part droll and part slapstick, with mortality being close to meaningless in the world presented. The upper class of the medical world fight for cadavers to further the sciences, the poor scramble over one another to make enough survive, and out two heroes land right in the middle of it. A market exists, and they intend to supply the demand for bodies, at first via happy accident, and then by murder.

This was my first career choice too.

If you like black comedy, then jump in and have a good time. Simon Pegg is always great, and that remains true throughout the experience. The hapless killers stumbling through the profession always delivers, and Tim Curry waltzes on screen to saw off feet from time to time. You can't lose.

Now with 90% more people killing.

You may recall that I reviewed The Crazies earlier. Well this is the remake. Reread my first review but delete everything about the drama regarding a cure, politics, and the inner workings of the government and military. You now have a very short and boring movie, right? Well, the remake fixes that by filling all this new space with murder. Murder, murder, and more murder. You get all kinds of people dying in all kinds of ways, its a much more typical modern horror movie with gross out scares and jump scares.

Tension is only ever achieved by making you wonder just when a supporting character will snap, or keeping a character strapped to a table while a crazy guy with a pitchfork slowly impaled everyone else strapped to tables. To be honest I actually enjoyed this more then the original. Yes, its predictable and unoriginal, but more happens in surprising ways compared to the original. It holds your attention much more affectingly, and that is entirely due to the aging of the original.

Now that's just good makeup design.

What I can praise unconditionally is the makeup of the movie. They makeup and effects artists did an amazing job of making the crazies look infected, sick, and under intense strain. Muscles and veins bulge and eyes are jaundiced. They look like what you would image radioactive rabies patients would look like, and its an impressive sight to behold. If you want some cerebral contact with your movie, see the original. If you want blood, guts, and a bit of a faster pace, catch this remake.

What is going on in the subconscious of France?!

Frontier(s) is another French film, and it does nothing to alter my understanding of the French being depraved violence obsessed people. Well, that's not true, I don't see them that way, but they certainly love the brutality in their horror movies. This is another film with uncomfortably in your face violence, horrible things happening to people, and a cast of antagonists totally devoid of morality.

Fleeing a bank robbery they pulled at the height of civil unrest and violence in the streets of Paris, our heroes flee to the countryside of France. When this eventually gets remade into an American film, it would be like someone robbing a bank in Austin TX during civil unrest and winding up in the backwoods of middle America where movies tell us inbred killers are constantly waiting. Anyway, they arrive at a shitty little motel run by some creepy people. Can you guess what happens next?

Nazi's were cannibals?

Well, it turns out these people are all inbred Nazi's who worship their father, a surviving SS officer. They kill and eat anyone who enters the area and use any women who are genetically fair enough for breeding and brainwashing. Our heroes all die in terrible ways, and our female character endures mental and physical abuse in preparation for her new life. Once the last of her friends dies in terrible ways, she breaks free and begins killing everyone in an escape/revenge scenario.

Besides its unrelenting brutality, its fairly generic. Characters make terrible choices that get them killed or artificially extend the tension. Like our female hero, she kills a guy machine gun wielding baddie and leaves to reenter a maze of tunnels where more killers are looking for her. Notice how I didn't mention her taking that machine gun? That's because she didn't. She left it on the floor. Next to the dead dude. Of course she gets beaten up more, she left a loaded machine gun on the fucking floor, and not for the first time in the movie either, its like she has a gun allergy.

Example of terrible thing happening to good guy.

Anyway, if you liked the last several brutal French new wave horror films, then of course this if for you.

These movies are CLASSICS. You see them or you are just a bad person.

Evil Dead 1 and Evil Dead 2 I will cover in one go, because 2 is basically a remake of 1. Evil Dead is about a bunch of friends who use a cabin in the woods for a fun weekend. However, they find a mysterious book and a recording of someone reading from the book. This is of course The Necronomicon, one of the most important and dangerous books in the Lovecraftian word, and it releases evil and horrors upon the cabin.

Someone gets raped by a tree in a uncomfortable scene and everyone but Bruce Campbell died in terrible ways and return to make life harder on him. He eventually manages to succeed in killing everything and ending the whole mess.

"Hey bro!"

Which is why Evil Dead 2 is so great, because everyone arrives at the same cabin and the same book/recording disaster happens again. Its either a remake, or this was another dimension where similar problems plague cabins in the woods. The main differences here, however, are in tone. The first movie really tries to be a horror movie, and succeeds in some moments, but is ultimately goofy. For the second movie everyone arrived ready to make that same movie, but determined to have fun doing it.

The horror comes paired with slapstick moments. Tree rape is replaced with a sentient severed hand and a chainsaw replacement for the stump. Campbell is no longer a hapless hero, he is a normal man forced to become an ultimate bad-ass as he fights off the evil. His friends all die off way faster, leaving him with more screen time to react to horrors and monsters. Its just all around more satisfying an experience. It also sets the tone well for its sequel, Army of Darkness, which really embraces the comedy aspects of the series.

Read is autobiography for some really funny onset stories.

The Evil Dead series is required watching by anyone who even thinks the like horror. If you haven't seen them, then you are a bad person until you do.

Micro-reviews like this will be the standard for awhile, at least until I catch up to my list. Or a really crazy movie pops up and surprises me. In other news 30 Minutes or Less was way less funny then it should have been, even watching it in a less then sober state failed to really make it worth while. Cowboys and Aliens is kind of bland in many ways, if you could edit the thing down to just Daniel Craig being awesome and Harrison Ford making angry faces it would be more fun. The aliens were also living, walking plot holes in so many ways. Rise of the Planet of the Apes was actually a pretty competent movie, despite the fact that they mix up some of the science behind how virus and genetic therapy work, but whatever, still more fun then the other two movies combined. Winnie the Pooh is the best one I have seen in theaters out of these four.

Can you win this game? Try!

As always, here is that link. The 150 Days of Halloween. Oh, and we are also hosting a competition over at Nightmare Mode for a free Steam key to Space Pirates and Zombies. So head over to try and win a game.

150 Days of Halloween: The Fly, Dawn of the Dead, The Ninth Gate, The Crazies

2011-08-12T23:48:00.000-07:00

Still going crazy and falling behind at everything I do! Hooray for that?

Anyway, lets bang out some poorly written reviews while I have the clarity of mind, shall we? Short and sweet today, whatever I manage to have tumble out of my head.

Gotta love this movie.

The Fly is a classic science fiction story, the man who goes too far and suffers the consequences. One of the quintessential horrors of science stories. A scientist who develops a teleporter, a device that would change everything we know about travel and supply lines, decides to test the device on himself. Of course any safety precautions are ignored entirely and a fly winds up in the system with him, and the two merge tragically. Then you hand that story to David Cronenberg and everything just gets all kinds of extra weird with a bit of creepy sexuality tossed in. Its how he rolls, afterall.

Forgoing the classic, "heeeelp meeee," line for hefty doses of grotesque prosthetics and stomach acid, he certainly puts his own twist on the story. Our scientist, Dr. Brundle, shows his device to a reporter and promises her exclusive coverage in exchange for secrecy. His social awkwardness endears her, and soon they are happily together exploring the frontiers of science together, her physical affection helping him to conquer the problem of his device turning things inside out. All is well and good until his own social awkwardness makes him jealous and impulsive and he teleports himself, with that fly along for the ride of course.

An example of a Brundlefly.

Slowly he transforms into Brundlefly, losing more and more of his humanity and his mind as he pukes acid on food and people to feed. Once over the edge he decides the only solution is to merge himself with another human, the love interest of course, to reclaim some humanity. Instead he gets to merge with some lovely bits of metal and get shot by a weeping lover. If you love Cronenberg then you don't need me to tell you this is a wonderful movie with all of his usual... um... charms. The effects are suitably moist and gross, the acting is all pitch perfect with just a hint of 80's camp, and its just a fun sci-fi horror romp.

SUCH a good poster.

Dawn of the Dead is the second chapter in Romero's classic zombie story, and is an improvement in almost all ways. Having proved himself with Night, he now has a bigger budget, a bigger story, and all around better assets to tell his story with. It follows survivors in an increasingly deteriorating society that is crumbling under the shambling steps of the undead. A lucky few manage to find a mall, and make themselves at home, indulging in a consumerist cultures wet dream and for a few, reveling in the ability to kill the undead with impunity.

Its a Romero film, so of course the zombies are nothing more then an environmental hazard, its the people that matter. The ugly, stupid, and base humans who enjoy the surroundings despite the dangers. The consumerism angle is, surprisingly, better explored in the re-make, but this one still does a fine job all the same. What the re-make left out however, is the roving gang of violent bikers who believe might makes right. Humans are the real monsters only works as an angle when you have some real assholes to wreck shit after all.

The oldest zombie.

Come for the zombies, stay for people being terrible to one another and the tragic lives that sputter out like candles in a sharp breeze.

The Ninth Gate is yet another Roman Polanski movie on this here list. What can I say, I like the guys work. This is another movie that despite some mystical elements is really all about how people are, ultimately, dicks.

Books. Never been so exciting.

Depp is a antisocial rare books dealer who lies and manipulates his way to the top of the trade. He is respected for his ruthless tactics by the rich and despised by honest appraisers who don't have the stomach to rob grieving families. This being a horror movie, we of course need more then rare books and snarky comments out of Depp to keep the story moving along. One of those rich clients of his makes him an incredible offer to travel the globe and compare one copy of an incredibly rare book on the devil against the only other two remaining copies.

The trip soon turns deadly as it becomes apparent that he isn't the only one interested in these books. Whenever he comes into contact with one, the owner dies and Depp is attacked. Soon enough he is less interested in the money and more interested in the mystery behind the books and the pages in each supposedly created by Satan himself. He of course wants it for himself by the end.

"Yep. That's a book alright."

This is a flawed movie, but its a damn fun one besides the flaws. Depp always delivers, and the tension surrounding the mouldering books that are so feared and revered makes for a truly engaging movie. It makes the book trade seem as intense as Indiana Jones did for archeology, which is no small feat. Its an enjoyable mystery movie, so you should check it out if your ever bored and want to see something a bit different.

Lastly we have The Crazies, Romero's original version as opposed to the remake. I won't go into the remake too much, as it will get its own review, but I will touch on two key differences. The remake is visceral and intense, with characters often in danger and the insane people of the town along with the deadly determined military are always uncomfortably close. Its much more brutal and effective as a scary movie. The original, on the other hand, is a Romero movie, which means it came here with a message first and scares second. Unlike the remake this one spends equal time with the survivors looking to escape as it does with the military trying to fix the mess, making for a very different kind of movie from its remake.

Because you poisoned them. Also shot them.

This split focus makes it much more about the evils of bureaucracy, military control, and government cover ups. People are just inconvenient statistics to the government, where lives mean nothing in the face of the bottom line. Watching people who genuinely want to help get hampered by people more interested in protecting the status quot is, in many ways, a more tense and engaging experience then watching the survivors wander around. They rarely find themselves confronted by the crazies of the town, and even less often with the military, generally just sitting around in houses or sneaking through woods.

I quickly found myself waiting for the survivor sections to end, which were predictable for the most part, in favor of watching a scientist attempt to find a cure despite the governments stupid rules slowing him down. To see a sympathetic general forced to carry out terrible orders and make hard decisions, for it to all tragically crumble under its own cumbersome weight. Way more interesting then one sane guy trying to corral his insane girl friend and best friend out of the quarantine just because they don't trust the government.

"Should we do something interesting?" "No."

The remake and the original are two very different movies, and they are both flawed in different ways. Romero's version at least has some ideas running the show, while the remake is fun for a gory splatter-fest. Both have merits in the horror spectrum.

Alright! Now to try and do this again sooner rather then later. Preferably tomorrow instead of in a few days. One day my mind will stop melting and I'll be on top of this again. Oh, here is that link I always post to the full list. The 150 Days of Halloween.

"Hey. How you doin?"

150 Days of Halloween: Cat Eye, Children of the Corn, Pet Semetary, The Shining

2011-08-05T21:59:00.000-07:00

Vanished again, sorry everyone. The way my brain works these days makes it feel like I live with some kind of sadistic roommate who has control over my mind. It used to be that movies were always something I could count on. Depression, anxiety, agitated bouts of hyper activity, none of these could stop me from just fading away and existing only in the movie. These mood swings have taken away my sleep, my motivation, and my capacity to be social when I choose, and now they are trying to take away my movies, my games, and my books. They seep in when I watch and drag me out of the moment, or just smother any drive I had to even watch them before I can get started. Its a strange feeling, to lack even the motivation to do the simplest things in life that you actively love to do.

Which is why I'm trying to get this all sorted out and fixed, like I mentioned in the last post. I finally found a psychiatrist who was recommended to me by a close friend, and have an appointment for late August to get that ball rolling. For now its cognitive therapy to try and manage some of the worst symptoms. I will keep the internet well informed of this riveting experience, but mainly I will keep you all well informed of horror movies. Since I will be droning on about four movies, I'm going to do my best to keep this short and sweet. So expect baseless mockery at times.

Like today's list of Stephen King adaptation! I enjoy King as a writer, often his work can be contrived and a bit pointless, but when he nails a story he really nails it. He also shares a trait with my favorite author of all time, H.P. Lovecraft. Like Lovecraft, his works rarely ever get adapted into a good movie. More often then not they appear in the world as misshapen grotesques, with malformed claws for hands waggling in our faces like cruel jokes.

I DARE you to make a shittier DVD cover.

Or in the case of Cat's Eye, three conjoined cruel jokes waggling all sorts of things in an honest persons face. This movie opens with the cinema equivalent of blue balling the viewing, but instead of being something a sex crazed douchebag would claim to suffer, this is a movie quality tease. A cat runs by, chased by a massive rabid dog which is clearly Cujo. The pair run through several locations and eventually cause a red and white Plymouth Fury to slam on its breaks, obviously Christine. Once the movie has its fun, "remember these classics?" moments, things get started.

The cat sees a ghost like apparition of Drew Barrymore appear over a mannequin and beg for help. The cat, being a well educated cat with a Harvard law degree, understands English and immediately uses its powers to know exactly where to go and sets off. Unfortunately the cat also has an uncanny knack for winding up in unrelated vignettes along the way. First it winds up at a facility to help smokers quit, where it gets electrocuted in a display of the companies methods. The cat soon escapes, but we are not so fortunate. We watch a poor smoker learn to quite via threats against his family, and soon he is a better person for it despite the physical and emotional abuse he and his wife endure.

If you find a child who thinks this is scary, punch them and call them a pussy.

Next the cat gets picked up by an extreme gambler, and also soon escapes the scene to leave us to suffer. The evil gambler makes a dude walk around the ledge of his skyscraper as a wager on his debt. The dude does it, otherwise we wouldn't have much a movie, and quickly turns the tables on the double dealing gambler. Soon the villain himself must walk the ledge, and quickly falls to his death.

The cat, meanwhile, makes it to the girls house where no mention of her magic abilities is ever made. A small goblin is trying to suck the girls soul out and the cat is her only protection because her parents are clinically retarded and/or hate cats. Cue adorably campy scenes of a guy in a ridiculous goblin suite. Goblin dies in a fan indirectly thanks to the cat, and we end with the cat getting fed an entire fish and then burping for comedic effect. This one has the distinction of being King's only PG13 movie, and of being slightly better then Dreamcatcher which ended with a crisis team trying to talk me down from the roof of the theater. This movie is three short films all trying to out camp and out cheese one another, and no one knows which one wins that battle.

It almost seems proud about starting over 9,000 shittier sequels.

Next up we have Children of the Corn. Not one of the nine thousand sequels, remakes, or the SyFy cinema abortion. The first one. This is a delightful parable of religion in small town America, where a small child preacher worships a corn Jesus who tells him to lead all the children in killing all adults. After those first fifteen minutes of the movie, a passive woman and a total dick arrive just in time to run over a kid who was busy dying of a cut throat. Being sensible people, they shove the body in their trunk and continue on in an effort to find a phone to call the police with. They didn't turn around an head back toward familiar locations to do this. No, they head off deeper into corn country for this one.

Pro-tip: Don't kill your family because a kid in a stupid hat tells you to.

They of course end up in the crazy corn kid town and begin the joys of running around while kids with knives also run around. You will thrill as asshole does stupid things! Gasp as useless passive lady gets captured by pre-teens with knives! Marvel as people hide in basements and other people get annoyed that they can't find the people in basements! Then some wacky things happen involving glowing evil lights, children dying from said lights, and the black smoke monster from Lost getting blown up by an asshole. I liked the short stories ending better, when everyone died. Anyway, I grew up with this movie and still love it despite how terrible it is, come for the high pitched child preacher and stay for the 16 year old who thinks acting means showing ALL of your teeth at once.

If you haven't guessed yet these reviews are in order from most terrible to least terrible, although if you were to graph it it would be a slight incline that end in a sheer wall. Before we hit that sheer wall of quality, we must first stand at it's base, where we find another cornerstone of my childhood. Good old Pet Semetary, the movie the insured I would never spell that word right for my entire life. I really do love this movie, but I'll take the nostalgia glasses off for a moment just to reassure you that it is indeed a war crime to screen this movie to a group of people.

They didn't take the tag lines advice when it came to the sequel! ZING!

Pet Semetary is essentially a guide for new parents on how to raise your children with a high mortality rate. Step one is to make sure that you move to a house with no fence that borders a road driven on exclusively by speeding semis. Next, when you learn about the massive death walls that speed by every five minutes that unfailingly kill every pet for miles around, proceed to not build a fence. Feel free to bicker constantly about raising your children, and ignore any ghosts who may suddenly appear to warn you about an Indian burial site at this point. Next, when your housekeeper decides to hang herself in your basement, allow your wife to tell you about the time she let her crippled sibling die alone and screaming because everyone in the family hated the burden. Don't be bothered by the fact that this women is raising your kids.

Following that bonding experience, you may find that the family cat somehow managed to get hit by one of those trucks. Somehow. Rather then inform your family and handle the grieving process with your children, follow your creepy old neighbor directly to the place your dead ghost friend told you not to go, and do exactly what he said not to do. You should now have a dead cat body possessed by the very essence of evil. Give the cat back to your children and pat yourself on the back. Try your best to ignore the scent of rotting flesh and the various injuries the cat inflicts on you.

"Seriously? Your going to try the evil cemetery again?"

If you are doing things right, you should be incapable of learning from past events, even ones days old, this will help in the crucial steps to follow. Against all logic, when you leave your toddler unattended in your fence-less yard he will somehow manage to wander into the road where he will be obliterated by a massive truck. The shock and injustice of it all will be overwhelming, but don't let that interfere with your dogged determination to be a moron who must have lost a brother in a miserable fence accident immediately following a strong blow to the head. Proceed to dig up that toddler and bring him to that place that everyone ever has told you is evil so you can have a demon wearing the flesh of your youngest son.

If you followed all of these steps, then you are well on your way to being awarded a cash prize for being the most blatantly stupid man to ever get a medical degree! The evil facsimile of your son will proceed to murder your best friend/father figure and your wife, which you will somehow find surprising. Pretend to have learned your lesson and battle your undead cat and son to the (re)death and burn all the evidence. This is the most important step, and the most easily botched as well, so pay close attention. Having learned nothing at all from this series of events, and apparently having the character arc of a rock briefly seen in the background, bury your dead wife in the same evil stretch of dirt for some reason. When she arrives as a half eaten corpse, lovingly embrace and kiss her while she stabs you to death. Congratulations! You left your one surviving family member an orphan with your in-laws who allowed their daughter to die and emotionally scarred their other daughter. FATHER OF THE YEAR AWARD!

"I'm killing you before you try to breed again Daddy!"

We now suddenly go from a series of campy and somewhat terrible 80's movie that I secretly love, to The Shining. If you ever met someone who said anything but good things about The Shining, then count yourself lucky, because that was no human. It was a monster. If you yourself don't like The Shining, then you can't fool me DEMON!

My review of The Shining is as follows. Its the single greatest adaptation of a King story, and its made by Kubrick. Watch the fucking thing. The end. I would write more, but I kind of want to be done writing now. Its an actually good movie with clever moments riddling the whole experience, the only downside is a child actor who could have been replaced by a trained monkey. It does suspense incredibly well, keeps you guessing until the end, and is beautifully shot. If you have never seen it, then you should, because its proven to prevent cancer.

"Kill anyone who says this isn't a good movie like I tried to kill my wife and son!"

Tune in whenever I manage to write again for more horror movies! Also here is that list I link to every damn time. The 150 Days of Halloween.

150 Days of Halloween: Faust, Teeth, The Wicker Man

2011-07-27T17:14:00.000-07:00

See, this is why I said I would stop promising not to fall behind, its just inevitable. These past two weeks have been both good and bad distractions from posting, I had friends visit for a week and good times were had. I also had a dip into the anxiety/depression wells for awhile, which was not nearly as fun as seeing friends.

I have watched a number of the movies that need reviewing, and also have some marathons in my future to catch up. It's going to be a climb back up to the top of this review mountain, but we will climb it together. I am also beginning the diagnosis and medication process for my mood and sleep disorders, so that will also make for interesting posts I hope. As opposed to no posts. No posts are boring.

Anyway, lets bang out a series of micro-reviews to begin the climb out of this movie hole, shall we?

The story of Faust is an old one, much older then the first film adaption of the story, Murnau's 1926 silent film simply titled Faust. We will be talking more about Murnau a bit later in the list, specifically when we get to Nosferatu. The original story of Faust is religious allegory and morality tale, a man bored with what he has who strikes a deal with the devil for pleasure and power. Its a simple story of christian values, similar tales can be found in many other cultures as well.

Later iterations of the story would seek to complicate and add nuance to what is a rather boring premise, iterations like this silent film. Rather then be a simple story of a man who forgoes scripture for science and then seeks further power through the devil, we get a Faust who is devout and eager to do good from the offset. He is a dedicated man of science as well as scripture, he is so close to the ideal man, in fact, that it attracts the attention of higher powers.

It's the beard, too bitchin' to not attract cosmic notice.

The devil, eager to win the right to spoil the earth, makes a wager with an angel. If he can damn Faust, the world is his. If not, he shall return to hell. The angel agrees to the bargain, and the devil sets to work. He begins by breaking Faust's faith, he consumes the city in a plague that Faust's medicine and prayer are powerless to stop. When his science fails and god seems indifferent to the suffering of the people around him, he throws his books into the fire and despairs. Soon he turns to the devil, after a book in the fire turns to a page detailing how to contact the infernal forces.

Condemning his own soul to save the people around hi, Faust begins to cure everyone he can, until he learns he cannot heal anyone wearing the cross. The people immediately begin to stone him, because while he totally healed little Timmy, the dude can't look at a cross, and Faust's will to help others is thus broken as well. Its here that temptation takes hold and he begins to really sample the demon's wares. Youth, lust, power, glory. Its all his.

How plagues happen.

Unfortunately, its here that the movie also loses its focus and strength. Faust and Mephistopheles run about wooing women. A demon plays Faust's wingman for an hour of the movie, flirting with the ugly friend and everything. The drama of the movie up to now has been that of a mans faith being broken and testing the limits of a persons morals, but when they break too easily and the guy becomes a young playboy for little reason it goes from a horror movie to a buddy comedy.

This drags on for a while until the inevitable breakdown, because seriously, your wingman is Mephistopheles. A pure, young women is wooed and her whole life is completely ruined by Faust. Her family dies, she becomes a symbol of shame for the whole city, she loses everything and gains a baby. Eventually her child dies in the freezing elements, after everyone refuses to help her, and when people discover this they decide to burn her at the stake.

Wacky buddies, these two.

Faust discovers this and rushes to her, but in one last act of betrayal, Mephistopheles takes back his youth. Too feeble to save her, he instead climbs into the fire with her and begs forgiveness. They then both go to heaven and the devil loses the bet, because you just can't trust angels to honor bargains. The devil clearly won here, but because Faust knew love at the end, the angel reneges on the deal. What an asshole.

I was disappointed in where this story placed its priorities, I was looking for a more tense and thought provoking look at a mans fall and less two guys getting into shenanigans to get the girl. Even seeing how his actions impacted others seemed irrelevant because he was largely absent for these moments, only caring about the one women a year after leaving her. Didn't so much as stop to feel bad about killing her brother and mother. An interesting piece of film history, but not my cup of tea.

The rose is a vagina. The thorns are teeth. If you were wondering.

Teeth on the other hand, is my cup of tea. In your normal slasher movie, a group of people are terrorized and killed off one by one by an unseen killer. You can change various bits and bobs, but that is the standard formula for an American slasher movie. Your killer can be a crazy dude in a ghost face mask, an undead killing machine in a hockey mask, or whatever you want. More often then not, your victims are teens who are horny, and the ones that have sex or get naked get the axe. What Puritans must imagine all sinners experience in hell or something.

What makes Teeth so amazing is that it inverts the whole thing. The story follows Dawn O'Keefe (raise your hand if you get the foreshadowed joke her last name presents.) as she attends a youth abstinence club. She quickly falls for one of the boys in the group with her, and they experience understandably conflicting emotions of attraction. One day, while swimming together, they forget about the purity rings on their fingers and begin to kiss. Dawn quickly decides its wrong and wants to stop. The boy is less willing to do that and knocks her head into a rock and decides to rape her.

"Did you get the O'Keefe joke yet!?" ~Maker of the Posters

This is around when she discovers her vagina has retractable razor sharp teeth, and bits the boys penis off. She runs off in horror, confused by what happened. The rest of the movie sees her gynecologist attempt to molest her and lose four fingers, a boy she likes having sex with her on a bet and thusly losing his wiggly bits, and finally Dawn coming to terms with her body and using it to avenge the death of her mother and mauling of her father by seducing and killing her stepbrother.

Instead of an unseen killer and a group of victims, we have a scared women being taken advantage of by a group of vile dudes who inadvertently kills/maims them. Inverted American slasher! It turns so much about the genre on its head, its wonderful! Everyone involved does a great job with the movie, acting is all solid, nothing seems too awkward or jarring despite the subject matter, and its a thoroughly enjoyable film. Its just good to see a horror movie go so confidently in its own direction.

The fourth wall knows, men can be creepy assholes sometimes.

If you have never seen Teeth, then you need to. Its not terrifying, so non-horror people can enjoy it as well. It can be understandably graphic, so those who don't want to see floppy sections of male anatomy fall to the floor and get eaten by a dog may want to shy away. Its just a well done and unique modern horror comedy, and its deserving of your time.

Lets end this entry in the middle of modern and old, lets go back to one of horrors golden ages, the 70's. If you were to look up The Wicker Man on Youtube, you would find clips like this:

That is just a crying shame. Don't get me wrong, that series of clips is intensely funny, but the rest of the movie is so boring that being filthy drunk can't even make it entertaining. Which for anyone who is familiar with the original 1973 Wicker Man can tell you, is a borderline sin, its confusing how a remake could miss the mark as thoroughly as this. It's also confusing why they felt the need to add bees to the whole thing, but I would be sad to live in a world without the BEES! meme, so a fair trade I guess.

Not starring Nicholas Cage or utter madness.

The original is a classic of mysterious foreboding. Our protagonist, Howie, is a devout christian and policeman who is autonomously contacted to help find a missing girl on Summerisle. When he arrives he finds a Pagan community that openly discusses sexuality and has no need for his religion. He also finds a complicated string of lies and secrets regarding the missing child. The islanders are all unhelpful and the culture clash makes every interaction for Howie strained and uncomfortable.

As he learns more about the islands past, the culture of the island, and the beliefs they all hold, he becomes convinced that the girl is still alive and will be sacrificed during the Mayday celebrations. His investigations are always tense, with the unreadable townspeople always coming off as aloof but menacing in the eyes of our devout detective. Once he comes to his conclusion he takes violent action to find the girl and save her from the fate he believes she faces.

Also a whole lot more naked ladies in this version. Take that as you will.

That's all for the plot, as I said, its a mystery movie as well as a horror, so I wouldn't want to ruin it for anyone that has yet to see it. Being submersed in an alien culture as he unravels the secrets works well, and the culture clash makes the viewers wonder how much is just prejudice coloring interaction. This movie is hailed for a classic for a reason, so I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys horror classics or even just mysteries. Plus Christopher Lee plays the creepy leader of the island, so you know your in for at least one awesomely strange performance, even though everyone on the island does a fine job as well.

Three down, three million to go! I'll do my best to keep the three a day rate up until we are sitting pretty at the proper point on the list. With luck, life won't interfere as much as it likes to. Oh, and here is the obligatory link to future movies and past reviews! The 150 Days of Halloween.

"This isn't helping me sleep at all!"

150 Days of Halloween: Perfume: The Story of A Murderer

2011-07-16T01:07:00.000-07:00

Things are going to get wonky for a spell folks. Reviews out of order of the viewing date and such, along with some multiple review entries. We will persevere through these troubled times, can't let life stand in the way of watching 151 horror movies!

So, for today we have Perfume, a movie I love for its absolute strangeness and tone. Its not your typical horror movie, and for long stretches you can feel like your watching a dramatic and beautiful period piece. Even the grim and filth of the poorer sections of France are immaculately captured and filmed, somehow being beautiful despite how absolutely dirty everything else is. When we finally leave then, its stunning. The colors and landscapes of the country are incredible, entire scenes are moving paintings of flowers and grass.

See this movie.

None of that matters to the man the story follows, played by Ben Whishaw. These things are all just vehicles for smell, simple vessels for the scents they carry. He is a man possessed of a need to smell everything, and soon that becomes an obsession to preserve the smells around him once he realizes that when people die, the smell died with them. A lesson learned when he mistakenly kills a women who's smell enraptured him. This eventually blossoms into a compulsory need to create a smell for himself, as he eventually realizes he has no smell of his own.

The movie opens with his birth, and follows his entire life from that moment. He enters the world without love from his mother, abuse from the orphanage, and essentially slavery when he is sold to a tanner. At no point does he experience meaningful human contact, he is forever apart from the human condition, all people offer him are smells. So when smothers a woman while trying to keep her from screaming (he just wanted to smell her) its not the loss of life that bothers him, its the loss of smell.

"My creeper sense... its tingling..."

This unspoken aspect of the character is what really makes it amazing for me, the movie has a narrator who explains a great deal, but never how his life drove him to these moments. His striving to preserve smells is an obsession because its all he knows, life gave him nothing save for his nose. When he realizes he lacks a smell his obsession is driven by the thought that a lack of smell is why no one has ever cared about him. The people he murders to gather the scents he wants for himself don't matter, just those smells.

When all is said and done and he finally achieves his goal and sees the power it grants him, he realizes it won't actually allow him to love or be loved back. What he knew wasn't enough to grant him the humanity he was denied from birth, his quest for humanity ultimately means nothing because he lacks the proper grounding to even see it. He returns to the place of his birth and lets it consume him, losing all drive after what must have felt like a purposeless obsession.

Beautiful even when its filthy.

The acting is all spot on. Our protagonist never comes across as a killer, even when hes in the middle of the act, because this barely registers as being wrong to him. Likewise, despite the sexual nature of the whole affair of gathering scents, he never hints at arousal of any kind. The camera lingers as if it itself is interested, and then pans to show a man devoid of interest in anything other then the scent at hand, it juxtaposes the moment well. He is always apart and awkward, but his talent for perfume allows him to integrate just fine. He portrays someone raised without love perfectly, you really believe the sociopathy.

Other great acting is all around him as well. When he finally manages to talk to a perfume maker played by Dustin Hoffman, the mans pride wars with the concept of an untrained prodigy, but he soon relents at the idea of a golden goose. He revels in the popularity of his new perfumes, finally coming out of obscurity. Later we get Alan Rickman as an overprotective father, and when he loses his daughter he drips the hate we know he can deliver so well.

Hoffman is an expert wafter in this movie.

Cinematography, as I already said, is incredible. This is a movie about smell, and the fact that they so effectively evoke this sense out of visuals and sound is a feat to behold. The soundtrack is also haunting and beautiful, subtly twisting scenes and driving your emotions. The whole movie is a very specific and focused study in obsession, humanity, and of course the important of smell in our lives. Its worth checking out, you will either love it or hate it for its unflinching exploration of its story, but its worth it for the spectacle alone.

Check out the full schedule and previous reviews, check out The 150 Days of Halloween, despite the wacky lose of schedule this week. I swear we'll get back on target soon.

Whoops! Also Infested Planet

2011-07-14T12:21:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone, sorry about the lack of updates the past two days, I totally fell off the wagon. The horror reviews will kick back up, and the list is getting a few updates and changes as well. Tonight is also Harry Potter: Final Movie Time, which is exciting.

In the meantime, to tide everyone over, this mini post is being made. Its basically just a link to something I already wrote over at Nightmare Mode on an Indie RTS called Infested Planet. Imagine a squad based game where you face massive seas of alien enemies, they evolve constantly and you need to change up your teams skills and weapons constantly to reflect that. Its pretty neat, but still a bit buggy in its beta.

SO MANY!

http://nightmaremode.net/2011/07/infested-planet-preview-7527/

Check it out if it sounds like your cup of tea. Horror movies resume in earnest tomorrow!

Back from Harry Potter! If you love the series, then of course you will love it. Anyway, a late night addition to this post:

In an effort to clear my space out some and actually work on something new, I'm slashing prices on the two special Cthulhu idols in the shop! 50% off on your chance to be driven mad by unwelcome waking nightmares and dreams of gibbering things in warped vistas! Great for kids!

http://www.etsy.com/shop/SpleenMachine?ref=pr_shop_more

150 Days of Halloween: Wrong Turn and Hatchet

2011-07-10T23:59:00.000-07:00

I have a guilty pleasure. Campy, over the top, American slasher films. Born from the bloody puddle left behind by Jason in the woods of Camp Crystal Lake, these are some of my favorite movies to watch. The acting is often terrible, the gore is out of control, and everyone making the movie is in on the joke and a fan of the genre. Most of the time that take a page out of Texas Chainsaw Massacre's book and set it in the deep south with deformed and inbred killers. New England is the land of ghosts and cults, but the deep American South is for grisly murders by wannabe Elephant Men. Holywood is terrified of the south. Its a shame too, the south, particularly the Cajun sections, have incredible ghost stories and legends. Robert E. Howard knew what it was all about.

Oh well, the average Hollywood directors fear of a Deliverance like encounter aside, I forgive the setting for the ridiculousness it provides, and provide it does. Wrong Turn and Hatchet are both totally over the top, Wrong Turn tried to be serious, while Hatchet gleefully pokes fun at itself and drops any pretense to being anything other then a messy good time.

The poster doesn't want you to have to wonder who will make it to the end.

Lets start with Wrong Turn, which tries to take itself seriously despite the three mutants who giggle through the whole film. Well, really only one does, but hes the best one. Trying to take itself seriously is a bit of a shame, and can be a bit disrespectful in some ways. Hatchet is like a love letter to the creepy swamps and Bayous of Louisiana, while also poking fun of the false Voodoo shops and tours that spring up wherever the college Mardi Gras culture does down there. Wrong Turn, on the other hand, isn't having fun with it. The killers are not vengeful ghosts that died because they were killed for their deformities, they are inbred cannibals. While Hatchet can be a love story to the ghost stories of the area, and a send up to over the top slashers, Wrong Turn just feels afraid of the South.

We get the standard here for this kind of story. A bunch of kids exploring the woods have their car wrecked by a trap, and soon after a young doctor crashes into the car as well. Stranded, they start walking down the road looking for help. Cue anyone who stayed behind being picked off, to make sure you know they will die, they have sex and smoke pot. Yep, they sealed the deal. If I ever think I might be in a horror movie, I will immediately give up all all substance and swear off the opposite sex, I know the score.

This is why you don't date your sister.

The main group, meanwhile, find the killers shack and find the evidence of the cannibals. Thus we enter the second act as the killers arrive back at the house as well. Our heroes flee into the woods, and the inbred brothers begin to hunt them down one by one. Once we are down to the Lone Female and the Savior Male, we hit the cliched final act. Lone Female is captured and the Savior Male dramatically fights back to save her. They apparently kill all the Bad Guys and drive off into the sunset in each others arms because we need a Romance of Convenience. Oh, then cue the sequel hook, of course.

This right here is why Cold Prey was so damn good. The killer had a decent back story, the characters were all believable, the scares were top rate, and they ditched the tired and vaguely sexist cliches of the genre. The Lone Female was replaced with an actual Strong Female, she reassured the frightened people around her. She kicked the killers ass and make all the plans. She was a legitimate bad-ass, Ripley would be proud. Not so with Wrong Turn, which was apparently afraid to defy genre conventions.

"Dinner!"

Aside from the retread of old memes, the acting is decent, the prosthetics for the killers are well done and interesting to look at, and they manage some good tense moments with fights in tree tops, chases in wide open spaces, and moments of silent hiding in close quarters. If you want a good movie, stick with Cold Prey, but if you want a generic American slasher that still manages to be fun, give this a go. As long as you are not in a horror movie yourself, consider some friends and substance for added fun.

Now for the real gem of the night. Hatchet knows better then to take itself seriously, and lets you know the score right at the open. How does it do that? By having Robert Englund, horror legend and Freddy Krueger himself, open the movie as the first death. If a movie has Englund in it, its a movie by fans, for fans, the man is an icon and a fan himself. If you ever wonder why the Nightmare on Elm Street remake sucked, this guy not being in it is a big part of that.

So much fun.

Anyway, this time we have the deep south setting again, but without it being as totally disrespectful to the area as Wrong Turn. It pokes fun at the invading tourist industry, the cast has a female native who is also a bad-ass, and the killers deformities are not due to inbreeding, nor does deformity automatically make him a killer. It changes the tone a bit, the setting itself is no longer the villain.

So, following the death of our legendary cameo, we join a group of party goers at Mardi Gras. Two of them break off, one unwillingly doing it to make his newly single friend feel better, to go on a sketchy haunted swamp tour. They join the con artist running the tour, a touristy middle aged couple, a sleazy man filming two girls for a Girls Gone Wild style video, and the daughter of the man who died at the open, out looking for her Father. Not before another legend has his moment, Tony Tod, Candyman himself, is the man who sends our two party goers to the tour.

Thank you Image Search.

The movie has fun all the time, characters ham it up at all times, the horror is totally over the top and often a joke itself, some of the lines are only barely delivered with a straight face. Its just a good time all the way through. The movie drops subtlety in favor of total lunacy, the killer sprints in and tears people apart in the most literal sense. Heads are pulled apart, limbs go flying, blood hits the scenery by the bucketful. Its glorious if you love the genre, its just having a good time, and your invited.

Anyway, the obviously expendable cast members die in increasingly over the top ways until we are left with the obvious survivors. Trouble is, we have three, the recently heart broken dude who is hilariously awkward. The daughter out for revenge, who is the clear love interest for our awkward hero, and his best friend who provided most of the snarky and clever lines. Trouble is, the awesome best friend character is black, and hes in a horror movie. Yeah, hes fucked.

Drink it all in.

So we have our exciting final encounters, the last minute surprises and kills, and the sequel hook. Hatchet is a winner for anyone who loves over the top horror, for the gorehounds, and the genre junkies. Its just as big a fan as you are, and it shows. I know I had fun.

All in all, a nice little double feature of slasher goodness with these two. Wrong Turn could have been better, but it manages to do some interesting things, and Hatchet is a glorious blood bath. Tomorrow brings totally different fare, check out The 150 Days of Halloween for the films coming up and for past reviews. Now that Steam has ended its Summer Camp event, I am free from its spell, so hopefully no more late reviews.

150 Days of Halloween: Repulsion, Cold Prey, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

2011-07-09T00:38:00.000-07:00

I'm gonna stop promising to not fall behind anytime Steam has an event. Its just unrealistic. So many games, prize tickets, sales, excitedly talking about those things, and then the frustratingly persistent life and responsibilities that always intrude. Anyway, we have three movies to talk about today, so lets get these going.

Repulsion is our first Roman Polanski movie on the list, with the next being Rosemary's Baby. I really should put The Tenant on the list to complete his apartment trilogy, but that's something I'll worry about later. Repulsion is about as psychological as a psychological horror movie can get, every detail is intrinsically linked to the mental state of the star. Its really something.

Note, only there is only one of her in the movie.

Repulsion stars a young woman who lives with her sister. She is quite, withdrawn, and prone to staring off into space for spans of time. She shares many characteristics of mine, which isn't very comforting. She lives with her sister, but distrusts and dislikes her sisters boyfriend who is factoring more and more into her life. Likewise she rejects the advances of a would be suitor, seemingly fearful and dismissive of him.

She displays signs of severe anxiety, her spacing out, intense and irrational moments of fear and panic, compulsive tendencies, and mood swings. As her sisters boyfriend becomes more central, the symptoms grow worse, affecting her job and life more and more. It all comes to a head when her sister decides to take a holiday with her boyfriend, leaving our hero all alone. Things immediately start to fall apart.

She always looks so sleepy. Take a nap!

In both real and hallucinatory ways the apartment begins to reflect our protagonists mental health. She leaves food out to rot, she overfills a tub and just leaves it that way, things just begin to pile up. At the same time she begins to see cracks appear in the walls, huge rifts that gape open at her and drive her out of rooms. The walls go soft like clay, and she begins to hear and see someone else in the apartment with her. Soon this imaginary man is attacking her and forcing himself on her, and she slips more and more into her own nightmare.

Eventually, having stopped leaving her home, the outside world begins to intrude in. Unfortunately these people are all male, which does not bode well for anyone. Her persistent admirer kicks the door open, so adamant he is to see her, and demands to talk, basically doing everything wrong that he can around someone breaking under the strains of such severe anxiety. This intrusion severs whatever line she may have had left, and she reacts violently out of panic.

When your safe space is lost, nothing makes sense anymore.

This is a movie about the slow decline, every detail of the movie is designed to draw you into the fear she is drowning in. The apartment mirroring her mental health is an amazing concept and really drags you into the thick of it. Her behavior may be alien to anyone not familiar with forms of anxiety disorders, but the clear visuals of the home, a space meant to be safe, breaking apart clue in anyone watching. Its a fantastic study in psychological horror, our hero is terrorized only by her fears, fears that are deeply rooted in her mind from traumas she likely doesn't even remember. No real outside menace was needed, for our hero an entire gender was out to get her.

As with many of Polanski's movies, its well worth your time to see. Short and sweet, lets keep this ball rolling and hit out snow bound second movie, the Norwegian film Cold Prey.

See, even Ain't It Cool News agrees with me.

Modern American slasher directors should feel a deep shame toward Cold Prey, a slasher film that manages to outshine damn near all the modern attempts at the genre, and even most of the old classics. Our protagonists are not stone stupid like those I lamented in The Strangers. They make a dangerous decision at the onset, to ski on a mountain not owned by a resort, but that's a believable stupid choice to make. Just ask the hundreds of people who die and go missing doing just that every year, why wait in line when you can go out and have an entire mountain to yourself?

Well, this being a horror movie, the lone single character amongst two openly physical couples breaks his leg. If he didn't already have it bad off being the 3rd wheel, he also looks like the Norwegian version of Ron Weasley. The guy has it rough, With night not to far off and the car very much far off, they retreat to an abandoned resort to treat his injury and wait for morning before setting off to find help.

"No one knows were here, what could go wrong?!"

Of course this is the resort where a crazed mountain man is holed up, killing anyone who wanders onto his mountain. Cue the delights of people getting picked off one by one. It takes awhile for our group to figure out whats happening, they are an emotional and hormonal group, so one pair will fight and whoever didn't storm off to join the group is killed. Everyone just assumes they are taking time alone to cool off. The dude who strikes out into the snow to find help? Yeah, hes not going to get very far.

Its all the fun of being the omniscient but impotent viewer. You know whats going down, but the characters don't, so you wait anxiously for the puzzle pieces to fall and everyone to realize they are in a horror movie. You wait for someone to go full douche bag and try to abandon the group and save himself, and the neigh instant karmic downfall. Its nothing super special, you have seen these individual parts before, Cold Prey just happens to do them all very well. So not many points on originality, but plenty of points for execution and style.

"Oh."

The killer is hulking and imposing, and this is his stomping ground, he isn't worried or nervous, he has home-field advantage and has fun with it. Still, rather then make him a living ghost or a friggan ninja, he makes noise when he moves and misses when he swings his pickaxe. Which is fantastic, like I said in The Strangers, if the killers are basically gods then tension just goes out the window. Friday the 13th has this problem sometimes as well, you know the only person who Jason will miss when he swings his machete is the heroine destined to survive the end. The Mountain Man has the imposing figure and silent menace of Jason, but his human tendency to mess up keeps the tension high, any character may manage to get away.

The scares are fun, plenty of obligatory jump scares from silly things, like characters trying to scare one another or the wind slamming doors. The kills are well done, not super imaginative, but this isn't an 80's franchise on its seven billionth iteration. It doesn't need to get silly with its death scenes to be relevant. Its just a well made slasher film set on a cold, snowy, isolated mountain, a setting made for horror. If you enjoy these sorts of movies, then seek it out. Everything about it is solid. Now to jump in the nostalgia wagon and head back to my childhood for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

When kids in elementary school were talking about the latest Disney movie, I was trying to find someone else who saw whatever horror movie I had rented or found in my Grandma's collection and watched with her. TCM was one such VHS I found in her cabinet of horror wonders, and what a find it was.

Its just how they say hello round them parts.

I remember being mesmerized by its depiction of a desolate and inbred spit of arid country somewhere far and away from society. Everyone who wasn't a teen was creepy in someway, and you just knew something was wrong with them. Of course, anyone who WAS a teen was doomed to die, and in very messy ways. It always seemed more real then when Jason or Freddy killed a person, those always seemed cartoony when compared to the dismal colors and dusty world of Leatherface. Also the sounds! The haunting whine and pop of an old flashbulb opens the movie, and that sound really creeped me out as a kid, not the movie itself, just that sound. Incredibly effective at setting the mood, and so simple.

Re-watching it now, what worked still works. The whine and pop of the bulb, briefly illuminating rotting and mutilated bodies is incredibly effective at setting the mood of the film. More so then the still awesome, but super cheesy voice over that comes before it. We don't need some dude telling us everyone dies in the end, let us find that out for ourselves. The creepy people are still damn creepy and do a fine job of coming off as crazy. The rest of the cast ranges from decent to slightly sedated, but not overly distracting thankfully, they are bad but not blindingly terrible.

Its hard to not act the part of, "hung on meat hook," well.

It also suffers from other choices that were common for 70's horror and exploitation films. The camera can sometimes roam, like the cameraman is drunk and suffers from restless leg syndrome. It will also make some super close zooms that are slightly out of focus. Its trying make you feel uneasy, but its mostly just distracting. Likewise some of the cuts can be schizophrenic, angles change on the same scene repeatedly before the scare happens, which again is more confusing then unsettling.

As for Leatherface, well, that's personal opinion on how well he has aged. His face looks more like plastic and rubber then dried faces stitched together now, but his grunting and raspy breathing and lumbers about is still pretty good. You have to love how he waves his chainsaw around like a toy when he chases people, you get the sense he never developed all the way and is just some twisted man child of a cannibalistic butcher. It slides into deep camp often, the decrepit grandfather suckling blood from a finger during the twisted dinner scene being a choice example, but its camp that borders and uncomfortable, so it still mostly works.

His tantrum at the end is great.

Really, if you love 70's horror, then you will still have fun with this. If you don't consider yourself a fan of this particular vein of horror, well then, you should probably steer clear. Me? I was raised on this stuff, and I don't think I can stop loving it.

Whats that? I'm done!? WOO! Run for the hills! Stay tuned for the continuation of my 150 day slide into madness. If you want to see my earlier reviews before my brain started to melt, or want to see where this roller coaster of self abuse is destined to go, then check out The 150 Days of Halloween.

150 Days of Halloween: The Strangers

2011-07-05T23:31:00.000-07:00

Back to home invasion, this time an American film with the laughably misleading claim to be based on true events. I hate that line in movies pretty often, movies that are actually based on true events don't bother with that line. The Kings Speech didn't waste its breath on that line, because its legitimately a dramatization of actual events. Sure it changed some things, but the general story is true, unlike with The Strangers. This movie claims to be based on true events, when in reality the director recalls that one time, in his youth, some people knocked on his door. The next day people realized that whenever someone didn't answer the door, they robbed the house.

So, when you get down to it, this is the opposite of a true story. In this version of the events, when someone answers the door they get killed and nothing gets stolen. That's some integrity to the craft right there, that line is only included to market and drive ticket sales. Much like the characters of the film, its staggeringly stupid.

"If you weren't doorknob level stupid, this movie would be about 25 minutes long."

That's right, this is one of those horror movies. If anyone halfway between intelligent were in the situation presented in the film, it just wouldn't have happened. When people believe the home they are in is being broken into, they don't plug the phone into the charger and then leave the room so the killers can take it. When your girlfriend is hysterical and tells you people are trying to break in, you don't dismiss her, you call the police. If you arrive at your friends house and a gunshot shatters your windshield, you don't get out of the car and meander into the clearly ransacked home.

Looks pretty suspenseful huh? Well this shot is only from the trailer, doesn't happen in the movie. Surprise!

When a movie is laughably campy, stupid protagonists can be fun, you shout at them and wait for them to die. Its the realm of high body count horror, the kind of movies that are improved with crowds and light substance abuse. If you want to make a suspenseful movie, then you don't want us to think your cast is so unbelievably stupid that we think they deserve to die. When we are rooting for the killers because the cast has a combined IQ of wood, you dropped the writing ball.

This pairs incredibly poorly with the nigh magical antagonists. While our heroes are all apparently recent recipients of lobotomies and leg hobbling, our killers are professors at the local ninja college. They know exactly where the heroes are at all times, can go unseen and silent whenever they want, can break into any part of the house with ease undetected, and can teleport anywhere they need to be. Watching this movie is like watching wizards determined to slowly terrorize and kill some baby mice. Baby mice that are missing two legs. Also the mice are stupid.

THRILL! At people walking and/or crawling.

What this amounts to is a movie that manages to disperse its own tension building constantly. Its clear early into the arrival of the killers that they are basically each a psychopathic version of Batman looking to toy with a room of children. You already don't care about the characters, which is criminal with this movie because the first half hour is us watching the couple try to cope with an emotional falling out. They spend one third of the movie on character development, turn them into walking talking bricks once the tension starts, and give us super human killers. You stop caring and start waiting for the end.

So, half an hour of two people being moody. about forty-five minutes of lions hunting headless chickens, five minutes of two people tied to chairs being stabbed, five minutes of kids finding the house and a sequel setup, and a jump scare at the end to really nail home the sequel thing. I just saves you and hour and a half of your life. Jump to the 45 minute mark for the stupidest string of decisions in movies. Two more minutes and about thirty seconds later to watch Dennis from Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia get shot in the face with a shotgun. Now you have the highlights of the movie too!

"Did he say I get shot? IN MY FACE?! No way man! I'm way to good looking for that."

To be fair and somewhat nice, the cinematography is well done. Shots are creepy and suspenseful, and could have been truly tense had the writing been willing to let it. Sound design is frightening where it should be, and music is used to good effect thanks to a record player. Lastly the dialogue isn't forced, and aside from the rest of the writing turning these people into brainless clods, is well done. That's about it though. Spare yourself the pain and watch something else.

Tomorrow we get Repulsion, by Roman Polanski. Thank goodness for that, because after this I need a non-stupid movie. As always, for the list of future movies and links to previous reviews, check out The 150 Days of Halloween schedule.

150 Days of Halloween: Dead Silence, The Last Circus, and 13 (Tzameti)

2011-07-05T00:44:00.000-07:00

Its been a ride. Insomnia is still here, as is the humidity. Had a 4rd of July party that was pretty nice, lots of friends and plenty of cooking on our home made grill. Had to re-arrange the list a bit around these events, and today we finally catch up with a three movie review post. These will be short reviews, blurbs really, because I'm still incredibly tired and thanks to having three to review. So lets hit the ground running.

Dead Silence is a movie that draws heavy inspiration from a segment in an earlier movie on our list, Dead of Night. This here is a ghost story that operates primarily through a Dummy, which is always a delightfully creepy premise. Who doesn't get just a little creeped out by ventriloquist dummies? Much like James Wan's other movies, most notably the Saw franchise, this is a bit of a love or hate affair. It has a classic horror premise with a unique twist, excellent effects, creative sound design, a stunning gothic color and set design at times, and a wonderful lack of newer cliches like shaky cameras and a washed out PG-13 delivery. Its an R, but it doesn't go out of its way to earn that rating, the gore is visceral and believable without being over the top.

Yep, creepy dolls and stuff.

That being said, we also get some delightfully wooden acting from the characters, not counting the dummy, who also love to make stupid horror movie decisions that will have you moaning and shouting at the TV. If you come into this with popcorn and friends, then its good fun to yell in annoyance at stupid people in the movie, but it is unfortunate that the movie needed to fall back on people getting stupid for the sack of plot.

The story revolves around a childhood legend about Mary Shaw, a ventriloquist. Just to skip a bit here, she of course dies in an unjust way and dire curses are made. You know the drill, you have seen enough movies with this premise already, the truly guilty parties being Stay Alive and Darkness Falls. Whats nice about Dead Silence is that the characters aren't stuck in the situation though some convoluted rules. When the movie first begins, our protagonist's wife is the first victim, which motivates him to investigate the legend and the creepy doll that was mailed to him.

Not many good shots of this movie on Google Image search.

Where the movie shines is when the ghost is going to kill someone, you see, you only die if you scream. To highlight this element, all sound stops besides the breathing and heart beat of the characters. Its delightfully creepy and makes for some good moments in the movie. Where it doesn't shine so well are when people try too hard to act, or the script makes some abrupt twists.

I'm tired. So lets just cut to the chase on this one. This is a fun popcorn movie that does more things right then wrong. Ultimately, if you are tired of PG-13 outings about curses and teens dying, try this movie for a more enjoyable version of that crap.

"GO TO SLEEP."

The Last Circus was a surprise addition to the list due to the party. Had to watch something that would interest the group, so I opted for something no one had heard of! A Spanish movie that only recently started making ripples online. This film is a little more then crazy, at times it has the surreal and dreamlike atmosphere of such French films as The City of Lost Children and Amelie, while also being reminiscent of darker Spanish magical realism movies like Pans Labyrinth and The Devil's Backbone.

Its a movie about heritage, family, career, lust, love, revenge, self loathing, identity, and pride. Its a movie about clowns. In the midst of the Spanish civil war, a circus is doing its best to keep the children happy and unafraid. Until the war find them, that is. The Happy Clown of the show is forcibly recruited, like many of his circus fellows, and handed a machete and forced into combat. In the terror and madness of the moment he mows through a regiment with his companions, cutting down countless rebel soldiers. However, when all is said and done, the rebels win and our Happy Clown is captured and forced into labor camps. He tearfully tells his son that he will see him soon, and that the labor can't last forever.

Such a strange and fantastic movie.

It does, and years later while visiting his father, our warrior clown is still in irons mining under harsh conditions. Half mad from years of abuse, he tells his son to be a Sad Clown, as he has known too much sorry to ever make children laugh. He also urges his son to seek revenge, as the only means to cleanse his sole. So, our young hero attempts to free his father with dynamite and a pistol. His father tragically dies, a commander loses an eye, and our hero still only knows sorrow and horror.

Fast forward, and we see a defeated and timid man joining the circus as the sad clown, the partner act of a happy clown who also happens to be a sadistic and violent drunk who beats his girlfriend. The girl our sad clown of course falls for, a girl who loves to manipulate and loves danger. You can never tell where this movie is going, and once you think you do, it will shock you. Its brutal and unrelenting in how cruel the world is to our sad clown, and once the strain of it all finally breaks him, the film pulls another twist and shocks you all over again.

I can't being myself to tell you about those twists, about where this movie goes in its drunken tumble through the soul of a clown. You really need to live it for yourself. To tease you into it, enjoy the trailer.

Did you see that? You know you need to see this movie now. Its a surreal look into the darkest corners of what makes us human. Where our motivations come from and what it means to truly be alive. If you like the stranger things in life, then you NEED to see this movie. Now to the last review! Hooray!

13 Tzameti is listed as horror just as often as it isn't, but for those of you who know what this movie is about, I'm sure you can see the argument for horror. This French film shares aspects with crime thrillers, but only just. You won't find shootouts, fest and witty dialogue, or car chases here. This movie is slow and deliberate, nothing is contrived for the audience either, dialogue and scenes are wholly natural. You won't find exposition of people talking so you can understand whats happening, you are meant to be as frightened and confused as the protagonist.

The poster gives nothing away unless you look very closely.

The movie follows an impoverished 22 year old roof repairman, the sole provider of his family leaves him constantly looking tired and worn-down. Every job he finds is essential, and the one he is on now is just that. Except when his drug addicted client dies and he is won't be paid, he find himself at a new level of desperation. Recalling overhearing the man talking about a shady way to make some big money, he sneaks off with an important letter of the dead man's and follows the shady instructions within. I'll tell you what happens next only because the marketing for the film does, but honestly, if you have the chance, see it fresh. Stop reading here and go in as clueless as possible.

Unknowingly being tailed by, and giving the slip to police, he follows an increasingly shadier series of instructions until he arrives at his destination. One which he cannot turn back from. He and twelve other men are part of a game on which other men gamble, a game where each man points a gun at the man in front of him, spins the barrel on the gun, and pulls the trigger.

Don't get in the car if you see this.

This part of the movie is incredibly intense, especially because of that lack of exposition I mentioned. We don't know who these people are, arguably the monsters of the film, nor why they organize the event. Likewise, besides our hero, we have no idea why anyone else is participating in the suicidal game of murder. The tension is immense, as round after round more men die and more bullets are added to the chambers. Our hero at first struggles and resists, and after it becomes clear the only way out is to play, he becomes withdrawn and sickened.

This section of the movie is undeniably horror, our hero forced into a lethal situation where only chance dictates if he lives or dies, if he is innocent or a murderer. Even once its all said and done, his safety is never certain and keeps the tension alive. See this movie now, before the American remake arrives to ruin its name.

"Do I have something in my Hair?"

Sleep now! For more reviews and future movies, see 150 Days of Halloween.

150 Days of Halloween: The Blair Witch Project

2011-07-03T01:33:00.000-07:00

Still not sleeping, and still behind! Tonight is just The Blair Witch Project and with any luck, tomorrow I will get two out of the way and be back on schedule. I am having trouble focusing, so this will have to be short.

Thankfully almost everyone knows about The Blair Witch Project, with nearly everyone having seen it at least once. Its a very love or hate movie, but its also an important movie in cinema, and Horror cinema in particular, history. It brought hand held back into popular use, it created a found footage craze in movies, and it pioneered viral marketing for movies. In many ways, it influenced horror is a number of good and bad ways.

The movie that changed marketing.

First the good. Love it or hate it, but a first person perspective is effective when it comes to fear. When a movie has clean, deliberate cuts you can relax some because it creates a pattern of setups and reveals. When the camera is basically the eyes of a character, you never know when it will swing around to reveal something terrible, you can't relax. However, it also creates motion sickness in some, and can becomes irritating very quickly. Many stories don't benefit from a the hand held camera aesthetic, Cloverfield for instance was infamous for making audiences sick. [REC] used this style to great effect, and in many ways even better thanks to the confined environment of the film.

Found footage is another tool that really took off with this one, the idea that it was all true and that we are watching these final moments of three peoples lives has a sick fascination to it. It crops up commonly still, with Paranormal Activity coming to mind, and the soon to be released Apollo 18. It gives the whole experience an air of authenticity. You watch Jason hack teens to bits and you might fear the woods. You watch footage that looks like kids being hunted and killed by a witch in the woods, and that will stick with you. However, seeing this used too often makes it into a gimmick for most people, eliciting groans and annoyed sighs over false claims of true stories. It makes the world seem incredible for an instant, and then disappointment sets in that you were lied to.

The last and most influential thing this movie did, by and far, was using the internet as a viral marketing tool. Leaving breadcrumbs and fake missing persons reports, an entire world was created and put online. Fact and fiction were blurred and people just didn't know what was reliably true anymore. It generated impossible levels of interest in the movie, and as a result the movie generated an equally impossible amount of many. Studios took notice of a movie shot with less then some people spend on a new car that was now churning out millions of dollars. Now countless movies do this every day, they build hype trains and fashion alternate reality games in attempts to entice large audiences. If it weren't for Snakes on a Plane tanking in box office, we may have drowned in it all. Now its a bit less overwhelming.

I bet you can't NOT hate her by the midway point.

As for the movie itself, it did what it wanted to do, and it did it well. Love or hate it, but you can't deny the ever off camera threat mixed with creepy sounds and dark, out of focus footage is impressive at tension building. You never feel at ease, waiting for something to finally enter frame and disperse that mounting dread. It never comes. The group fractures and fights because of it, and that's the tiny release you get, shouting and crying, then night comes again and it just keeps mounting. Its very successful in that regard.

The ending is also clever in many ways. Everyone involved knows its a trap, you and the characters, but desperation just overwhelms them and they have nothing left to do but enter it and blindly hope. The infamous confession scene, of the girl crying into the camera for forgiveness, sets this up wonderfully. You see the defeat presented bare before you as she cries for whoever finds the footage to not judge her too harshly for dooming herself and the others to die in the woods. You know she is keeping something a secret from her companion, and you know she does it because they are doomed, and she simply wants to spare him the knowledge.

The ending also draws nice parallels to a legend told in the opening of the film, making an image of a man standing in a corner go from seeming silly to being the single most ominous moment in the movie. It really is well done. Love it or hate it for what its done to movies, you can't deny they made gold out of rocks with this one. Personally I feel the movie doesn't hold up to repeat viewing, which is a shame. Once you know the nature of it, all power drains from the experience. I haven't seen it since it was in theaters, and even then it still didn't have the same kick it did the first time.

At this point I would have left the creepy house.

If you have yet to see it, well, you should. You might hate the whole thing, but its worth seeing once, as a piece of memorable history of horror at least. Best case scenario, you get the full experience of dread and ceaseless tension. At worst, you are bored for a little more then an hour and go on to make fun of the drippy nose in the confession scene.

So, with any luck, tomorrow will be The Fly and The Strangers. Wish me luck, or at least a good nights sleep. Check out The 150 Days of Halloween for previous reviews and future movie dates.

150 Days of Halloween: Insidious

2011-07-02T01:01:00.000-07:00

Falling a bit behind, and that's because my insomnia is pretty bad this week. Haven't slept much at all really, and its eating away at me. So tonight I will only review Insidious, and tomorrow I will double review to catch up. This may end up a bit short, which is a shame really, because the movie is beyond excellent, but sleep has to be my primary concern today.

Insidious is the ghost movie to end all ghost movies. It does everything right and better then its been done before, its incredible. Music sets you up and then just leaves you all alone, primed for the scares. Things slink around out of focus in the backgrounds, sounds whisper in your ears, and whenever things get dark the movie pulls you in as you lean on the edge of your chair. It has been years since a movie has actually made me feel dread and horror, to actually increase my heart rate. Its that well done.

Now to try and not spoil the scares via images!

The movie even cuts my normal haunting movie complain off at the pass. Traditionally I enjoy haunting movies, but moan and yell at the people in the house. Just move already! Get a new house and let the real estate company worry about it. The family in this movie does that in the first act, they aren't your typical horror movie protagonists. This movie isn't driven by bad decisions that the plot needs characters to make! This is practically unheard of in the haunted house section of the horror world.

I will give you an ever so brief idea of the plot, because if you like horror in anyway, then you owe it to yourself to see Insidious unspoiled, alone, and in the dark. Headphones makes it an even more imposing experience, so it gets a vote for that as well. Before the movie even gets started the opening credits manage to provide a creepy and foreboding entrance to the experience, something I always appreciate in a good movie. Set the tone before you even start the show.

The only Google Image of him that doesn't spoil a scare. Enjoy the armchair.

We open with a family moving into a new house, looking for a fresh start and a space that will inspire them and make them happy. They settle in, getting used to the new house, and life resumes save for a few strange occurrences that everyone writes off. Until one of the children falls and hits his head, and the next morning is in a mysterious coma. Then the dread really begins to mount, and the movie makes excellent strides in these moments, making the first half of the film near flawless in tension building and scares.

They, as I said, soon move to avoid the horrors of the house they fear to be haunted. They soon learn however, that the house isn't haunted. Their comatose son is, and unspeakable things are trying to use him as a means of accessing the world of the living. The second half of the movie still nails the mounting dread of the film and the fear of what could be around any corner, but does drop off some from the excellent first half. They couldn't hold that high forever, and needed to drive the story somewhere, so its understandable in a way. Little can compare to that first hour of the film.

The best child actors are the ones in comas.

Despite the dip for the second half, its still a great time and expands the world built up in the first, and while some may not like the direction of the second half, I absolutely loved it. It helps that the things they go into absolutely fascinate me, the nature of dreams and out of body experiences. The very climax of the film almost feels like some horror version of an intense car chase, as we are thrust into a completely new setting with no certainty and a very dire time limit.

If you are fascinated by ghost stories and love the feeling of creeping doom, then see Insidious. It drips with foreboding atmosphere and manages to evoke the most chilling nightmare in its best moments. Its a proud addition to the horror genre, and shows that you don't need a shaking camera or buckets of gore to tell a truly frightening story. Which is ironic in a way, as it was made by people involved in Saw and Paranormal Activity.

Good, now you won't be ready for when things freak you out.

As always, please check out The 150 Days of Halloween for the full schedule and for links to past reviews. Coming up we have The Blair Witch Project which I haven't seen it was in theaters, so that will be a bit of a time warp. Now to get some sleep and try my best to resist the siren call that is Steam's Summer Camp event.

150 Days of Halloween: The Loved Ones

2011-06-30T02:15:00.000-07:00

Our second Australian film of the list. I'm really enjoying seeing so many interpretations of horror, from so many time periods, countries, and cultures. Its wild, and my appreciation for the genre grows each day, which is shocking, as I already loved horror more then I can really relate in words. Its just always been my thing.

Today's film, The Loved Ones, trades out the surreal and the mysterious of Picnic at Hanging Rock for the white knuckled tension and unflinching brutality of France's Martyrs. It doesn't bring the insane plot or tense relationships of Martyrs though, which is a shame, it instead has qualities more familiar to more torture related ventures listed later in the schedule. While it may be missing out on those aspects, it doesn't detract from the intensity of the film nor the visceral shots it employs so well.

It is rather good.

The Loved Ones falls firmly in the oft maligned segment of horror that has been dubbed torture porn by the media. Movies that linger on painful and excruciating scenes rather then move the camera away, with organic and brutal sounds to pair. Common complaints are that these scenes are meant to excite and titillate the viewer, like some kind of porn. Its fascinating to note that the only people who ever say its supposed to entice in an erotic fashion, are the detractors who condemn the movies. The rest of the viewers don't seem to have that problem, seeing it as horrific and ghastly. When women are the victims a new crowd of critics arrives, but today's outing only sees male victims. So we'll save that discussion for another movie.

The secret desires of angry movie critics aside, that does give you an idea of what you are in for. Very in your face scenes of terrible things happening to good people. So don't pick this one up if that upsets you in anyway. That being said, the tension building used while these bad things happen is done well. I found myself incredibly tense at a few junctures in the movie, most notably during scenes involving a drill. The mechanical whine as it bored into bone, on a one way trajectory to a mans brain, was paced flawlessly. Just long enough to keep me tense but not so overly long that I got over it.

That damn drill!

Getting a bit ahead of myself here, lets blame that on the fact that its 4:30am again and that I just never learn. Anyway, the movie opens in a fashion that should be old hat to anyone that's read all of my reviews, a car crash. A son driving his father home, swerves to avoid a man who is covered in blood, the car strikes a tree so hard that the movie cuts to one year later. We meet back up with the son, our protagonist, who now cuts himself out of guilt for his father's death.

After some typical high school dialogue with his friend, he gently turns down a girl who invites him to a dance, and meets up with his girlfriend for car based sex. This is when we notice the girl he rejected is angrily watching through the window. Her father will then later ambush the boy as he smokes by a tree. Killing his dog and drugging our hero, the man spirits him off to his home, where a makeshift dance has bee arranged in the dingy confines of the kitchen. Then the torture begins.

"Did he say torture?"

We won't dwell on that much, as I have already said most of what needs saying. These moments are visceral and unflinching, and they play with timing in ways that will leave your body aching from the tension it builds. We have seen this all before, but they do it very well here. What I didn't mention were the fantastic jobs of looking totally bat-shit that the father and daughter pull off. The father dotes on his daughter with the same lazy ease that he hammers knives into the boys feet, his sleepy eyes flashing with a delighted menace only the insane can pull off. The daughter flies wildly through intense moods and gleefully dishes out pain with reckless abandon like a child at play, just with salt being flung into deep cuts.

They actually manage to pull some comedy out of the situations this way, such a completely absurd and disturbed relationship played with so much gusto gets a few uncomfortable chuckled out between horrible abuse. These pair well with the b-story of the movie, of our imprisoned hero's friend on his date with the girl he likes. In many ways I wanted more of it, his date is revealed to be the sister of the bloodied man who opened the movie for us, but as interesting as that is, we never get any closure out of it. They build it up, spend the time showing us this happening, and then just leave it unfinished. Makes you wonder why the scenes were included at all, if it was just for comic relief, then that's same dark comedy right their. Seeing a self abusive girl tormented over her brothers year long absence, drinking and being depressed with the comical sidekick, that's not really much fun when the movie ends without her getting any closure.

Crazy done crazy.

This isn't a French movie, so as we near the end we have a heroic escape by our protagonist, which of course includes his bloody vengeance as he wins his freedom. It doesn't all work out perfectly at first, once again giving us some great tension building moments and false starts.

All in all its a well made movie, but it drops its side story abruptly which is a great shame. The potential for building some of the other characters up and fleshing out the story was all right there, but nothing gets done with it. Its the difference between something that's well made, but nothing special, and something that really nails it. Its still a good movie so long as you can stomach it, but it won't surprise you with anything terribly new. Well worth checking out, but leaves you sad at the missed potential.

It must run in the family.

Tomorrow brings us Insidious, which I have been hearing about all year, and all I have heard has been heaps of praise. Needless to say, I'm pretty excited. I have managed to keep all aspects of the plot and story a mystery to myself, just knowing that people think its amazing and scary. Can't wait. For the rest of the movies on the schedule, and for previous reviews, check out The 150 Days of Halloween.

150 Days of Halloween: Hour of the Wolf and The Howling

2011-06-29T01:30:00.000-07:00

At first glance these two titles seem to imply a double review of werewolf movies, but you would be wrong! One is a surrealist introspection in personal demons, and the other is... about werewolves. So one of them is about werewolves, so what! I will also briefly talk on Cars 2, the Pixar movie the internet loves to hate right now, while forgetting that, "comparable to a Dreamworks outing," doesn't mean a 40% rating. Anyway, onward to our first movie. These may be short, as I have only slept a very little these past few days and have been fairly busy. Hence the double review! Kill me!

Hour of the Wolf is a strange experience, lets get that out of the way now. Unlike in your namby pamby Hollywood ventures, this movie won't ruin the fun and come out and tell you who is crazy, who is real, and who is a vicious externalization of ones inner most demons. It makes for a rather interesting viewing experience.

The movie is presented as a true account, the movie opens with the sounds of a camera crew setting up over black, and eventually cuts to a woman recounting an experience while directly addressing the camera. The fourth wall, thusly obliterated, will no longer be around to help you when a character decides to peer directly at you, despite being in the retelling portion of the film. You are on your own.

I know. I told you it was weird.

The story recounted is that of a wife regarding her husband. He is a tortured artist, plagued by an insomnia I can relate to and hounded by strange persons who may or may not represent his own inner shames and hatreds. That last part I worry about relating to one day. His wife, meanwhile, wants to be by his side through these times, staying awake with him when he can't sleep, and often reminding the viewer that couples who grow old together grow to act and look alike. This foreshadowing can get a bit heavy handed at times, seeing as how she manages to mention it several times.

As the story progresses, so too does the look into this mans slipping grasp on reality. At the open of the film, we are told of these people that haunt him so, he shows his wife drawings of them even, though we are never privileged to see those pieces. Interestingly, we never get a direct look at his finished works, only glimpses of whatever is under his arm or half finished in the background. Soon enough though, they begin to hound him in earnest for us to see, never really sure if they are real or not at this juncture.

No wonder he sees things. Stop that!

This becomes increasingly disconcerting as the encounters become more unhinged and violent, with our tormented artist murdering a child he believes is one of the demons. We, like his wife, have no idea if this was murder, or a violent episode of his degrading mind. It makes for a very effective exercise in mounting dread. Never being sure if the events are actually transpiring or not, who is actually being harmed. The images of the placid island go from beautiful to isolated and foreboding as we watch things decline.

Its not for everyone, certainly, but its an interesting peek into madness and self loathing. If one stops to consider the movie carefully, each character encountered can fit nicely into some aspect of the husbands past and mind. Budding sexuality and curiosity, despair, pompous artistic integrity, and many more. Each one is reacted to in a different way, each a shard of a broken mirror cascaded on the floor.

"Shit, I dropped a contact up here."

If you like Ingmar Bergman, then you would of course like this movie, plus have the added interest in how this relates to the director. If you don't mind surreal and disturbed portraits of mankind, then give it a go. If you prefer a nice linear plot with clear motivations and outcomes, then like Picnic at Hanging Rock, you may want to pass on this. Though you are missing out if you do. Now for our second movie.

Ah, the werewolf myth. The classic tale of man's inner animal, the evil we try to mask through society. Every culture has a myth like it, from skin-walkers to the classic shape-shifters, its one of out oldest legends regardless of where you are. Its natural story fodder, being a part of the collective unconscious as it is, and thus you can find countless movies about it. Such as The Howling!

I too fear large walls of paper.

The Howling is a bit heavy handed at times regarding the nature of the myth, with characters constantly mentioning the inner animal. That's fine though, this isn't exactly an exorcize in subtly here. Its just a good old romp with monsters eating people, and we shouldn't fault it for going through the trouble of adding some story. Even if it drops various threads along the way.

Initially the movie is about a reporter hunting down a serial killer who eats parts of his victims. This of course draws parallels to cult like behavior and the werewolf myth, as well as a clever little moment where someone mentions our societies fixation with violence. Something that was constantly in the news when 80's horror films like this were the big societal scapegoat, after comics got de-fanged. The serial killer is the focus, and with his body vanishing from the morgue, its assumed his werewolf self would play a major role.

Suddenly the sex scene is awkward for everyone.

Well, the writers disagree, and instead we get a whole colony of werewolves! The colony that our poor reporter is sent to as a way of recovering from her PTSD after her encounter with the killer. So, while our serial killer drops from the limelight and is officially the first werewolf to die, that's alright since we have about 15 more to work with. Its a fun, entertaining werewolf story. It sets up more plot threads and themes then its able to actually address in anyway, but that doesn't stop it from being a good old 80's horror experience. Sometimes that's all someone wants. The plot turns are expected, but no less exciting, and we have plenty of hammy actors having fun with the roles. Oh, and the director was Joe Dante, who you may recall from earlier in the list with The Hole. So good times all around.

While this certainly isn't the best werewolf experience, that comes much later in my schedule, it certainly does have some damn good effects for the time and budget. Making liberal use of air bladders under foamed latex appliances, skin bubbles and crawls all over the place. Skin rips open, bones snap and warp, and everything is visceral and immediate. Few cuts, and some clever use of time shifts make for some very nice transformation scenes. Although some of the puppet work once they finish transforming makes it look like an aggressive Muppet doesn't understand how hugs work at times. For me, this is less a detracting from the experience, and more a happy perk. Something to laugh at besides the useless female lead hugging the silver bullet loaded rifle as opposed to firing it.

Aw, look! Hes happy!

If you enjoy campy, bloody, and oft times goofy horror, then watch it already. Its a good time, and a great choice come Halloween. It manages to evoke a tense and creepy atmosphere at times, but also breaks its own spell with hammy goodness enough to keep it a good party movie. Well worth watching alone or with friends.

"Hugging! HOW DO I DO IT?!"

Only 4am and here I am wrapping this up! I may not die today! Well, tomorrow, which is today, is another day, despite really being today. That means another movie! The Howling eased us out of our older movie streak, and tomorrow's The Loved Ones firmly returns us to modern horror for awhile. After that is Insidious, which made lots of waves this past year at festivals and among horror bloggers. So I'm looking forward to the next two days for sure.

As always, check out the full 150 Days of Halloween schedule for future movie dates and previous review links. Hope you didn't mind the slightly delirious tones these revie-OH! Almost forgot about Cars 2!

Cars 2 - A danger to our children?

The internet angry men who review movies have gone feral and now foam at the mouth over how bad Cars 2 is. Lamenting the lack of emotion or soul that we have come to expect from Pixar. They rant about having the redneck tow truck as the focus point, and that its too James Bond, with enemy cars dying left and right. They then give it abysmal ratings, but not before saying its on par with Dreamwork's movies.

That last bit is what annoys me. They give Cars 2 a 30% or a 40% which is a pretty abysmal score, but the average Dreamworks outing in mediocrity gets a 60% or 70% instead. I can promise you that Cars 2 is disappointing when held up to previous Pixar movies, but when you hold it up to Megamind, or Mars Needs Moms, or so many other movies that scored better, Cars 2 is the clear winner. People are skewing the score board HARD for Cars 2, making what is an average movie out to look like some kind of abomination. It's not, its just average. Hell, its slightly above average considering the talent involved.

See it for this short. DO IT.

It's fun for kids, and if you just want to watch some James Bond knock offs that are living cars blow shit up, then hell, your in for a good time. If you want to be emotionally moved in some way, re-watch any other Pixar movie. They didn't hit a home run, doesn't mean we need to beat them to death with the bat for it.

Really done now. No, I won't proof read it at 4:30am. Suffer grammar nazi's!

150 Days of Halloween: Picnic at Hanging Rock

2011-06-26T22:58:00.000-07:00

First, an unrelated announcement. For those of you who are on Steam and were curious as to what Capsized is like, I reviewed that sucker over on Nightmare Mode. Spoilers: I liked it. Check at the review here if you are interested.

Beautiful game.

If you don't like movies being spoiled, then don't read any further then this. The movie is a strange one, and nothing is clearly offered up to the viewer. For this reason, speculating on its meaning and events requires I reveal aspects of the movie, including its ending. If you don't mind, then read on, otherwise see the movie first. Its a strange one, and doesn't follow many conventions we expect in a movie. This is less a review and more my open musings on the movie, what it meant to me and what i thought of various decisions it made.

A bit of plot for you before I dive into the surreal movie that is Picnic at Hanging Rock. The movie follows the students of an all girls school in Australia in the 1900's. At the open everyone is getting ready for a picnic at the titular mountain, save for one girl who is told she isn't permitted to attend. So everyone piles into the carriage and they head off to for the day. When they arrive everyone discovers their watches have stopped at noon, but their musing are cut short by four girls who ask to strike out to see the mountain better. As the four climb higher they become more and more detached, save for one complaining girl who wants to go back. The higher they go, the more dreamily they talk about life and human purpose, removing stocking, shoes, and corsets as they go. At one point they all silently lay down on the stone to nap in unison, and upon waking three silently climb higher, and the fourth runs off screaming.

Also Beautiful, but a movie.

The screaming girl returns, but can't remember where the other three went, but remembers seeing one of the teachers climbing the mountain as well, but she wasn't wearing her dress anymore. Unable to find them, they return to the school to alert everyone of the missing girls, and the manhunt begins. Among the searchers is a British boy who saw the girls head off to climb the mountain, and becomes obsessed with finding one of them, much to the annoyance of his Australian friend and servant who helps him. The boy is unable to locate any of them, being unable to climb high enough, but his servant isn't as hampered and does manage to locate one girl just above where his friends strength gave out.

The girl, of course, remembers nothing. The school meanwhile is losing students due to the incident and things begin to fall apart. I'll discuss the rest of the movie after we talk about the tone, ending, and story.

A unified nap among lizards and stones.

Picnic at Hanging Rock is a strange movie. Generally speaking horror movies have active antagonists, a man with a knife, ghosts, monsters, aliens, and all other manner of dynamic forces seeking to harm the protagonists. A smaller amount make the protagonist into an antagonist, who, through madness or bad choices manage to drive the horror. This movie lacks both of these aspects, its unclear why the events happen as they do, and little explanation is ever offered up.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing either, although for some viewers this can be frustrating, some would even feel its pointless. Some people don't like a lack of closure, and without a proper ending, will often feel the movie was a waste. For me, however, that's not the case. I'm more about the journey then the destination, stories don't necessarily need resolution for me, which may be why I enjoyed this movie.

Never seen such a haunting movie.

The journey of this movie is a study of unease. Sounds are prominently used to un-center the viewer, clocks ticking and then stopping, strange and otherworldly sounds echo down the mountain side, and sometimes the pleasant soundtrack will just abandon you. The characters who will come to vanish in the mountains each have strange moments, of low spoken monologues about the nature of the mountain, wistfully talking about someday leaving, and other moments that displace them from the cheerful classmates around them.

The cheerful, and not so cheerful classmates at times appear to be the true story being told despite the focus being on the search for the missing girls. If you ignore the surreal moments atop the mountain, the real conflict being explored is classicism in 1900 Australia. Everyone is treated well at the all girls school save for one, notably the only Australian girl among a school full of British students and instructors. Besides her friends and one teacher, who is French, the girl is looked down upon and denied a chance to join her friends on the picnic. After her best friend vanishes on the mountain, she gets no consolation or comfort besides being told her tuition wasn't paid, and she is to be returned to the orphanage.

The poor Australian girl trapped in an English hell.

On the other end of the classicism spectrum we have all of these posh British people in the outbacks of Australia. They build homes that stand out in stark relief in the environment, they explore the mountain sides in corsets and proper dresses, they are like a well dressed infestation on the wilds of Australia. It seems as if the country itself was driving events of the movie, the British boy couldn't climb high enough to find the girl, but his Australian friend did. The girl who ran screaming complained the whole way, and the one girl who didn't remain vanished but was found remarkably unharmed after a week in the wild is the only one who expressed concern for the complainer. The other three, and the teacher, were all seen as having reverence for the mountain in some way, and were seen stripping themselves of class before silently vanishing into the mountain.

Back at the school, the poor Australian girl is tormented by everyone but the servants and the French teacher, no one having any pity for her. The girl who returned from the mountain is accosted by her peers who demand to know what happened to their classmates, she has been tainted in their eyes. This ostracizing of the Australian girl would drive her to suicide, unable to take being confined in the small bubble of upper class Britain. As the school falls apart in her hands, the head of the school would later die attempting to climb the mountain that ruined her, she would be found dead and broken at its base.

The man who fails to find the girls or tame the land.

The missing people are never found, not even signs of where they went, no explanation is ever offered up to us or the people of the movie. My speculations are just that, my own interpretations into the movie, largely informed by assumptions I have on Australian feelings toward a colonial England. The movie is beautifully shot and well acted, and many scenes seem pregnant with meaning that I'm not aware of. I'm still not sure what the movie is about, or what it was trying to say. I enjoyed it, certainly, but I also feel like I need someone who is more knowledgeable in the location and time period to explain it to me. I would certainly encourage you to see it, if only so you can also muse on what you have seen.

Tomorrow we return to Sweden, but in 1968 and directed by the esteemed Ingmar Bergman. Hour of the Wolf is notable for being the auteurs only venture into Gothic horror. If you want to know what comes after that, or want to read previous reviews, then check out The 150 Days of Halloween schedule.

150 Days of Halloween: The Phantom Carriage and Dead of Night

2011-06-26T01:58:00.000-07:00

Apparently one movie and one review a day is hard to manage, what with life's vagaries. However, I made a schedule and I am determined to stick by it, even if it means double reviews like the this. The two movies in question are the 1921 Swedish romantic horror movie, The Phantom Carriage. This was the first silent film of the list, and other silent films now have a great deal to live up to. The other was Dead of Night, a series of horror vignettes by the British Ealing company, which is best known for its comedy classics produced following WWII.

First up is The Phantom Carriage, and just to set the tone a bit for you, I loved this movie. Its the best Swedish movie I have yet to see, and its even the best silent film I have yet to see, with a rich and involved narrative uncommon for the time, and the wonderfully expressive acting that was. This ninety (90!) year old movie, which has held up remarkably well, was paired with a distinctly modern soundtrack produced by KTL. At first I was sad that it was the only version I could find, but after watching the movie with this music pairing, I am glad its the version I found. The soundtrack was immensely effective at creating a haunting mood.

Its based on a novel written ten years prior to the film.

This movie is a morality tale at its core, like A Christmas Carol, but instead of being about a man bitter for bitter's sake and often just focusing on Christmas' role, its about humanity. Its a tale about the faults in us all, the potential we each have to fall off the path and become lost souls. It is also about the redemptive qualities in us all, and the power we have to help out fellow man. By giving the main character a distinctly human flaw, alcoholism as opposed to just being a dick, it grants the film great power in affecting its message.

The movie opens with a young women on her deathbed, consumption has been taking its toll on her for a year now, and she doesn't have much time left in this world. In between fits of spasm inducing coughs, she begs for those around her to bring David Holm to her bedside. Everyone looks uncomfortable and concerned, but after much pleading, they consent and begin the search. We soon understand why, the man is a filthy drunk spending his New Years eve with others addicted to the bottle among the dead in a cemetery. In the spirit of the setting and the time, he tells those around him a tale.

He's the drunk on the right.

He once had a friend who was always jolly, the same man who incidentally introduced him to the joys of drinking. This friends spirits were high everyday of the year but one, the day of New Years Eve, and once explained why that was. He was once told a tale, one he believes with all his heart, about the specter of death. You see, Death just oversees the whole operation, he doesn't collect the dead himself. Instead, the last soul to be reaped in any given year will be doomed to drive deaths carriage and collect those who have lost their lives. So, fearing such a fate, he becomes withdrawn and scared every New Years eve.

His drunken friends give a shudder and fretfully glance at the clock to see its almost midnight, at which point David takes a gulp of his wine and tells them the friend died last New Years eve, of all nights. Its at this point that someone finally finds the man and demands he come to Sister Edit's death bed, to which he bitterly refuses. The man soon gives a sad sigh and leaves the drunks to their cemetery.

The titular carriage.

This doesn't sit well with the other drunks however, who soon demand that he heed the call of the dying. Denying them, a fight soon breaks out between the once happy inebriates. The confrotnation comes to a head when a bottle gets smashed over David's head, and fearing he has died just as the clock struck midnight, they flee the scene. Its at this point that his old friend arrives atop a ghostly carriage to inform him of his new duty as Deaths driver, but not before he shows David the extent of his sins in the living world.

From here on out the movie follows the two as they silently witness events from David's past, from his initial fall, various failed attempts to clean up, and the fact that his own callous disregard for others caused Sister Edit's consumption. We watch his slow transformation in these flashbacks from loving father to a broken and bitter man driven only by a desire to watch others fall like he has. While we watch that happen in the past, we watch the opposite happen to his ghostly shade, we see him slowly understand the harm he has caused, and slowly we see his sorrow and desire to repent. These two parallel arcs for a single character happening in one narrative is masterfully done, and for it to happen in a silent movie is incredible. You barely get such great structure and story in modern movies, and this people did it without sound, color, and with the limitations of filming equipment at the time. Not to mention the impressive effects of the film.

His friend, now Death's driver, shows him his life in grim detail.

The double exposure special effect is used to great effect, and better then I have ever seen it. The ghostly apparitions will be covered by elements or characters in the foreground while still allowing the background to be seen through their bodies. For a movie made in 1921 this is an amazing feat, and it allows for incredible scenes, such as death's carriage riding between crashing waves at the scene of a capsized boat. Death's driver is then seen to climb from the carriage, down between the swells and waves, to collect a soul on the sea floor. Its beautifully done, and all the while the soundtrack by KTL is creating a truly haunting feeling that pairs so naturally with the ghostly nature of the film.

I don't have enough praise to heap on this movie, its that good, it is beyond rare for a movie to age even 10 years gracefully, the fact that this one remains powerful and so good after 90 is hard to even believe. You may be wondering why I was so detailed with the opening of the film, and then trailed off into vagueness for the middle and end. The opening really sets the tone of the movie, showing us a present state to the world before stories and flashbacks change everything up on us and take everyone for a ride. I want you to have that set up, and my various peeks into why this movie was as well liked as it was, in the hopes it may drive you to seek it out. Its a beautiful moving portrait of everything we are capable as people, the story is moving and masterfully told, and everyone deserves to see this with fresh eyes. If you like movies, then you owe it to yourself to see it.

Two shades begin to talk about life.

Now for Dead of Night, a decidedly different experience. Made in 1945, this movie is comprised of a series of related stories being told by guests in a house. The stories are all about encounters with the supernatural, be they ghosts, premonitions, or possession. These stories are all told to one character in particular who is convinced he has dreamed his arrival at the house, and that in the dream terrible things will happen. The other characters tell their owns stories, both as a means of agreeing with him that it could be possible he foresaw the future as well as to comfort him that nothing bad will happen.

This makes it hard to judge the movie as a whole, as each story told within the greater story is so distinct. Some of the stories, like the slow tension building story of a man who sees a totally different room on the other side of a mirror that slowly consumes him, or the tale of an unhinged ventriloquist rules by his dummy really stand out as great segments. Some of the others, meanwhile, are not as strong, such as the story of a girl playing hide and seek and finding a ghost alone in a room.

See that? Apparently critics got up and hugged the movie.

On the whole their are more good segments then bad, and they all flow nicely into the main story. The story tellers react and change with each telling, some getting more concerned and some calming down as time passes. All the while portents from the mans dream slowly come to pass, and sometimes fail to thanks to a story that was told, easing his concerns some. This mechanic does wonders to create tension in the main narrative, all of these tales being told leaves you wondering when everything will finally fall apart in that house.

As for horror, not many segments really bring the scares, the dummy sequence does well, but when have you seen a dummy that didn't creep you out? Most people in my age bracket also have the benefit of Are You Afraid of the Dark's dummy episode, which was inspired by this movie, having seeded the fear of dummys in us years ago. Likewise the fear of mirrors is a natural choice, everyone has caught sight of something in a mirror in a dimly lit room once in their lives, this will always leave a lingering doubt.

Any sane person fears a dummy just a bit.

I suppose that's what this movie does well. Nothing is going to jump out at you, nor are any of the scenes gruesome in anyway. The stories though, they are all rooted in very common and basic fears and superstitions. Dreams that seen to predict tragedy, perceived supernatural warnings that avert disaster, ghosts, mirrors, and living puppets. The movie doesn't need to go out of its way, these are already in the back of your mind.

Still though, I don't feel its aged as gracefully as the other movie reviewed in this post, segments could have been much more imposing and left lingering fears that would color the main narrative. I just wanted more out of it, for it to be more creepy and frightening then just merely entertaining. The movie is still good, make no mistake, but it isn't truly frightening, and I sadly never felt much in the way of tension. Still worth checking out, because ultimately this movies concepts have gone on to inspire many more movies after it, some of which took the ideas and really ran with them to great effect.

"Watch these movies, or I'll let the dummy eat your eyes."

Tomorrow we jump forward in time 30 years to 1975, and move from Britain to its former colony of Australia for Picnic at Hanging Rock. As always, check out The 150 Days of Halloween schedule for past reviews and future movie dates.

150 Days of Halloween: The Testament of Dr. Mabuse and The Cremator

2011-06-23T23:34:00.000-07:00

We are in the middle of a block of older, and largely foreign films now, which is exiting. Yesterday was The Testament of Dr. Mabuse, a 1933 black and white German film by the auteur Fritz Lang. Today's film was The Cremator, a 1969 Czechoslovakian film by Juraj Herz. Vastly different movies in style, tone, content, and direction.

Being from the mind of Fritz Lang, I don't need to tell you that The Testament of Dr. Mabuse was an exceptional film. Not much of a horror movie sadly, save for the creepy titular doctor who organizes a crime spree from a padded cell. A crime spree with no other purpose then to destabilize the government and create havoc and terror in the streets. Kind of like Tyler Durden's Project Chaos, but with a disregard for innocent lives.

Does Fritz Lang have any bad movies?

Despite it not being much of a traditional horror movie, it still has various elements of the genre. The mysterious and mad Dr. Mabuse for instance begins as a crazed man frantically scribbling criminal manifests in his cell. These plans slowly build a larger picture for what essentially amounts to a terrorist cell committed to creating terror for terrors sake. After his death, Mabuse then returns as a ghastly apparition to oversee his plans, his visage is transparent with massive unblinking eyes and a partially visible brain. He would later possess his caretaker and admirer at the asylum, and use his body to personally handle aspects of his plan to destabilize the nation.

Besides the doctor and his ability to drive those who hamper his plans mad with fear, the movie plays mostly like a mystery and a crime thriller. You have gangsters committing robberies and murders, the police working to unravel the mystery and holding gunfights with the gangsters, and the obligatory gangster who has second thoughts and becomes the hero. Its not Lang's best work, but its still a beautiful movie and its a joy to watch. For a better thriller by Lang, you can't do any better then M, which is a brilliant movie.

May not be much horror in the movie, but this certainly counts.

This was a short review, but so were its Halloween appropriate elements. Whatever list I read that listed this as a horror movie was very much mistaken, but I'm still glad I can say I saw it now. I'll be more careful about reading up just a bit more on these before watching them, to weed out anymore non-horror surprises. The bottom line is The Testament of Dr. Mabuse isn't a horror movie, but its still a damn good movie. The special effects are stellar for a 1930's movie as well, Mabuse is a creepy sight as he haunts his plans for ruin, and Lang insisted on using real weapons and explosions through the production, which really shows.

The Cremator is also not a 100% horror movie, but it certainly is creepy and strange. It follows a man who works for a crematorium, and that work borders on obsession. Through the entire movie the man dreamily muses over the nature of death and life, and the freeing nature of burning a body. He monologues through scene transitions, starting a conversation at a brothel and finishing the same line to his wife. This creates an incredibly surreal state through the film, with the main character being the one constant feature as he drifts through the movie.

Morbid, funny, and super weird.

Around him, Germany is closing in the the Czech borders, and loyalties are being drawn. At first he resists the transition, valuing his friendships and his family more then being a member of the Nazi party. Soon that begins to change, as he falls more and more deeply into his warped interpretation of the Tibetan philosophy of reincarnation. As he sees the German influence grow, his desire changes from protecting those around him, to saving them. Saving them, of course, means killing and burning them to spare them the suffering to come.

So, with the same dream like motions he has always had through the film, he begins to kill off his family to save them. He sells out the other workers at the crematorium, his temple of death, to keep it pure and unspoiled. Soon he is having vivid hallucinations of being the reincarnation of Buddha, which coincide nicely with the new job the Reich have for him. They need a party member who knows a thing or two about burning bodies, someone to lead a project to build massive crematorium furnaces. He joyfully envisions a massive hall of fire, where bodies stream in one end and ashes out the other, freed souls pouring out the chimneys all the while. He wants to save everyone in the world.

"My Father isn't insane and evil... right?"

Its a dark movie, I mean did you read that last part? The man goes on to build the furnaces that millions would die in during the war that follows! Despite that dark subject matter, its played perfectly straight. The score is beautiful classical music, the same that plays over the crematorium speakers. Our leading man smiles constantly and is always eager to lay a hand on whoever hes talking to. He never comes across as a killer, and believes everything he is doing is for the best. Its an incredibly black and incredibly dry comedy. The deaths don't happen until the very end of the movie, after he is beyond lost in his own unstable mind, but the menace pours off him long before that.

With his hand constantly touching the people around him, his endless smile and need to constantly fix his hair, the man is just creepy the whole time. His family is stone silent for near the entire movie to really contrast with his nonstop talking about death, beauty, and the nature of the soul. His obsession with death, and his belief that it is a freedom from suffering, is a constant subject for the man, and it influences everything he does. The entire experience is simply surreal.

"Think I'll save my family suffering at the hands of the Nazi's by brutally killing them one by one."

You won't be terrified by this movie, but you may be unsettled by it. Its a window into a warped mans mind, one who believes that death is mans only salvation. As viewers we are aware of the horrible acts that will follow the Nazi parties rise to power, a knowledge that colors the entire experience in a very dark light. If you want a strange experience, then give this movie a go. I'm still not sure what I fully think of the whole thing.

Tomorrow continues our trend of older, foreign, not quite straight horror movies with The Phantom Carriage. Its a 1921 Swedish romantic horror movie. Romance horror is a fairly uncommon sub-genre, so it should be interesting to say the least. To see past reviews and future movies, check out the full 150 Days of Halloween schedule.

150 Days of Halloween: The Dunwich Horror (1970)

2011-06-22T00:19:00.000-07:00

This will be a short review, mostly because I have a headache, but also because this movie could have been interchanged with any terrible B-movie from the late 60's or early 70's.

I love terrible B movies, from any year really. The wooden acting, the cardboard special effects, and the thread bare plot and logic are all hilarious to endure. However, this isn't just some random B movie with giant bugs or tin-foil based alien menaces. No, this one chose a Lovecraft story to base itself on, which means it falls under a special kind of scrutiny. The Dunwich Horror can't avoid drawing comparisons to its written source of inspiration.

The female lead and Sir Not Appearing in This Film.

The story is drastically different between the story and this movie. The timeline is truncated, characters are altered and added, motivations have been changed, and the ending is of course vastly different. Aside from names and locations, this could very well be an unrelated movie. This isn't the first movie to fail at adapting Lovecraft's work, but it is the first one to keep its title the same as its source materials.

We follow a charismatic creeper and the best part of the movie, Wilbur, as he manages to charm and make off with a young woman who may or may not be the assistant to Dr. Armitage, who is lecturing at Arkham. Wilbur then slowly, ever so slowly, drugs the woman, Nancy, over the course of a weekend. The purpose of drugging her seems to be so she will be a willing sacrifice as a means to open a gateway to allow entrance of The Old Ones. This slow drugging process gives us plenty of time for Wilbur to make painfully funny faces at Nancy to show us hes using his occult powers to control her. It also gives his grandfather plenty of time to stutter lines at Wilbur in a hilariously forced old man voice.

"My god... I just realized. I'm awesome."

I think the best part of this experience is the "special effect" used whenever someone is attacked by the monster, Wilbur's alien twin brother. The first one is by far the best, a woman unlocks the door the creature resides behind, prompting the creature to attack. The image flashes to a primary color, just a simple colored transparency placed over the film. After the first flash, the woman's coat is gone. FLASH, now she is lacking a shirt. FLASH, now she is naked. With one last primary color the woman falls to the ground screaming, then dies.

Why did she have to get naked during the rave of colors? No idea, that's just how monsters roll in this movie. Later the monster would massacre a forest of armed men, but they got to keep their clothes on as the screen flashed between red, blue, green, and so forth. The monster, apparently, doesn't swing that way.

"Yep, still the best part of this movie."

If you want a good movies, or even just a passable one, this isn't for you. This is a Mystery Science Theater caliber movie experience, it demands that you have fun with it. So sit down with some friends and prepare to mimic the robotic like mannerisms of Wilbur, and to make all the awesome wide eyed faces he makes. I really hope the Rifftrax people cover this movie one day.

In other news, I saw The Green Lantern today. Its a bright and shiny movie, but it has a number of serious flaws when it comes to writing and character motivation. As is the case with many movies I see, this one was more entertaining as something to mock then to absorb and consider. Its not terrible, mind you, this isn't another Dare Devil or Fantastic Four, but it certainly isn't a Dark Knight or an Iron Man either. Its still an entertaining movie, and when they just let GL do his thing it can be pretty good, just be prepared to roll your eyes a few times and to question a number of things that people do in the movie.

"No evil... save for the various genocides in developing regions, those don't look cool to fight though."

So, tomorrow we have The Testament of Dr. Mabuse, by the master of German Expressionism, Fritz Lang. So get ready for a trip back to 1933. If you want to know what other movies will be coming up, or have already been reviewed, check out the full 150 Days of Halloween schedule.

150 Days of Halloween: A Tale of Two Sisters and Cabin Fever

2011-06-21T00:49:00.000-07:00

We return to our 150 day long celebration of Halloween, already in progress. In a way this will also be a celebration of my memories with Pleasant Street Video, they may be leaving, but the movies go on. So lets pop a vitamin D supplement because we never see the sun and talk about the past two days movies.

First off we have A Tale of Two Sisters by Kim Ji-woon, the man responsible for the two highly recommended movies, I Saw the Devil and The Good, the Bad, the Weird. One day I'll go through all my past posts and make sure all the titles are italicized, but that day is not today.

If its a good Asian horror movie, then you can bet a shitty American remake exists.

A Tale of Two Sisters was an incredible movie experience, and one that will be frustratingly hard to talk about without somehow robbing you of part of what makes it great. With the exception of Martyrs, all of the movies on this list so far have had stories and plots that could be openly discussed and used for context without seriously detracting from the experience. Knowing that The Descent has monsters and group tension doesn't ruin the movie, just like knowing that Stay Alive is a steaming pile won't make it any less stupid and fun to mock. However, to go too deeply into Martyrs and some of the directions that story goes would seriously detract from the experience, those reveals and realizations are integral to the experience. The movie can't toy with you as mercilessly as it does if you know what to look for.

This is more true of A Tale of Two Sisters, by several factors even. It is essential you go into this movie your first time as unaware of the experience as you can. Skip the Wikipedia entry and the IMDB listing, avert your eyes from the DVD cover and read nothing on the streaming media source relating to the movie. Start it cold and fresh, and allow the confusion and anxiety to slowly build inside you. Here is another important note, if you like to watch movies with friends, consider breaking that trend for this one. You don't want someone asking whats going on, or wondering aloud why someone behaves the way they do. This movie will not be giving out answers while you watch it, and the last thing you want is someone whispering questions or guesses and taking you out of the experience.

So much subtle menace throughout this movie.

The experience is everything. You get little to no background with the opening of this movie, characters have complicated and tumultuous histories with one another and you are not privy to them. Not knowing anything that happened in these peoples lives, to make them love and hate the way they do, it drastically colors your perception of each person living in the barren and foreboding home together. This lack of insight into these lives will pull you in and not let you go, if you lapse in attention you might miss a clue or a window into the mysteries of the family.

Its grasp on me being as strong as it was also allowed the horror aspect of the film to more deeply penetrate the experience for me. Most movies give you plenty of back story to work off of, hoping to endear characters to you as efficiently as possible. Likewise they try to integrate the horror aspect with stories told among characters, expendable cast who die before the main cast arrive, flashbacks, glimpses on cameras or televisions. More likely then not, by the twenty minute mark you are aware of the killers existence, or the monster, or the telepathic car tire - and the important event that caused this horror to happen.

I forgot to mention the movie is visually beautiful as well.

You have no such luxuries here. When creepy comes for you here, it comes with no warning or knowledge of why its come. The soundtrack makes excellent use of distortion to pair with the visuals to unnerve you as effectively as possible, and once it happens the first time you just can't relax anymore. You don't know when those moments will return, you don't know what prompts them or what they mean, you are as helpless as the people in the movie.

I know this is all incredibly vague, but I have to be, the mystery of it all is what makes this movie so great. The fear of the unknown and the mounting dread as each event builds on the last is such a wonderful feeling that it would be criminal to deny them. Watch this movie and let it take you for the ride, and when its all over and you finally understand all you have seen, watch it again. I don't even need to tell you to, you just will. You will have a need to see the events of the film transpire as someone privy to the history of the characters, to know why they are the people they are.

Seriously, see this movie.

Many movies proclaim to by psychological horror movies. A Tale of Two Sisters puts most of them to shame, it makes them feel bad for including that psychological tag in its genre listing. Put on headphones, turn off the light, watch it alone, and let it take you. You will be glad you did.

This brings us to the movie I watched today, a movie I have seen many times and never seem to get tired of. Made by the oft maligned Eli Roth, Cabin Fever is often credited for bring the R rating back into popularity after movies like Scream set the trend that horror needs to be PG-13 to be profitable.

I want a skull cabin.

I love Cabin Fever, I have ever since I rented it from the Blockbuster that replaced my childhood indie rental store. I loved it so much I never returned it, they never noticed, so it was clearly fated that I should own it. Since then I have upgraded to a proper special edition DVD release of the movie, because I guess I like shiny holographic slipcovers for my horror movies. Cabin Fever deliberately chooses a common setting, common protagonists, and other trapping for an 80's inspired slasher movie. Unlike your common 80's horror movie, this one doesn't have a killer.

Not in the proper sense of a killer anyway, no mask wearing behemoth wielding a machete to be found, only a disease. This is one of the big reasons I like Cabin Fever as much as I do, it forgoes the seemingly magical killer in the woods with something just as deadly and unpredictable. Fear and paranoia mount, and without a tangible thing to fear, all of that energy turns inward. As the infection makes itself known, lines get drawn in the sand. They isolate one another, either by choice or by force, in desperate attempts to stay alive. This falling apart makes the other element I love all the better, the fact that nothing ever goes right for these people.

Boy meets world, then meets flesh eating bacteria.

The whole movie is a comedy of errors just as much as it is a horror movie. Attempts at salvation are constantly within reach of these characters, but somehow they always manage to do exactly what it takes to ruin it. My personal favorite being when Paul, the primary focus of the movie, manages to find a house with people in it. He excitedly runs up to a window and peers inside, desperate to save himself and his friends. What he sees is a woman, naked, reading a book in bed. Understandably caught off guard by this, he freezes like a deer in headlights, which is when the husband and his shotgun round the corner.

Roth manages to craftily build tension through the movie this way, while at the same time getting some laughs out of us. The cast progressively get sicker, and range out further and further for help that is always snatched away at the last moment, all the while the flesh literally melts off their bones. Lesions grow and weep, skin slides off in wet heaps of red, and you can practically smell the sweat and rot wafting off the sicker members of the group. The R rating is put to good use in the movie with the gore alone, without it the flesh eating virus that rampages through the film would simply fail to be menacing in anyway, and much of the twisted humor of the experience would be lost.

"Those kids need help! SHOOT 'EM!"

Cabin Fever is a love letter to the genre from someone who grew up with the splatter-fests of the 70's and 80's, the setting is a tribute to Evil Dead, the creepy denizens of the backwaters around the cabin are straight out of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, in many ways its a road map of my own childhood. Most importantly, rather then just make his own masked killer in the woods, Roth brought something new to the experience without losing those homages. Horror was dead for a few years in the late 80's and early 90's, Scream managed to make it profitable again, but only as a PG-13 venture. Decry him all you want, but with Cabin Fever Roth brought the R rating back, and in many ways revived Horror in America.

We'll be talking about Roth again not too long from now, when Hostel pops up in the schedule. He gets plenty of flak from people opposed to gore and violence in films, but those people aren't his target audience. People who love the low budget madness of Troma, or who count Bad Taste among the best of Peter Jackson's work are the audience. Those of us who wistfully recall the first time they saw The Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Evil Dead understand where Roth is coming from when he makes his movies. In many ways he is like Tarantino, the movies he makes are Frankenstein like monsters of tributes and homages that still manage a unique twist that takes it out of the range of emulation. In much the same way, half of the critics will pan the surface of the movie, while those who praise them do so by expounding upon the details and features that lie beneath the surface.

Wrong Cabin Fever...

This Cabin Fever review certainly got away from me toward the end there. The movie is a tribute to the genre, its funny without sacrificing its tone too much, and overall its a great time. Its fun to watch with friends, and just as fun to watch alone. If you have fellow horror junkies in your life, sit down with a bowl of popcorn and have a good time with this one. Otherwise, crack yourself open a beer and enjoy the show. Be sure to stick around for the credits, or you miss out on the punchline to a joke that gets set-up in the first ten minutes of the movie.

Tomorrow is The Dunwich Horror, the first directly Lovecraft inspired film on the list, but certainly not the last. Lovecraft is one of my favorite authors, and a massive inspiration for my life and art, but sadly his stories have rarely been adapted into anything above a B-grade movie. Our best bet was Guillermo del Toro who was all set to adapt At the Mountains of Madness, so fingers crossed another studio steps in that's willing to invest in a dark, R-rated movie that doesn't have a happy ending.

A great behind the scenes moment here.

If you are curious about past reviews, or about upcoming movies, check out the full 150 Days of Halloween schedule.

The Changing Times and the Death of a Community

2011-06-19T13:26:00.000-07:00

Need to interrupt our 150 Days of Halloween with a lament of the changing times, and to draw attention to a good cause. If one thing is clear to anyone that knows me, or even just reads this here blog, I love movies. More then love really, they have been my crutch through every tough phase of my life, not that I don't watch them constantly during the good parts of life as well. After sickness, injury, heartbreak, death, and during periods of loneliness I have turned to movies to ease transitions and dull pain. Often when someone says something like this they then slide into a talk about why that makes their taste in movies superior, or why they know more about movies then other people.

Those people are stupid. From the highest concept art-house film down to the worst b-movie ever strung together with pocket change and lies, they are all worthy in my eyes. I have been, and will be, critical of movies I review on this blog, but I never regret watching even the worst ones and will often defend them against unfair critical attack.

The average movie critic.

Growing up, I had a local rental store not far from my house or my aunts house, so we would often stop and rent a movie from one home to another. Soon enough I was in that little store once a week or more picking out VHS's to watch in the following days. After awhile I became a regular fixture in the horror section, this little 11 year old kid who was working his way through the shelf because he decided he needed to see them all. Also because the game section included a total of five SNES games, and the only one that was ever in was Mario's Missing, so their weren't many other interesting sections.

The owner was a nice old guy who was also passionate about movies the same way I was at that age, the good ones were good, and the bad ones were still plenty of fun. Soon my trips included talking about what I had watched that week with the owner, and not long after that, other patrons. Even though I was just a stupid kid, the regular adults could still chat with me about movies and for kid me, this was awesome. It was my first taste of being a part of a real community, where my age didn't matter, but my opinion on Trilogy of Terror's Zuni warrior Tiki Doll did. That little rental store was my favorite place in the whole world growing up, for the movies as well as the community.

Yes, this was my child-hood. Never met anyone else who has seen this one.

When that store closed during the early years of high school it was more then losing a store, I was losing a community of friends that just couldn't be sustained outside of those walls. I watched a part of my life get boarded up and reopened as a Blockbuster. A year later when I finally decided to give that Blockbuster a try, my rental DVD was snapped in two right in the case. To this day I still don't know how the employee managed to open and stare at the DVD for 15 seconds without noticing half the DVD was upside down. I understand that the store died and was replaced because the switch to DVD happened as fast as it did, and I know it was too expensive for the owner to replace all of his collection with DVDs. He tried, a small DVD section appeared around when The Matrix came out, but Blockbuster had the weight of a corporation behind it.

I hated Blockbuster for years after that, and would often feel a dirty little glow of happiness whenever a location shuttered its doors. Eventually though I realized that, while I hate the corporate and controlled nature of the store, its still a place for people to get the movies they need, and perhaps for communities to form around. Indie rental stores were dead for miles around me back home, so all I had were the Blockbusters. Then I moved away for college, and that changed everything.

We all saw it coming.

I arrived at my new college as part of an orientation group dedicated to geekery. We gamed, we talked comics, and we watched movies. We also drove around in a dinky van to visit every comic shop and game store in the area. I was excited to see these communities, and to be a part of them, but they didn't satisfy the itch for a movie community. Until we casually happened to walk past a place called Pleasant Street Video. It changed everything.

It was everything I could have ever wanted, it was an independent rental store with two floors of every movie I could ever want, built next door to an independent movie theater. Instead of one owner and five regulars, it had eight awesome employees who were all passionate about movies and it always had people browsing the aisles. Once again I had a movie store to visit once a week, and slowly I had a community again.

If I wasn't on campus, I was here.

After my first college breakup I haunted the cult movie section. In my second year I stepped up to run my favorite student group, and once a week I would rent the movie to be projected from among those rows. After my aunt died I celebrated her memory by revisiting those years from my childhood, picking out horror movies based on whatever had the silliest cover, as if I was a kid again and she was there with me. I could count on Pleasant Street to entertain me and my friends, to distract me from the hard times, to inspire my art, to give me research material during my thesis. It was a part of my education those four years just as much as the college was.

I remember the second semester of my third year. It was already a pretty rough year, I was in the hospital the semester before due to severe dehydration and a caffeine overdose, after a week of intense anxiety and forgetting to eat, drink, or sleep for days. Rather then be smart and take a lighter schedule, I had opted to be stupid and had a schedule that included a full course load and three screenings a week. This essentially meant that if I wasn't in class I was at a screening for class or running a screening for one of the two clubs I ran. Two of the screening were at another college, Smith, and so twice a week I would bus down to North Hampton after dinner for screenings. I loved it. Five screenings a week with discussions about the content was the perfect thing for me.

After screening I would chat with this guy and others about the terrible horror movies I was renting.

It being college, a complicated situation with a girl got more complicated and I was in a funk again. The same week that happened, Pleasant Street adopted a new rental policy on the days I was in town for a screening, and I had an hour to kill before and after due to the bus schedule. Rent one movie, get one rental free. It was as if they knew. Soon I would arrive in town, browse the aisles, leave for my screening, return and rent two movies for the clubs I ran and the two free movies were for me. My days were classes and friends, and when the world went to sleep and my sleep disorder kept me up, I watched movies. Pleasant Street Video was always there for me.

Through college, and in the years since graduating, I have grimly watched the tides change. Once Blockbuster had swept the land clean of independent stores thanks to a bigger DVD selection, leaving only a few that were able to either make the switch or had a large enough customer base. The stores around these five colleges had students like me, eager to keep the community going, and so Pleasant Street lived on. Now I watch as Blockbusters close shop across the country, unable to compete with Netflix, Redbox, and the convenience of instant streaming and torrenting. The age of convenience is great for most consumers, order it online for cheap and never leave the home. Its poison for a place like Pleasant Street.

I'm everywhere, Dave.

Sure enough, here we are, with another community I loved closing up shop thanks to a technology shift. I understand why, I barely like to leave the house as it is, and I often hate interacting with people, but that's what makes it hurt as much as it does. This was my exception, it was a place where I belonged. Now it will close up and vanish forever, and unless people help, so too will its library and cultural legacy.

In an attempt to preserve 25 years worth of building the ultimate cinema library, a donation has been started to fund the costs of moving the DVDs from Pleasant Street Video to the Forbes Library in town. The idea is to keep the collection in the area, and if possible, keep the community alive and hopefully expand upon it. If successful the library would have the largest DVD collection of any library, it would preserve a legacy, and it would make a statement on the importance of cinemas impact on our lives. As revealed in past posts, I love to read just as much as I love to watch movies, and would love to see a library with a focus on both.

The Forbes Library, the future of physical movie rentals.

I know not many of you who follow this are anywhere near North Hampton, MA, but if this sounds like a cause you can get behind, then I urge you to consider donating. The donation system is movie specific if you want it to be, you can be the person responsible for The Human Centipede being publicly available in a library for instance. Or you could donate a directors whole works, or an entire genre, its up to you what becomes available in the library. Imagine a little plaque with your name on it telling the world that you knew Takashi Miike's works were of cultural significance.

For more information, and how to donate, check out the Forbes Library link here.

150 Days of Halloween: The Hole

2011-06-19T00:25:00.000-07:00

So, a short aside before we jump into the movie. As I said in other posts, I hate the summer and the heat, so I naturally avoid the sun. More so, bright lights hurt my eyes and give me headaches, so I typically keep things dim. I actually enjoy hiking, fishing, and taking long walks outside, but I tend to do it on overcast days or the winter. Well, my body noticed these trends apparently, as my doctor called to tell me that I have vitamin D levels like some cave dwelling mutant. Now I need to drink 4 glasses of fortified whole milk a day or my bones will erupt into chalky dust when I least expect it. So that was a fun phone call! Now onto the movie of the day, The Hole!

Me? I'm afraid of child actors dialogue.

I had heard of this one before, but had never seen it. Even then I didn't really know much more then the name going into it. Imagine my surprise when it turns out to be a kids horror movie! This wasn't a bad thing, I loved The Gate growing up, even though I was watching The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and other adult horror movies before I even saw The Gate as a young kid. Joe Dante, the director of The Hole, also apparently saw The Gate as a kid, because it borrows heavily from it at times.

The movie follows two brothers, one a sulky teen and the other a typical perma-bored and hyper younger brother. They just moved into a new house with their single mother, having recently moved after having their abusive father imprisoned. Its typical young adult fare, the teen begins to pine for a hit neighbor girl, the younger brother feels neglected and bored with his brother never having time for him, and the mother is exasperated and unsure how to behave as a recently singled mother. Everyone is also on edge and emotional about her starting to date again, its basic family drama plot points.

"Alright, don't tell any adults about the death trap/rape pit in the basement."

The kids soon discover a hatch in the basement that has six padlocks on it, and this of course inspires curiosity as to whats hidden below. After some futile attempts to cut the locks, they stumble into a keyring in a paint can that opens the locks, so whoever thought it was important enough to lock six times obviously didn't think it warranted keeping the keys with him. Anyway, they find a bottomless pit that just descends into darkness. I will point out at this juncture that if I ever encountered a magical hole with n bottom that seemingly vanishes into what could be another world, I would jump in without a second thought. I basically lack any survival instinct and have an overwhelming need to explore stupid shit.

Soon the obligatory love interest for the teen joins in and they poke and prod the hole with lights and cameras and find nothing aside from strange and uncertain images on the camera. They get bored with the hole, as it clearly isn't a video game or cell phone, and return to being annoying kids. That's when ghosts of dead little girls, demonic clown puppets, and other such fun apparitions begin to terrorize and threaten the three of them. Its made for the younger crowd, so the mother, and any other adults for that matter, are of course away on business anytime this happens.

Obligatory creepy dead girl? Check.

Worried for their safety, but not worried enough to tell the mom or anyone, they seek out the former owner of the home. Thus enters the one expendable character in the movie, as I announced to my housemate sarcastically when the old crazy guy entered frame. He rants like crazy old men are want to do, and soon after dies in the dark, but not before telling the kids THEY will die and scribbling some pictures down into a notebook for no reason.

So the kids then face their fears, the younger brother gets to spend time with his older brother, the older brother gets the girl are learns to value family, and the girl resolves a random plot point from her past. Its a fun movie, and perfectly suitable for a younger siblings or child's introduction to the horror genre. Or as a general movie about facing ones fears and understanding the importance of family and sticking together. For an adult, its entertaining enough in a silly way, certainly fun to make fun of as its littered with plot holes that kids just don't care about. I would recommend it for the little ones in your lives, but I would also suggest following it up with The Gate, which does the same job but better. Its also a bit more eager to try and scare then The Hole, which is less willing to startle anyone.

"I'M THE BEST CHARACTER AAAAH!"

Tomorrow we go back to proper horror with the Korean horror movie A Tale of Two Sisters, made by Kim Ji-woon who made the movie we started the whole list off with, I Saw the Devil. I have only ever heard good things about this movie, so I'm excited. If you want to see the full schedule, and links to reviews for movies seen, check out The 150 Days of Halloween.

"Sweet dreams."

150 Days of Halloween: Die You Zombie Bastards!

2011-06-17T22:53:00.000-07:00

Well this was certainly a departure from the rest of the list. I went into Die You Zombie Bastards without knowing anything about the movie. Not a thing, never even heard of it, which is incredibly rare for me. Where did I get the idea to include it on the list then? One of you crazy bastards suggested it to me in the comments once, so I added the damn thing. Thanks you lunatic.

Oh! As a quick aside, those who read my first two posts about Space Pirates and Zombies, the third and final entry is now up on Nightmare Mode. Check it out.

What is this i don't even...

This is one of the weirdest movies I have seen in a long time, and seriously funny at times as well. Right off the bat, if you ever intend to watch this movie, be sure to watch it with some friends. The movie is unrelenting in its breakneck pace, which pairs well with a schizophrenic story and editing. Scenes will interrupt other scenes, at one point the movie just switched to a Spanish superhero movie for five minutes before switching back, all for no reason. Even better, the sidekick character that came with that moment remains for the rest of the movie, confusing the viewer and the characters in the movie alike, prompting "who the fuck are you?" lines both in and out of the screen.

Its hard to give a breakdown of this movies plot, at times it feels like seven or more ridiculous movies inter-cut together. We have a Amphibious Man with a massive penis who is being tracked by a trio of sexy Paleoarcheologists, those three are then kidnapped by a mad scientist who wants to make a zombie army. We have a serial killer with a heart of gold who is in love with his similarly insane wife, and when the wife if kidnapped by the same mad scientist, he dons a super hero suit made of human skin and sets off to find and save her. The movie follows his adventures around the globe to find his wife and gain the tools and skills he will need to save her, this results in various tangential stories being told, from Rastafarian super villains to Swedish cheese demons.

The face of a Paleoarcheology.

When not following our serial killer hero, we watch the mad scientist reminisce about his childhood, work on his evil machinations, and alter his bride to be with various "enhancements." For those of you familiar with Troma films, this should all sound pretty standard, and while this wasn't actually made by Troma, it was made by former Troma film makers. Its a seriously strange movie.

The faces of a Paleoarcheology as zombies.

If you decide to make the plunge, then get ready for a barrage of unnecessary nudity, hilariously fake gore, makeup, and penises, and lots of "WTF" moments as this movie drunkenly stumbles through countless scenes of utter madness. This movie breaks the fourth wall with the reckless abandon and savage brutality of the kool-aid man, and just like that massive jug of sugar, this movie makes no apologies about it. The hero of the movie progressively overacts as the movie goes on, repeating lines in ridiculous voices, waving his arms and entire body around to accentuate lines, and generally just being the best thing ever.

If you find insanity distilled down to a muddy paste to be entertaining, then you need to watch this pile of cinematic discharge. Find some unwitting friends, some beer, or some fragrant greens and settle in to watch your very mind melt on TV. You will smell the alcohol on your television's breath, and after awhile the TV will slowly emit a thick cloud of pot smoke, that's how utterly saturated the production of this movie must have been, just watching gives you a contact crazy.

Like if someone made a movie after only ever watching MST3K skits.

Tomorrow we pull a hard 180 in tone for The Hole, although almost anything would be a 180 after Die You Zombie Bastards! If you want to know what other movie to expect, or want to read reviews for previous entries on the list, see my full schedule for The 150 Days of Halloween.

ACTING!

150 Days of Halloween: Night of the Living Dead and Deadgirl

2011-06-17T01:03:00.000-07:00

Been a busy day, and the sun will be up in not too long, so these will be some short reviews!

The first movie doesn't even really need a review, it's Night of the Living Dead, the seminal zombie film from George Romero. I don't think you could find someone who doesn't at least have a vague understanding of the film.

A classic.

This black and white classic is about the night the recently dead rise up and attack the living, causing panic and hysteria. The movie follows a small group of people who hole up in a house to try and stay alive, but inevitably mistrust, hate, and fear tear everyone apart shortly before the zombies do. While it may not have aged well, its still an effective movie and a timeless portrait of the time. Subtle undertones of racism and fear of the enemy at home color the undead and the survivors in interesting lights. Of course by the end of the movie the viewer is acutely aware that when confronted with frightening situations, humanities greatest threat is its own inherit prejudices and hate we have for one another. We will always be our own worst enemies.

This movie was the jumping point of a cultural phenomenon that has lasted generations, Romero's depiction of the walking dead would spawn plenty of sequels and countless imitations. Its a cultural icon, and a horror foundation stone.

"Gruuuhave you heard of our lord jesus christ?"

Following Night of the Living Dead was another zombie film, this one a decidedly different approach to the idea, but with some of the same themes running throughout. Deadgirl.

The premise of the movie is that two outcasts from the high school social scene decide to cut during a fire drill. Looking to find a nice cool place to drink some beer and get out of the sun, they opt for a condemned insane asylum. Its in the basement that they find a sealed room, which when opened, reveal a naked women chained to a table. A girl who cannot die. A zombie.

For better "growing up" horror, see Teeth or Ginger Snaps.

Deadgirl is an interesting movie to say the least. Off the bat the premise makes the movie seem to be a base exploitation film, looking to shock and titillate more then anything. Actual viewing the movie is a different matter, the movie keeps most things off screen, and isn't looking to visually shock you as much as emotionally shock you.

For instance, The Last House on the Left from a few days ago. The original version of that movie exists basically to show you naked ladies, and terrible things happening to naked ladies. The revenge tale the last fourth of the movie focuses on is almost an afterthought, the typical ending expected from an American horror movie. Happy and brutally retributive. Deadgirl doesn't put it all up front, yes some nakedness is seen, but the sex is always through the eyes of the protagonist who thinks whats happening is appalling. The camera never lingers, the movie seems more interested in giving you time to mull over whats happening.

What would you do if you found this? If you didn't say, "Call the police," then I have some bad news for you.

You have the protagonist, Rickie, who refuses to rape the zombie girl, and J.T., who feels this is what the world owes them. To J.T. this is the best thing they will ever have, and they would be fools to pass it up. As J.T. spends more and more time with Deadgirl, Rickie grows more and more despondent and angry about whats happening. Soon after J.T. brings down another friend, Rickie tries to break Deadgirl free, but is interrupted by J.T. returning to where he now basically lives.

Its interesting to watch. The two who committed to the act of rape become increasingly more desperate for Rickie to either join in or express approval, and even more desperate to maintain the status of their operation. Rickie meanwhile grows more and more desperate to set things right while battling the loyalty he feels for his friends. Things eventually spiral out of control, of course, and the bodies begin to pile and we finally find Rickie's tipping point for his morality. Honestly his tipping point comes across as kinda lame after the events of the movie, negates most of his character.

The bad news is that you are a bad person, and should feel bad.

Its not a perfect movie by any means, but I respect that it at least tried to be different. Rather then make it overly gory or titillating, the movie wanted to mull over morality and philosophy. It wanted you to consider the darker side of the teenage male, and the bonds of friendship. It doesn't do these things all that well, but it does try, and that's what matters. It was interesting, it was different, and it let its concept do the work rather then being in-your-face about it like so many other movies. That's all I ask for in a movie, do something interesting and entertain me in some way. They also cast J.T. very well, never have I seen such a sketchy guy.

So, two short reviews because I will die if I don't get some sleep! Tomorrow brings another Zombie movie with Die You Zombie Bastards! As always, feel free to check out the full 150 Days of Halloween schedule with links to (fuller) reviews for the movies I have seen so far.