We’re back… and we haven’t cleaned up our act yet.

In tonight’s psychedelic 70s horror offering from Italy, a young and beautiful photographer takes a ride from a mysterious old woman and gets more then she bargains for. It seems our jet set protagonist is cursed and suffers constant weird and erotic hallucinations and everyone she photographs turns up dead.  After another visit the the old woman’s creepy house, complete with a bottomless pit and creepy S&M dolls, she discovers that her host is an witch that is trying to steal hear body.

Hi kids. I don’t really have a lot to say about this one. An alien craft crashes near a rural town and some of the creatures start killing and mutilating the townsfolk and must be hunted down. This movie is, however, a lot of fun. If you love rubber suites and b-level special effects you’ll really dig this.

Also, we introduce what we like to call The Corpse Cast… AFTERMATH! It’s a little treat that Shane put together… Watch below:

It is that time of year when the thoughts of blissful lovers and pining loners alike turn to matters of the heart. Such is true here the dank vaults of public domain gold as well. Of course we are a much more literal lot down here. If you promise your lover that you will give them your heart, you’d better be ready to deliver.

In than vein, I offer you tonight’s movie. It is a neat, but very loose adaptation of Poe’s famous story. The Tell-Tale Heart has been adapted more times than the most written works, coming in just behind The Bible and Dracula. The movie in question is from 1960 and has our murderer a little more motivated than in the original story. In this movie he kills a rival for the woman he loves. The outcome is basically the same,but the movie has lots of suspense and even a little gore to make things interesting. The film is well shot and well acted and, coming on heels of the stinkfest that was Night Fright, you really can’t ask for more? Enjoy and don’t forget to be a lady or gentleman with your date for the evening. Hold them close during the scary parts and don’t forget to give them a little peck on the cheek before you put them back into the ground.

We bring back the “Question of the Episode”, and this episode we direct it to the ladies out there.

Finally, we have the first prize pack available since The Corpse Cast’s inception! Zach calls in with another “name that tune” contest… So let’s get the guesses in!

Enjoy!

Here’s my complication though.  This movie isn’t like The Devil Inside.  It’s not like Grave Encounters.

I cannot snark this film.  Oh, I tried!  I tried hard!  But all I could come up with was a weak joke about the carriage driver looking a lot like my Dad these days.  So all I can really do is give you the hard, unvarnished truth about this film.

Here.  Go watch the trailer.  I’ll wait until you’re back.

Now, the whole point of a review is to tell you if you should see a film or not, right?  Here’s the problem – I don’t know if you should.  Some reviewers are calling The Woman in Black a bore, with three scares worth watching in over 90 minutes of film.  What I can tell you is that these reviewers need to have delicate portions of their anatomies gently massaged with sledgehammers.  The film was excellently paced, to the point where when the rest of my family walked out at about the half-way point, they were surprised that so much of the movie had actually already passed.

Wait, I hear you saying, the rest of my family?  Indeed.  Since this looked to be a classic style of horror film, I took my mother and brother out to watch it, sort of a family outing so that I can’t be accused of never doing anything with them if Mom wants to catch Ghost Rider 2 in theaters (sorry, Mom, but I need to snark somewhere in here!)

Well, it seemed like a good idea.  After all – they enjoyed Paranormal Activity 2, and they enjoyed Insidious, so this should be a nice, classical chiller along the lines of a Hammer film, and we’ll all have a good time.  We go into the film, and if anything, I’m expecting to have to explain to my brother that it’s a throwback to an era where films were slower, more methodically paced, and not all about keeping you tense and unsettled for 90 minutes.

Well, you already know how it turned out.  About 45 minutes in, and the combination of the brilliant score and the palpable sense of dread over what we know is going to turn out to be a Very Bad Thing had them both sneaking out to the car to talk things over quietly in the sane and sensible light of day.  Their conclusion was much the same as mine; the audio in this film is brilliantly designed so that, even during the quiet scenes, you never quite get your heart rate back down to baseline.  There’s always something at the edge of your senses telling you that you need to be tense, nervous, worried about what’s coming.

This, along with good writing and an excellent performance by Daniel Radcliffe (who is not Harry Potter any more, in case you’re wondering) make for a great film, thoroughly enjoyable, especially if you’ve got a great home theater system.  It’s even a film you can watch with the family, since there’s very little blood in the film.

But… well, here’s the thing about the film.

Do you like kids?

Do you like kids jumpin’ out o’ windows, drinkin’ lye, or immolatin’ themselves with kerosene lamps?

If you do, you’ll have a rip roaring time here!  And you should probably seek professional help.

The thing is, in this PG-13 film, the entire story hinges around dead children… and children killing themselves at the behest of the Woman in Black.  The opening scene of the film involves three young girls having a tea party… until they look up at somebody off-screen, stand up, walk over to the windows, and jump to their deaths.  So if children being hurt is something that turns you off of a film, you should probably skip this one.  I’m actually a little surprised Mom didn’t leave the theater right then, myself.

We proceed to shift to Arthur Kipps, played by Daniel Radcliffe, who turns out to be a young solicitor (lawyer, for those of us in the states) who’s going out of town on business, leaving his son with the nanny.  His wife died four years ago (we later discover in childbirth), and his job performance has been such that his boss is basically at the end of his ropes.  If he can’t do this job, and do it right, then he’s out of the firm.

On the one hand, this guy seems to be quite the ass.  On the other hand… he’s not in a very good position, from what we can tell.  And he’s still better than the boss in the original BBC version, who was casually making comments that Our Hero’s dedication to the firm was called into question by his starting a family at a relatively young age.

This immediately differentiates the film from the original BBC production and, from what I know, the book both were based off of.  I haven’t read the book yet, though I intend to.  But as far as I know, in both, his wife is alive and well.  Which means I can only guess at the endings of both, and how they must differ from the current film!

This is where the title of this post comes from.  Spoilers follow.  If you don’t want them, then take me at my word when I say that it’s a great film with a powerful, gut-wrenching ending, and go see it… if you can handle children dying semi-off-screen.

You stay away from Eel Marsh House.  Go back to your spoilers, and cherish them.

Here’s the thing about the ending.  In the end, Arthur reunites the Woman in Black with her son’s body (and, presumably, spirit), and hurries off to meet his own son at the train station to take him home, safe and sound.  The problem is… the Woman in Black hasn’t been laid to rest yet.  And she’s particularly interested in Arthur, for having the audacity to invade her haunting.

She manifests at the station, luring Joseph (Arthur’s son) onto the train tracks without anybody noticing until the last minute.  Arthur dives in to save Joseph… buth both are hit by the train.  What makes this anything other than the ultimate downer ending is that, after that, Joseph askes “Daddy, who’s that woman?”  We’re expecting it to be the Woman in Black, but it’s actually Arthur’s wife.  The family is reunited, and presumably go on to Heaven.

It’s… it’s a happy ending, kind of, but… *sniffs*

It makes me want to grab the Director by the lapels, shake him, and scream “HOW DARE YOU REUNITE THAT HAPPY FAMILY?!?” in his face!  And I know that’s confusing, and weird, and maybe a little funny, but that’s the effect it had on me!

And, while I suppose the Woman in Black might end her haunting, child-suicide-inducing ways, there’s nothing to guarantee it!  So for all we know we’re off to another batch of child suicides any day now, and none of this had any meaning except to reunite Arthur with his wife!

It’s still a great film, but gah!  That ending really gives the viewer the kick in the balls.  In a good way.

Man.  That Harry Potter kid is kinkier than I thought.

Here’s a little monster movie trash for the more indiscriminate among you. We’ve got a small Texas town terrorized by a renegade primate that has been mutated by NASA experiments. The town’s only hope are the local “college kids” who all seem to be around 35 or so. Not great, not even that good really, but you can watch it at work instead of doing something productive and that is always a plus.  Have a good weekend and enjoy the flick.

For some reason, we’re having an issue converting this file… but it is definitely available for download!

I’m referring to the film masterpiece from 1973 entitled The Wicker Man. In this film, a police officer was sent from mainland Scotland to a small island called Summerisle. Here, Sergeant Neil Howie is sent in to solve an apparent missing persons case. Without talking too much about the plot (because I’m sure you’ve all seen it), I’ll just say that Sgt. Howie is faced with trials that make him question his strong Christian conviction, and he ends up falling into a trap set by the people of Summerisle.

Fast forward to 2011, we’re introduced to an Evangelical Christian Church from Texas U.S.A. and a young couple, Beth Boothby and Steve Thompson (Played by Brittania Nicol and Henry Garret respectively) who have chosen to visit the heathens of Scotland to bring them the word of Christ. Like in its predecessor, these Christians are taken to a remote Scottish village where the locals practice a form of Paganism.

Now, I’m not going to discuss any of the plot, at least not in an exhaustive way. I will say, however, that there is a famine, of sorts, in the small Scottish village. Unlike in The Wicker Man,  this famine is an inability for the women of this small town to conceive children. Much like in The Wicker Man,  this famine is what sets the stage for this film and gives us a reason to have the Evangelical Missionaries come to the small town.

Written and directed by The Wicker Man‘s director, Robin Hardy (this film was actually based on Hardy’s Novel: Cowboys for Christ), he takes a bit of a different angle with The Wicker Tree. I mean… would it be smart to just do an exact retread of The Wicker Man? Probably not… However, what he did was take enough similarities and create a story unique enough for it to theoretically have the same feel and themes of the original without outright rehashing the original story.

I have to admit… being an utter fanboy of the original, I was anticipating this film from the first time I heard it was in production. However, after seeing this film, I was very disappointed. Some would say that it was inevitable that this film wouldn’t stand up to the level of excitement I had and maybe it was unfair to put such expectations on it. However, though I couldn’t help but continually compare it to the original, there were many things that really got under my skin while watching this film.

The first, and most painfully obvious problem with the film, is the fact that the two Christian missionaries couldn’t have been more wooden and cliche representations of hick, Texas proud, country folk. They were completely unlikeable. In the first hour of the film, I cringed every time they opened their mouths. I don’t know if it was their dialog, so much, as it was the delivery by the actors. In the beginning Sgt. Howie is a likeable, no-nonsense, person who was truly likeable. Now, it’s true that we got to know Howie in a much deeper manner than Beth and Steve, but we did journey with him through the mystery that was Summerisle. He was a complex character, that the audience liked and struggled with. Whereas I wanted Beth and Steve to get their asses burnt after about 10 minutes into the movie.

In The Wicker Man, we had the chance to meet and interact with many of the Summerisle locals. We even got to see one of Christopher Lee’s best performances playing Lord Summerisle. We heard them discuss their beliefs, their rituals, and why they do it. In The Wicker Tree, we have a one-dimensional, mustache twirling, bad guy Sir Lachlan Morrison (Played by Graham McTavish). Instead of being the leader of a group of folks that is willing to go to great lengths to do what is the best interests of their people, Morrison seems to be an uncaring murderer.

In the original, the May Day celebration ritual depended upon Howie’s goodness and uncompromising drive to solve his case, to allow him to come of his own volition to fulfill Lord Summerisle’s ritual. In The Wicker Tree, (SPOILER ALERT) Sir Lachlan Morrison was just going to poison Beth and send her to her fate and cheaply trick Steve to send him to his death (SPOILER OVER). This film had so much less imagination than its predecessor that it left a huge gap in my expectations for this film.

My final gripe about this whole movie, and the thing that inevitably made me lose complete interest, was the way that it seemed to not have any of the suspense of intrigue of the original. There was plenty of nudity… but mostly in a tribal dancing savage way instead of the overwhelmingly sensual way that the original was full of. My pulse never pounded, my eyebrows never raised. Hardy seemed more interested in humiliating the Evangalical Christian cardboard-cutout characters by showing how easy it was to tempt them and expose their hipocracy, than to actually make these character “real” people with struggles and humanity.

This isn’t all bad. There are solid performances by many of the cast (like I said, neither of those solid performances was by Brittania Nicol or Henry Garret), and Honeysuckle Weeks is super-hot. There are moments of genuine humor… and did I mention Honeysuckle Weeks is super-hot? However, it wasn’t nearly enough to salvage this film… not even close.

Oh… and one more thing… Christopher Lee was in one short scene as a cameo. Apparently he injured himself and wasn’t able to take on the role he was offered of Morrison and had to settle for the short scene he was in. I’m not sure if he could have saved this film because of the writing… so I guess it’s just as well he didn’t have much to do with it.

Actually… you know who could have made this film better? Nicholas Cage… yeah… I said it…

Director-Konkiat Khmosiri

Starring:Arak Amornsupasiri as Tai, Chatchi Plenpanich as Papa Chin.

IMDB TITLE

Hello Folks,

Jonny T here from the UK. Over the next few reviews I will be bringing you several great Asian titles for The Corpse Collective to rip your eyeballs apart! Some of which you may have heard of some of you may not have. I will be starting this series with the fantastic film from Thailand entitled Slice.

The films plot revolves around a serial killer that is killing mainly the rich and influential and leaving various body parts scattered around as clues. It reaches fever pitch when body parts start turning up everywhere and the policeman in charge is given an ultimatum of just 15 days to solve the case by a minister whose very own son has become a victim of the killer. The policeman in question is Papa Chin. He basically has no clues or leads to go on so, against his best wishes, he reluctantly turns to a prisoner he knows of named Tai. Arrested and jailed for being a hit man he assures Papa that he has a very big clue of to who the serial killer is. He thinks it’s a disturbed friend from his childhood. So Tai is released, and heads back to his old town and old places he and his friend used to hang out to start searching for clues and possibly to find his friend who could be the killer… and by the way his friend is  brilliantly named “Nut”.

So there you go that’s the basic outline of the plot and although it doesn’t sound that exciting I can 100% reassure you that it is intense beyond belief, the violence level is certainly ramped up to 11 and with twists that will just blow you away. The cinematography, by director  Kongkiat Khomsiri, is stunning and the acting is top notch. The main thing I liked about this though was the way the story is told. As with a lot of the Asian films there is obviously a massive cultural difference and sometimes a lot is lost in translation as in traditions Etc. But it’s told in such a way that it never turns confusing or dull… and as I said this is as violent as many Asian flicks. The film opens with a paedophile in a hotel room inviting in a small figure dressed in a red hood and then is subsequently stabbed to death in a bath and has his genitals removed and that’s just the opening scene! No spoilers but there is a twist at the end which I didn’t see coming at all. So whether you are into Asian films or are sometimes put off by subtitles, I would ask you to give this one a try before it gets turned into another bad western remake… and yes, apparently it is being remade, boohoo!!!!

Until next time, take it easy corpse people,

Jonny T.

http://jonnyscultfilms.blogspot.com

I’ll tell you in about 90 minutes.  Oh, and this is probably the point where I should mention that I’ve got a heavy duty dose of the really strong cough meds at play, as well as a shot of Nyquil, so if I get punchy throughout the review, let’s blame everybody’s good friend codeine, shall we?

What I’m going to tell you now is that I’m trying something a little different for reviewing a film.  I’m not going to watch this movie and let it digest for a while before I put my words down, because I happen to be watching it at home this time.  I’ve finally gotten a chance to watch Grave Encounters, a Tribeca Film Festival found footage goodie based on the concept that a ghost hunting reality show went horribly, horribly wrong.

This is actually where the laughter comes in.  As you may or may not know, I am a peripheral member of the paranormal podcasting community along with the horror podcasting community.  I enjoy shows like Ghost Hunters, Ghost Adventures, and Paranormal State, and I was a regular commentator on Eerie Radio.  I know that the paranormal reality shows are cheesy, but some of them are cheesier than the others.

Paranormal State is particularly bad in this regard; in one episode, they clearly identified the Jersey Devil on infrared camera!  Of course, the Jersey Devil happens to bear a shocking resemblance to a white tailed deer, but that doesn’t diminish the importance of their discovery.  Similarly, and far less debatable, was an episode wherein Ryan Buell, the host, clearly pulls a door shut and then accuses supernatural forces of slamming it in his face.  The best part is that, especially as the series has moved on, the show seems to constantly be encountering demonic forces, uncovering Satanic cults in churches, even identifying a prison where guards, prisoners, probably even the warden were all members of a grand Cult of Satan!

This is a paranormal reality show where they have had recurring villains for Pete’s sake.  It makes The Devil Inside look positively tame and mundane by comparison.  Even the opening lines are melodramatic… but why take my word for it?  You can go watch the opening on Netflix any time you want, at the moment!  You can even catch our feature for the evening, because it just went to streaming in the last day or two!

But, if you don’t want to do that, then here y’go.  Basically, they have a few title cards, and then do a preview of major elements coming up in the show.  And then we get the following monologue:

“My name is Ryan, and I’m a paranormal investigator.  When I was a kid, my experiences with the supernatural terrified me, and I’ve been searching for answers ever since.  When I got to Penn State, I realized I wasn’t alone in my quest, so I founded the Paranormal Research Society, dedicated to helping those who are haunted like I was.  We are students.  We are seekers.  And sometimes, we’re warriors.  And each time we help someone, I feel like I’m one step closer to finding the truth.  This… is Paranormal State.”

Heck, it sounds like it could be the opening to Supernatural or X-Files or something like that, almost.

“But Wolfemann,” you’re saying, “you’re here to review Grave Encounters, not Paranormal State!  What’s taking so long?”

Well… here’s the opening we get from Lance Preston, our would-be host of Grave Encounters, in the movie of the same name.

“My name is Lance Preston.  When I was a boy, my family moved into a house that I soon discovered was haunted.  The things that I encountered… have stayed with me forever.”

The similarity to the opening of Paranormal State, particularly the gravitas that Lance is bringing to things, and the fact that Lance is a dead ringer for an older Ryan Buell with Sexy Hollywood Stubble, tells me that I’m about to watch a film about Ryan, Chip, Sergey, and the rest of the Paranormal State gang getting themselves et by real ghosties.

Would somebody please tell me why this didn’t get a mainstream theatrical release again?

So… disappointments in theatrical distribution aside, let’s actually try reviewing the film we’re all here for, shall we?

Title:  Grave Encounters (2011)

Release Date:  9/9/11

Gross:  N/A (No Theatrical Release)

Production Company:  Twin Engine Films

Director:  The Vicious Brothers

Writer:  The Vicious Brothers

Starring:  Sean Rogerson (Lance), Juan Riedinger (Matt), Ashleigh Gryzko (Sasha), Mackenzie Gray (Houston)

Short Summary:  Paranormal investigators go into a haunted asylum for their reality show.  Will they come out?  Well… it is a found footage film, folks.  Do these ever end well?

The Venue:  My place.  Plopped down in front of my computer.  Typing all of this out and only just realizing that I’ve already spent an hour and a half writing the review and we’re not even two minutes into the film yet.  Woah.

The Trailers:  Tribeca Film Festival ads for The Bleeding House (reviewed on Scream Queenz by the lovely Patrick!), NEDS (a coming-of-age in lower-class England film, I think), and Fire in Babylon (a film that actually makes cricket look interesting!  Looks kinda like baseball, except the pitcher is actually trying to hit the batter in the face with his balls.  And yes, I’m going to leave that typo in there.  This is the Corpse Collective, after all.)

Final Verdict:  I’ll be passing that question off to Future Wolfemann.  Future Wolfemann?

“Don’t you hear them?  Crawling in the bushes, in the walls, under the floor!  They hunt, they seek, sleek, lean, and athirst!  The Black Goat sheds her thousand young and rises to the stars!  IA!  IA CTHULHU FTHAGN!  IA IA, CTHULHU FTHAGHN!“

Hmm.  I’m not sure yet, but I think I might gone a little too far into the future to get that final verdict.  We’ll check back in when the actual film is finished, shall we?

(Not-Quite-So-Future Wolfemann says:  Actually, it’s pretty good.  If, like me, you love to hate the paranormal reality TV shows, you’ll probably really love it.  If not, pick it up in about Scene 4 and you’ll probably enjoy it.  I’m going to buy it, but I’m the guy this movie was made to amuse most.  Some flaws, but The Devil Inside this ain’t, in all the best ways.)

Are you getting this on the tape?  I hope so, because I’m not going to go back and do this spoiler shit again, you got me?

Okay, so the film opens up in the office of this network bigwig who’s telling us that, one day, he got the promo to this new show, Grave Encounters.  After a bit of explanation, we cut to the promo, discussed above.  Then we’re back to the exec, who tells us that everything was going great, filming was working out… and then they got to Episode 6.  He gives us, in-film, the spiel about “I want to be perfectly clear.  What you’re about to see is not a movie,” yada-yada.  They’re really pushing the idea that this actually happened, to an extent that even The Devil Inside didn’t go for, and completely beyond anything Paranormal Activity may have ever done.  Not quite as far as Blair Witch, but probably because they knew they wouldn’t get away with that.

Then we cut to the 91 minute Assembly Edit of Episode 6, which takes place at the fictional Collingswood Mental Hospital, based loosely off the Collingswood Stockade from Australia (long since converted into a state school.)

[Full disclosure; I may have fallen asleep at this point in the movie, but that's the cold medicine talking, not the movie.  Picking things up where we left off....]

Lance explains to us that his crew is going to be locked inside the asylum for 8 hours in the evening (calling out Zach Galligan and Ghost Adventures), and meets with a local historian to learn about the background of the hospital.  I suspect that some stock footage may have been used from Geraldo’s exposé of similar ‘hospitals,’ though I’m not sure about that.  And then we’re told about Dr. Vanacutt Friedkin, whom I suspect to be our villain of the evening.

We enter the hospital, and there’s a dropped line about a fire hazard that I’m certain won’t come back up later in the film, especially with a tech guy who’s having regular nic fits.  Speaking with the caretaker of the hospital, we’re shown some of the setup for the evening, and encounter my favorite part so far; a room where the patient scrawled his ramblings on the wall all over the place.  More exploration of the hospital during the day follows, the usual sort of thing that we see on the paranormal reality shows while they establish the background.

What I’m enjoying in the course of this is the growing split that I’m starting to see in the team.  Lance is walking around, completely psyched about the perfect conditions for the show and already thinking about how they can “fix it in post” to make it even spookier.  By contrast, Sasha seems to be tuning into the fact that they’re profiting off the suffering and deaths of hundreds, even thousands of psychiatric patients who were shuttled off by their families to be locked away out of site and out of mind for the rest of their lives.

Probably the most telling moment is when Lance gets the bright idea to go talk to the gardener… who proceeds to say that, no, he hasn’t really heard anything, or seen anything strange at all.  He just started working here.  Lance proceeds to encourage him to make something up for the camera, even paying him to do so.  Never mind that he’s already got several people giving their stories, he has to get that one more bit of “evidence.”  But, then, what do shows like this have petty cash funds for, right?

We then meet the show’s psychic, Houston Gray, who’s somewhere between Al Pacino, Willem Dafoe, and a seriously overused bottle of suntan lotion.  He comes on in, dramatic and serious, giving them the readings they’re looking for, and even spontaneously tells them the story of a patient who killed herself in one of the tubs (which the caretaker told us earlier in the film).  After the cut, he’s laughing and checking to see if he’d laid it on a bit thick, only to be reassured that, no, he was great.

We’re slowing down for a bit now, so I’ll chit-chat about what makes the film work so far.  The interesting thing right now is that the concept excuses a lot of the conceits that you have to work into this type of film.  If you had a found footage film that was, say, Survivor meets Zombi 2, you couldn’t have “Episode 6″ feature a drawn-out explanation of the show’s rules; everybody knows them by then.

But the ghost hunting shows seem to rely on the fact that significant parts of the audience aren’t going to necessarily be sticking around long enough to have watched since Season 1, when they explained what an electromagnet field (EMF) meter was and why it provided evidence of potential ghostly activity.  Since the shows will constantly pad themselves out by explaining what EMF meters are, or what EVP stands for (electronic voice phenomena), the movie has a license to do the same without running into the problem a found footage film about serious ghost hunters would.  Namely, “why are you telling your friends what the machines they’ve used a hundred times before are used for?”

In case you’re wondering yourselves, I’ll chitchat a bit about that later on myself.

Now, we’re into the actual lockdown portion of the show, and I’m having fun.  I suspect this is where we get into the part of the movie where most people start to say “it’s a good 45 minute move stretched out to 90 minutes.”  But for me, this is the sort of cheese I occasionally turn to on Biography when I’m bored on the weekend.  Great theater?  Nope.  Still fun?  Yep.  Especially since, with this being a found footage film and all, I know that everything they do to make these people seem more hopelessly cynical will end with them finding out that It Is Very Real.

Also:  My predictions for how the film ends.  Matt is going to end up burned to death (or, alternately, the entire asylum will burn down).  Sasha is going to end up scrawling on the walls, or at least rocking back and forth in the room with the writing there, completely insane.  Lance is going to end up dead in the suicide tub.  Still figuring out what’ll happen to Houston and TC (the cameraman… and if this name doesn’t stand for exactly that, I’ll be shocked,) but I’m pretty sure one of them is going to take a header out of the window.

Speaking of which, we just had something really happen!  Callback to Paranormal Activity 2, with the switching from one camera to another… callback to PA1 with the bass track… and something new of their own, as the camera gets some interference going before we see the window swing open.

Cut back to Lance and crew, as they’re discovering what might be “residual ectoplasm” with the aid of a blacklight.  Sorry to tell you boys, but that’s probably not so much residual ectoplasm as a couple of high school kids who didn’t clean up after themselves.  While TC is out catching some stock shots they can use, he find a wheelchair, and during a cell phone conversation where he explains to his daughter that monsters aren’t real, the wheelchair scootches around behind him a bit without his noticing.  That might be what ends up getting him, but it’s not quite blatant enough.

Things start picking up pretty quickly from there, with doors closing and opening, loud noises, and Sasha’s hair getting moved around.  When that happens, Sasha’s pretty well going bye-bye; she’s the believer in the group, and when something touches her, she has the very reasonable idea of Getting the Hell Out.  Of course, the front door has been locked and chained now, so that’s not too helpful.

I like this.  It’s perfectly clear, right here, right now, that nobody was prepared for this.  Lance is still desperately trying  to keep control, focusing on the fact that they’ve just gotten real proof of paranormal activity, and that this is a major breakthrough.  Sasha, TC, and Houston all want to leave, now.  The expression on Houston’s face when he comes back up from taking Sasha to the lobby is perfect; a sort of blank, vacant “we are so fucked right now” look that’s exactly the sort of thing I’d expect your average fake psychic to have after encountering something real.

They try to get it to act up again but, of course, it doesn’t.  I’m particularly amused when Lance, with a spiked, very short haircut, tells the ghost to manipulate *his* hair like it did Sasha’s.  Unbeknownst to them, Lance does catch an apparition on the still camera, before deciding that they’re going to pack up and just wait out the last hour and a half before the caretaker comes back to open up.  Given there’s not even another full hour of the movie left… well… I don’t think it’s going to work out quite that well for them.

And, indeed, they manage to get themselves lost trying to get back out to the front lobby.  They seem to be completely cut off from contact with Matt and Sasha down front.  They actually do find their way back down, surprising me a bit, but let’s see what happens from here, shall we?

Matt goes up to start collecting the static cams, and unless my ears deceive me they’re playing that lovely little bass track in the background!  Matt finds the open window and closes it… and that’s when I know we’re hearing the bass track in the background.

Going back to the lobby, Lance is signing off for the show, the radios aren’t working, and Sasha points out that they really do have to go back for the cat, err, Matt.  They find his equipment scattered, and Lance continues with his track record of brilliant ideas by sending TC off down one hallway, and taking Sasha with him (Houston having stayed down stairs).  We follow TC for a bit, and something pushes him down the stairs.  Again beating the horror movie odds, he survives this little run-in, though not without a serious amount of getting beaten up on the way down.

TC freaks out (understandably) and since the caretaker’s late he decides to break down the door… which is when we have what is, so far, my favorite moment of the film.  I’m not laughing anymore, but I am grinning as they break down the door only to find another hallway on the other side… along with the graffiti that they saw on the way in and the chain the caretaker had through the handles of the door.

They kick down a door clearly marked exit… and it’s another hallway.  They reach one of the barred windows, and can’t really get out.  It’s a hefty drop from the open window upstairs, but there’s one tiny little issue besides that… it’s still night out.  At almost 8:00 in the morning.

The next day passes, and basically we just watch things progressively getting worse.  There’s no way out, hospital beds are moving around, and one of the friendlier ghosts decides to hold a conversation, scratching out the word ‘hello.’

On Sasha’s back.

A bit more searching for Matt, and we come across a figure in the corner.  Well… it’s not Matt, and I’m pretty sure that Josh’s face can’t do what this girl’s does, and the Grave Encounters crew seems to agree with me as they turn and run screaming from the howling apparition.  TC, Lance, and Sasha disappear into the closet, leaving Matt wandering in pitch blackness with nothing but the static cams to occasionally pick him up.

He’s also occasionally being picked up by the ghosts, which eventually settle for throwing him down the hallway and shorting out the camera.

Cutting back to the last three, we get Lance looking like he’s about to do the Confession Scene from Blair Witch, though he doesn’t go into the same histrionics.  That’s Sasha’s job, when they all wake up later to find that they’ve been outfitted with patient wristbands… going to dock the film a couple of points for that, I’m afraid, because I’m pretty sure those wristbands weren’t in use when the hospital closed in the 60′s.  I could be wrong though.

There are a few nice scare scenes here, leading up to our discovering where Matt is.  I have to say that I’m enjoying the tension through this, even broken up by cutting out to work on the review.

Come questionable CGI, though in night vision it works out pretty well, and TC ends up disappearing into the tub (well, I was presumably wrong about Lance getting it in there, but who knows?)

It looks like what’s happening is that some spirit (Doctor Friedkin, I presume) has sealed off the hospital and is having his assorted lunatic ghosts bring him new patients, like Matt.  We don’t get this confirmed, at least not yet, but we’re seeing a lot more in the way of freaky ass spirits and… Matt just took a header down an elevator shaft.  Well, that’s another one wrong!

They find their way down into the tunnels, and Sasha starts vomiting up blood for no apparent reason.  She’s checking out, but it’s taking a long time.  Over the course of… who knows how long, really, the two of them apparently keep walking in one direction, only to not get anywhere, and to remain within view of the static cam left at the end of the hallway, so that’s kind of weird too.  About 10 minutes to go here….

Some sort of gas flows down the hallway, blocking our vision through the static cam… and Sasha’s gone when it clears!  Lance goes running off to look for her, and his flashlight dies.  Lance, desperate, tries to get an EVP again… and actually gets a result, but not the one he probably wanted, given it involves people screaming insanely on the other end.

Lance is starting to freak out and… EWWWWW!

Okay, folks, be warned.  There’s a rat eating scene in here.  Though it’s kinda funny how obviously they cut and replaced the rat with a flattened prop (obviously they had to do that, but really, there’s no way to do that shot without making it blatant, so just don’t do it….)

After a bit of that, Lance finds himself a door and goes through, only to find evidence of sadistic, horrific experiments, and then go looking for the source of what sounds like it might be Sasha sobbing.  He finds a lobotomy needle… more evidence that Very Bad Things were happening here… correction, VERY Very Bad Things….

More ghosts, Lance gets it, and… end.

Well.  Actually, that was a lot better than I thought.  I’m guessing that the folks who say the movie should’ve been about half this long were talking about the first half.  The first half of the film, where they’re setting everything up, is only going to appeal to a limited audience.  I just happen to be that exact audience – the guy who’ll be laughing his ass off and eagerly waiting to see all Hell break loose.

If you’re *not* that guy, then I suggest you get the Cliff’s Notes version of scenes 1-3, and pick up at “Undeniable Proof,” when the shit starts hitting the fan.  You’ll notice that my notes got less detailed as it went along; that’s because I really didn’t want to break out of the scene to write down that much.

It’s not a perfect film though.  They did have me on every one of the deaths; what I thought they were setting up wasn’t at all what happened, and I give them credit for that.  The problem, the real problem, is that they drop things.  There’s not so much as a *peep* about the writing on the walls of the guy’s cell once all Hell breaks loose, despite the fact that the clearest stuff there was about demons inside the walls.  I think they intended to call back to it with what we discover in the very end – hints of Satanic rituals conducted in the lower levels – but it could’ve been done much better.  Similarly, the fire hazard never pays off, and neither does the window that keeps opening.

There’s pretty much nothing here for the gorehounds, and if you’re hoping to see Sasha’s assets, it ain’t happening, but that’s almost to be expected.  The good news is that I could see this film playing on TV with almost no edits.  It hasn’t been rated, but except for the rat eating I don’t think there’s anything that would need to go.  And, frankly, the rat eating isn’t exactly a key sequence, given it has zero impact on the rest of the story.  That bit could probably have been cut with no loss, and made the film flow a lot better, since it slows down to creepy shit again right afterwards.

Ultimately though, it’s worth watching.  And if I weren’t already at 7 pages and 4000 words, I’d go off a bit into the ghost hunting stuff that I mentioned earlier… but, instead, I think I’ll save that for another post, if anybody’s interested in a layman’s view of the hazards to happy haunter hunters.

Howlingly yours,

The Wolfemann

This week’s episode focuses on the Swedish band Ghost’s first full-length effort entitled: Opus Eponymous. We also talk some about 2003′s The Manson Family…

Get out your shields folks… your ears are about to take a beating!

A greedy man tries over and over to scare his his millionaire wife death in order to get control of her money. Everything things to be coming up roses for your guy when she finally succumbs to mental exhaustion and kills herself. Soon however, his begins to be haunted by her vengeful spirit.

This is one I saw in TV as a kid. It didn’t seem as effective me as the Bava or Hammer stuff, but I liked it them. I hope you have fun with it tonight.

The movie itself is a weird little number. It is sort of like a giallo, but you know who the killer is all of the time and it is very much a character study. Also, at about the half-way point it turns into either a ghost story or an account of a crazy man going even crazier. Either way, the whole thing has that great Bava feel. I’m sure you’ll like it.

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]]> http://corpsecollective.com/2012/01/friday-night-frights-hatchet-for-the-honeymoon/feed/ 0 Any FNF viewers that follow me in MISO know that I've been on a Mario Bava kick for a few days. I've been watching Kill, Baby Kill, Black Sunday, Baron Blood and Bay of Blood and really enjoying them. So, I wanted to put up some Bava for you guys to en... Any FNF viewers that follow me in MISO know that I've been on a Mario Bava kick for a few days. I've been watching Kill, Baby Kill, Black Sunday, Baron Blood and Bay of Blood and really enjoying them. So, I wanted to put up some Bava for you guys to enjoy. The only two of his pics I know of that are public domain are Hatchet for the Honeymoon and Kill, Baby Kill. I've had both of these on the site already, but the first time I put up Hatchet, I tried to do a little FNF intro at the start and it messed up the video so that the sound and picture where out of sync. As this is one of my absolute favorite movies from Chiller back when I was a kid, I had to put up a better, non-messed up copy. The movie itself is a weird little number. It is sort of like a giallo, but you know who the killer is all of the time and it is very much a character study. Also, at about the half-way point it turns into either a ghost story or an account of a crazy man going even crazier. Either way, the whole thing has that great Bava feel. I'm sure you'll like it. Download MP4 Get the Flash Player to see this video. // The Corpse Cast no http://corpsecollective.com/2012/01/friday-night-frights-hatchet-for-the-honeymoon/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/corpsecollectivemain/~3/K7aRK_pJPW4/ http://corpsecollective.com/2012/01/the-corpse-cast-episode-2-the-cryptkeeper-five-and-dead-and-buried/#comments Sun, 15 Jan 2012 05:13:40 +0000 Mike http://corpsecollective.com/?p=1079 This episode Shane and Mike discuss The Cryptkeeper Five’s brand new album The Unbeatable Cry, and the 1981 classic film Dead and Buried.

… Read the rest

]]> This episode Shane and Mike discuss The Cryptkeeper Five’s brand new album The Unbeatable Cry, and the 1981 classic film Dead and Buried.

]]> http://corpsecollective.com/2012/01/the-corpse-cast-episode-2-the-cryptkeeper-five-and-dead-and-buried/feed/ 0 This episode Shane and Mike discuss The Cryptkeeper Five's brand new album The Unbeatable Cry, and the 1981 classic film Dead and Buried. This episode Shane and Mike discuss The Cryptkeeper Five's brand new album The Unbeatable Cry, and the 1981 classic film Dead and Buried. The Corpse Cast no 1:54:19 http://corpsecollective.com/2012/01/the-corpse-cast-episode-2-the-cryptkeeper-five-and-dead-and-buried/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/corpsecollectivemain/~3/JLysJQEvonQ/ http://corpsecollective.com/2012/01/friday-night-frights-bloody-wednesday/#comments Fri, 13 Jan 2012 17:27:47 +0000 Mike http://corpsecollective.com/?p=1072

If you listened to the Mind Fuzz episode of Cadaverlab  over a year ago, you may recall me talking a bit about this one in the “It Came from the Public Domain segment for that show. The movie opens on bloody, bullet ridden bodies strewn about a coffee shop. What follows is an account of the events that led to that scene. We basically journey with the main character, who has mental issues to begin with, as he goes more and more insane. It is an odd little picture and totally out of place in the action movie collection I found it in. We are never sure what is real and what isn’t as his life and his mental… Read the rest

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If you listened to the Mind Fuzz episode of Cadaverlab  over a year ago, you may recall me talking a bit about this one in the “It Came from the Public Domain segment for that show. The movie opens on bloody, bullet ridden bodies strewn about a coffee shop. What follows is an account of the events that led to that scene. We basically journey with the main character, who has mental issues to begin with, as he goes more and more insane. It is an odd little picture and totally out of place in the action movie collection I found it in. We are never sure what is real and what isn’t as his life and his mental state begin to unravel rapidly toward the climax of the movie. I thought it was pretty good at the time. Of course, I’ve only seen it once. Why not send some feedback to aaron_edgell@yahoo.com or on the CC facebook page and let me know what you think.

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]]> http://corpsecollective.com/2012/01/friday-night-frights-bloody-wednesday/feed/ 0 If you listened to the Mind Fuzz episode of Cadaverlab  over a year ago, you may recall me talking a bit about this one in the "It Came from the Public Domain segment for that show. The movie opens on bloody, If you listened to the Mind Fuzz episode of Cadaverlab  over a year ago, you may recall me talking a bit about this one in the "It Came from the Public Domain segment for that show. The movie opens on bloody, bullet ridden bodies strewn about a coffee shop. What follows is an account of the events that led to that scene. We basically journey with the main character, who has mental issues to begin with, as he goes more and more insane. It is an odd little picture and totally out of place in the action movie collection I found it in. We are never sure what is real and what isn't as his life and his mental state begin to unravel rapidly toward the climax of the movie. I thought it was pretty good at the time. Of course, I've only seen it once. Why not send some feedback to aaron_edgell@yahoo.com or on the CC facebook page and let me know what you think. Download MP4 Get the Flash Player to see this video. // The Corpse Cast no http://corpsecollective.com/2012/01/friday-night-frights-bloody-wednesday/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/corpsecollectivemain/~3/9DSUep2TB_s/ http://corpsecollective.com/2012/01/dont-go-in-the-woods-a-review-by-taylor-dahl/#comments Wed, 11 Jan 2012 17:36:12 +0000 taylordahl http://corpsecollective.com/?p=1055 Don’t Go in the Woods (2010)

Don’t Go in the Woods (2010)

written by Sam Bisbee and Joe Vinceguerra

directed by Vincent D’Onofrio

Remember the scene in Full Metal Jacket where Pvt. Pyle goes nuts, shoots Sgt. Hartman and then blows his own brains out (spoiler alert)?  Vincent D’Onofrio’s directorial debut Don’t Go in the Woods is pretty much the film-viewing equivalent of that event: D’Onofrio is Pvt. Pyle (of course), Don’t Go in the Woods is Pyle’s rifle, and the audience are Hartman and Pyle’s brains.  I mean none of this in complimentary way.

In the tradition of Cannibal! The Musical and Repo! The Genetic Opera, Don’t[!] Go in the Woods takes a horror subgenre and turns it on its head by making it also a musical…In this case, it’s a slasher/alternative-folk-pop musical.  So if you ever wanted to see a bunch of hipster dickheads with acoustic guitars get butchered in a forest, then look no further.

A group of musicians from Brooklyn — each distinguishable from one another by use of such deeply defining character descriptions as “the blind one” and “the Asian one” — have packed up their gear to spend a weekend in the peace and quiet of the woods in order to write songs for a new album.  The leader of the band (who looks disturbingly like the lovechild of Tobey Maguire and David Hess) has laid down some ground rules for the weekend: no drugs, no booze, no cellphones…In other words no fun, and no distractions from the songwriting process.  But when the group’s girlfriends show up unexpectedly looking to have a good time, Spider-Hess gets pissed…And tensions are further multiplied by the appearance of a mysterious stranger in a black mask, tuxedo and top hat who takes to knocking off the dingbats one by one with a sledgehammer (actually making this more of a “smasher” than a “slasher”).

I have a pretty broad taste in music.  It’s not that I can’t like sensitive singer-songwriter style pop songs, but I’ll tell you…When your cast has just played an entire song in a scene around a campfire, and before I even get a chance to breathe a sigh of relief that it’s over, they immediately start playing another song and my reaction is to toss up my hands and say “Come on!” then you might have done something wrong somewhere.  That’s just my personal musical taste, but I doubt that even liking the songs could save this muddled turd of a movie for you.

After way too much sitting around singing jumpy songs about love and pain and how rotten the world is, the slasher elements finally kick in fully and it’s quickly apparent that including full-length songs had done little more than pad the running time, without helping me to care one way or another about any of the characters…Except to make me anxious to see them all dispatched to the great beyond sledgehammer-style.  Almost all of the killings take place within a very collapsed timeframe that might as well have been a montage, leaving an arbitrary final girl to survive until the ridiculous story wrap-up.  Don’t even ask about the twist at the end; you’ve seen it a million times before in much better movies.

I can tell that D’Onofrio and writers Sam Bisbee and Joe Vinceguerra are trying to make a statement with this movie, or at least they want to give the impression that they’re making a statement.  Excepting the opening scene — which involves a singalong to a ridiculous Christian country song on the radio, actually sung by D’Onofrio — the movie plays out with such a straight face that I can’t imagine that we’re meant to sit back and enjoy it only as a goofy lark.  I just know that there’s a message in there somewhere…Something about methods of creativity under stress, or dying for your art, or judging from the title possibly something about not going in the woods?  Who knows.  The problem is that the movie as a whole seems like they saw that they had a collection of unrelated poppy folk songs already written, then they spent about 15 minutes conceptualizing an incredibly bare-bones slasher plot to wrap around the songs as an excuse to get them onto a soundtrack.

Halfway through the movie I started developing a theory…Maybe Vincent D’Onofrio hates wannabe musical wankery also, and he wanted to see kids like these dragged out into the woods and killed as much as I did.  If that’s the case and was the whole reason the movie was made, then bravo Maestro D’Onofrio!

NOTE: To best of my memory of the early 80s movie titled Don’t Go in the Woods, this is not a remake.  Though it’s been several years since I saw the old one.  Believe it or not, the early 80s one is actually worse.

Don’t Go in the Woods is available on demand now, and has a limited theatrical release starting January 13, 2012.

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Here’s an oldie (but a goodie) from Shane’s band DieMonsterDie. Make sure not to soil your panties when you see the sexiness of the drummer in this video!

The Innkeepers

An old hotel is closing down.  The place has a bit of a bloody history, and now the few people left in charge of it are hearing noises, seeing things…Are the spirits of people who have died in the hotel still lurking around?  And if so, what do they want?

In spite of that brief plot summary, the movie I’m vaguely describing is Ti West’s The Innkeepers, not The Shining…Though if you told me that writer/director West wasn’t thinking about The Shining at least once every five minutes during the writing process, I’d very diplomatically call you a filthy liar.  That being said, while The Innkeepers does wear its classic hotel-horror influence right on its sleeve, it emulates its cinematic big brother with a sense of fun not found in something as unflinchingly dread-inducing as The Shining.  The characters in The Innkeepers are nerds for the paranormal, so of course being stuck in a haunted hotel would be a blast for them…for a while, anyway.

The Yankee Pedlar Inn has been sold, and this is the last weekend that it will be open for business.  Two desk clerks, Claire (Sara Paxton) and Luke (Pat Healy), are to be the only employees on duty for these last two days, and to keep themselves busy they’ve brought with them some EVP equipment and an enthusiasm for parapsychology…Luke claims to have seen the ghost of a bride who many years ago had committed suicide in the hotel, and now the pair are looking to capture some proof of her existence before the hotel is closed forever.  They’re not completely alone in the place; a few (living) guests, including a formerly famous actress (Kelly McGillis) who now specializes in New Age psychic mumbo-jumbo, are milling around also, mostly to the annoyance of our intrepid ghosthunters.  Gradually, as EVP recordings start to reveal ghostly sounds and a ghoul in a wedding dress is glimpsed, staying alone in the old hotel begins to seem less and less like a good idea.

Like West’s previous movie The House of the Devil, The Innkeepers is not a jump-a-minute scare fest, but rather a slowly cranking machine of quiet atmosphere, more interested in establishing the characters and the setting than moving the story forward with any urgency.  The first half of the movie is mostly spent presenting the rapport between Claire and Luke, who are performed very likably by Paxton and Healy.  Paxton in particular has to do a lot of the heavy lifting herself, and does a great job of naturally playing an adorably quirky geek who seems to be completely aloof to the fact that her coworker might have a crush on her.  Healy’s Luke is played as exactly the kind of sarcastic slacker coworker we’ve all had (or HOPED to have) in menial jobs, helping the time pass with playful pranks and subtly insulting the clientele.

Since the focus of the movie is established from the earliest scenes to be on these characters rather than specifically on the ghosts, what we end up with for the first three quarters of the movie is more or less a light indie comedy about two people having a harmless spooky lock-in night at an old hotel, seeking ghosts and finding only the slightest little scares.  When the ghostly happenings start to rev up near the end and there are some real jolts, it was kind of jarring for me…Not because the scares weren’t good for what they were (there is some pretty creepy stuff), but because up to that point I hadn’t expected Insidious-style jump scares from a movie that had taken such care in creating a vibe that was almost like Clerks meets Scooby-Doo.  Leading up to the very end, the ghostly activity builds quickly to a frenzy that would have seemed unlikely given the slow first half of the movie, and I predict that the conclusion will either disappoint people, or — if they hadn’t really gotten into the quiet and slowness of the bulk of the movie — it will be the only part that they liked.

Personally though, even with so many of the real scares weighted to the end of the movie, I do have a soft spot for a good old-fashioned ghost story, and The Innkeepers spins its story like a classic campfire tale told by the camp’s most dryly funny counselor.  If you want a pants-peeingly scary roller-coaster ride you’ll definitely feel underwhelmed, but if you feel more like grabbing your flashlight and strolling slowly and carefully down some dark corridors to find out who or what may lurking behind the closed doors, then the Yankee Pedlar Inn might be the hotel for you.  Just, try to stay out of the basement…

This episode, we talk about The Rosedales latest album Once Upon a Season and Lucio Fulci’s duck voiced killer classic The New York Ripper…

Howdy there, folks!  It’s your friendly neighborhood Wolfemann here, taking advantage of Mike giving me an open forum to torture you all with.

As you might remmeber, Mike put out his ‘casting call’ for folks to help write for the Corpse Collective a week or two ago, and I wrote in to him to volunteer.  I was wondering what to do for my first article, and then I remembered – The Devil Inside was coming out!

Now, I first saw the trailer for this film when I went to see Paranormal Activity 3 last year.  It intrigued me.  I’d seen The Last Exorcism and enjoyed it more than most.  Exorcism films may not be my bread and butter, but I generally enjoy them, and found footage type films are definitely something I enjoy.  So I’d practically bought my ticket already, what better way to introduce myself to the site’s stable of writers than a review?

Then I saw the movie.  And I realized there were probably many things that would be better to introduce myself to you, gentle readers.

But, since I happened to misplace the footage from my last colonoscopy, you’re still getting the review.

Y’know, I’m starting to think that, just maybe, you can tell where this is going ahead of time.

Title:  The Devil Inside (2012)

Release Date: 1/6/2012

Production Budget:  $1,000,000

Gross:  Who knows?  However, there’s allegedly a gross of about $2,000,000 from the midnight showing alone (per Box Office Mojo), so it looks like this might be a hit after all.

Production Company:  Paramount’s Insurge label, the company Paramount spun off following the success of Paranormal Activity to produce “micro-budget” genre fare films.  This film is the label’s second release.  The first?  Juntin Bieber’s Never Say Never.  Well, at least they’re getting away from the torture porn.

Director:  William Brent Bell

Writer:  William Brent Bell and Matthew Peterman

Starring:  Fernanda Andrade, Simon Quarterman, and Evan Hellmuth.

Short Summary:  Isabella Rossi (Fernanda Andrade) seeks the truth regarding the gruesome murder of two priests and a nun committed 20 years prior during an exorcism… by her mother, now an inmate at Centrino mental hospital in Rome.

The Venue:  Since we all know how important the theater experience is for many films, I want to lay out the details.  I went to the Marcus Eastgate Cinema in Madison, didn’t spring for the insanely overpriced popcorn or soda, and caught the last matinee of the day.  The audience was small, and reasonably polite until the end of the film, when they started laughing at the horrors on screen.  I was starting to get irritated, but when I saw the actual ending, I started to wonder if they’d actually been to the film earlier in the day and knew what was coming.  So, all in all, I’d say that the experience didn’t really sour me on the film.

The Trailers:  While not really part of the film, I’m always amused by the trailers and ads that precede the actual movie.  For example, the fact that the movie theater was advertising On-Demand cable services (didn’t anybody ever teach them not to shit where they eat?)  In particular, the trailers for The Dictator and Project X told me exactly when not to go to the movies, while the trailers for Chronicle and especially The Woman in Black left me thoroughly interested.  Definitely can’t wait for The Woman in Black; looks like it’s going to be a great throwback.

Final Verdict:  The first half of the film was pretty good.  Now, if only they’d remembered to include the last one with the price of the ticket.  Netflix it… maybe.  Personally, I much preferred The Last Exorcism.

Merciful Lord in Heaven, protect us from the spoilers of thine enemy…

Okay, here’s where I’m going to go into the blow-by-blow and in-depth analysis here, for those of you who are interested.  The sad thing is, the movie really was pretty damn decent up until the last ten, fifteen minutes or so.

The film starts with the statement that the Vatican does not allow the filming of authorized exorcisms, and also that the Vatican did not assist in any way with the completion of this movie.  To which I say “Amen, brother!”

Iinformation about the murder that set up the story follows; Maria Rossi calling 9-1-1 and getting the police to come discover the bodies of two priests and a nun who were murdered during an exorcism.  By Maria Rossi.  We quickly move from there to twenty years later, meeting Isabella Rossi, explaining the impact on her life of all of this.

She runs through the backstory pretty quickly; her mother’s erratic behavior, some interviews with doctors and a sympathetic priest, her father’s death three days after he told her the truth about the exorcism, and the trip to Rome to help with a documentary about the case that’s meant to help determine what really happened to Maria Rossi.

Of course, things quickly go downhill from there.  Isabella attends classes on exorcism, allowing the film to set up key elements of the story for the lay people in the audience.  Multiple possessions, the idea that demons can transfer from one person to another, and the fact that there’s a constant debate going on between whether possession exists or is merely a manifestation of mental illness.

This is also where we meet David and Ben, two young Exorcists who’ve come up in the faith.  David’s a doctor, and a practicing priest beyond the exorcisms.  Ben, at least by implication, doesn’t have a particular church he works at, dedicating himself to the practice of exorcism and following in the footsteps of his late Uncle, who was himself an exorcist.

You know that old saw about “if all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail?”  Well, replace ‘hammer’ with ‘the Rituale Romana‘ and ‘nail’ with ‘demon,’ and you’ve pretty much got their take on things down throughout this film.    In class, and afterwards at a local bar, the two of them hotly debate the possessed status of a girl named Rosa with a more scientifically minded student.   This is really the central conflict of the film for the first… oh… two thirds of it or so.  Possession vs mental case.

Following this, Isabella visits her mother, who seems to be a pretty garden variety schizophrenic up until the end of the conversation.  Maria shows Isabella her artwork from the last few years, including a touching display of self-scarification with inverted crosses, including the one on the inner lip that everybody saw on the poster. Isabella, showing remarkably little appreciation of religious artwork for a woman so interested in exorcism, is instead more taken with a crude painting that bears a resemblance to an old family photograph.

Shortly before Isabella leaves the rather awkward meeting, Maria says something about “you shouldn’t have killed the child.  It’s against God’s will, you know.”  Then she screams, starts throwing a fit (probably about Isabella’s shockingly poor taste in art), and is sedated while Isabella runs off to find the two priests she met before.

On meeting with Ben and David (the more level-headed fellow she met being completely forgotten for the remainder of the film), she presents them with the film.  They explain that she only meets one of the four major criteria for being a possessed individual (possessing knowledge she couldn’t otherwise have, namely regarding an abortion that Isabella had four years prior), and then explain that if she really wants to help her mother, she needs to understand more about exorcism, which will only really happen if she witnesses one in person.

Conveniently, they happen to be conducting an exorcism right now!  And, while the Vatican won’t allow an authorized exorcism to be filmed by the media (like Isabella and the filmmaker), they’re really in luck because David and Ben aren’t doing an authorized exorcism!

You see, despite the Church teaching that there are over 800 Satanic cults operating in Italy alone, with thousands and thousands of members, and training more exorcists than ever to help combat this flood of evil, the Church is really very down on the whole ‘exorcism’ gig, and would probably have recommended that Regan get herself on a nice healthy blend of Zanax and Vicodin rather than sending Father Merrin over.  But Ben and David, with their combined experience and superior knowledge of possession, are taking those cases the Church turns down and investigating themselves.  They’ve already resolved two of their five cases, with a third in progress – Rosa, the girl we saw on the video in the class!

So, they head on out to watch the exorcism, and we get the usual array of vulgarity, offers to perform Very Personal Favors for the priests, unexplained vaginal bleeding, sudden forced levitation, a *bit* of wall-crawling, escapes from restraint, and threatening statements directed at those observing.  Fortunately, our two young turks know the identity of the proper demon, and after some cutting remarks directed at the two of them they invoke the proper Saint and exorcise the demon, young Rosa returning to normal within moments of the exorcism being completed.

I would like to give some real points to the girl who played Rosa; I’m pretty sure they got an actual contortionist in to play the part, and what she did to her body looked excruciatingly painful.  I’m sure the audio was enhanced, but I’m pretty damned sure she really did twist her body into those shapes.  Actually, I don’t think there was any CGI in the entire film, though that could just be my poor talent for noticing it.  Still, at just a million bucks, I wouldn’t be surprised if there wasn’t.

Here’s where the movie both starts to get really interesting, and go off the rails, all at the same time.  On the one hand, things start moving pretty damned fast from here on out.  We get exorcisms and demonic possession hard and heavy from here on out.  We get the Church supposedly trying to stomp down on Our Heroes.  We get Our Heroes enduring increasing stress and mental breakdowns of their own.  We get some tantalizing hints of dark secrets in the pasts of the priests, especially Ben.

All of this leads us through the exorcism of Maria Rossi, some evidence on film that proves demonic possession (supposedly), and some very creative threats  directed at Isabella.  I’d go into more detail, but the exorcism sequences really are the highlight of it, so you’ll probably want to catch those for yourselves.  This is where the major spoilers start, so if you really do have any interest in seeing the film, stop reading here.

Ironically, after Maria’s exorcism things start to go down hill.  We find out that Maria was apparently possessed by at least four demons (coincidentally, there happen to be exactly four characters present during the exorcism!)

There’s talk about Ben having done something in the past that was a horrible sin.  Isabella is freaking out about her mother’s wellbeing, particularly when the Church refuses to release her to be cared for in the States against the doctor’s advice.  David is freaking about potentially losing his job.  Ben and Isabella are freaking about David freaking.  Michael (the filmmaker) is freaking about everyone freaking.

Then, David goes to conduct a baptism at his church.  The rite of baptism is briefly explained; cleanses the infant of original sin, so that if the child dies it goes to Heaven.  If the child dies before baptism, it goes to Hell.  David conducts the baptism properly, except that he forgets the crucial last step of “pull the baby out of the Baptismal Font before it freaks out/needs to breathe again.”

Well, I don’t know about you, but I’ve had some Very Bad Days at work before myself.  Normally they don’t involve the police chasing after me for attempted murder, but hey, everybody screws up a little step in the procedures now and again.  Sometimes, it seems like a really big problem though.  On days like that, you might even go home and do something drastic, like yell at the wife and kids and down a case of beer while moping in front of the game.

Or, alternately, try to slit your wrists, start speaking in tongues, make cryptic statements to your roommate, and then blow your brains out with the gun you took from one of the cops who was trying to arrest you.

Here’s where things start going downhill though.  And they go downhill fast.  First off – speaking in Latin or Italian, for an ordained Catholic priest and exorcist serving in Rome, is not speaking in tongues!

Second, I know they’re trying to suggest that David is possessed, and acting at the behest of the demon who was transferred to him from Maria when he tries to drown the baby in the baptismal font.  But he just finished telling us that if the kid is baptised, it goes to Heaven if it dies.

Once you have dipped the baby in the baptismal font, the baby is baptised.  So if you drown it there, you’re not consigning its soul to Hell, you’re sending it to Heaven.

Which means if the parents hadn’t intervened, your dramatic suicide would have meant that your boss was barely breaking even, dumbass!

Seriously, the whole thing belonged on Satan’s personal version of FailBlog!  You possess a Catholic priest – the gold standard for possessed souls, I would think – and what do you do with it?  You almost send the soul of a potential sinner directly to Heaven, and then go kill the body before it has a chance to lead anybody astray!  Some master corrupter of souls you are!

From here, Isabella starts to act like she’s possessed, and gets taken to the hospital.  Ben calls his teacher (gee, maybe you should have called in the folks who knew what the fuzz they were doing before this all happened, rather than villifying the Catholic Church and performing your own DIY exorcisms?)  They start to take Isabella out of the hospital (after the film’s biggest scene of gore, when she demonstrates that, no, she really isn’t resting peacefully) and to the experienced exorcist.

Now, after the last two exorcisms, you’re expecting something big, right?  Resolution as to what the dark secret in Ben’s past is.  Some real fire-and-brimstone, weapons-grade Rituale Romana action being brought to bear.  Epic battle for the soul of the young woman we’ve come to care about through the last hour and a frickin’ half, culminating in either success or failure.  Probably failure, given this is a found footage film, but hey, at least it’ll be a resolution to the entire plot, and that’s what we want here!

Instead, while driving Ben and Isabella to the priest’s, Michael slips off his seatbelt, floors it, and drives them all into a semi.

We are then treated to an epic, dramatic title card that tells us to go to the movie’s website (www.TheRossiFiles.com) in order to follow the ongoing investigation.

Really?

Really.

Seriously.  An hour and a half of my time.  Seven dollars and fifty cents of my money that could be spent at the local Mexican restaurant tonight enjoying myself a truly grande margarita.  And the ending is seriously rocks fall everyone fricking dies?!?

Oh, but we put a website in the end title card, you can get all your resolution to storylines there!

Well fu@# you too, William Brent Bell! 

I go to watch a film, expecting a story that actually fu@#ing resolves itself, not to be told to go to a website to finish the film!

That’s how you do a TRAILER,  not a FEATURE FILM!

And this isn’t Mr. Bell’s first time at the rodeo either!  He directed a film about six years ago called Stay Alive, and one about nine years before that called Sparkle and Charm.  If they had endings as great as this one, then no wonder it took him fifteen years to get people to pay him to make three films!

H’okay… I’m calming down now… taking my medicine….  There.

Oh, and the website?  It’s basically a glorified collection of deleted scenes.  Ben’s dark secret?  His Uncle was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and he ‘helped him end his suffering.’  A 22 second scene that has all the dramatic impact of a cricket hitting the windshield of a semi.

This movie really, really pissed me off, in case you can’t guess.  There was so much there, and it had most of the audience going, or at least the ones who didn’t apparently know that we’d all been sold two thirds of a good film.  And it just flushed it all down the frickin’ drain.

Seriously, folks, go watch The Last Exorcism again.  At least there the last five minutes will piss you off by ending.

I’ll see you again in a while, assuming Mike ever lets me post to the site again.  Hopefully, my next review won’t involve quite so much vitriol towards the end.

Howlingly Yours,

The Wolfemann

I see you’ve found us in our spiffy new location. I’d say it is time we settle in, kick of our shoes , spark up some Dollar Store cigars and stink the place up a bit. To that end end, I give you tonight’s movie. It is a lovable little turd that goes by the name “The Creeping Terror”. If you haven’t heard of this one, you haven’t spent much time looking into bad movies. This one is considered to be one of the worst of the worst. In other words, it should feel right at home around here.

What better way to make our presence known here on Mike’s shiny new site than to add that slight aroma of stinky cheese to the air that makes a place feel lived in.

Enjoy the movie. I think you’ll get a kick out of it. I haven’t seen this many people buried to the shoulders in writhing carpet since the Carnie  Wilson sex tape.

Download the MP4

WARNING: his movie should come with a “don’t eat an egg-salad sandwich while watching this movie” warning. Now that we’ve got that straight, we can go on with the review.

Ryan Nicholson… for those who know, or for those who have seen anything from his movie company, Plotdigger Films, will have an idea of what to expect from Hanger… However, for the uninitiated, Hanger will deliver quite a shock to their senses.

Hanger is the story of a whore (played by the illustrious Debbie Rochon) who became pregnant during her labors. Unfortunately her pimp didn’t think a pregnant hooker was good for business, so he decided to take the issue into his own hands.  In a very brutal and explicit scene, Leroy, the pimp, takes a stretched-out hanger and… Let’s just say, he retrieves the unborn child.  The child was covered in plastic and placed in a dumpster to be forgotten.

The child is saved by a homeless man who raises him until his 18th birthday.  Hanger, as he has come to be known, is horribly disfigured and has little going for him… except for one his mother’s former Johns, (played by Dan Ellis who has also been featured in such films as Gutterballs, RetarDEAD , and Monsturd) who is sure that he is Hanger’s father,  provides Hanger with a place to stay and a job at the local refuse sorting plant.  He also provides Hanger with something else, an outlet for his unquenchable blood-lust (which has apparently been growing throughout his life and is a result of his confounding circumstances).  The rest of the movie consists of brutal killings in a quest for vengeance.

This film is filled with over-the-top, and arguably unnecessary, scenes of sex, violence, and expressions of racism.  There is a level of vulgarity present in this film that is unmatched in any horror film that I’ve ever seen before.  Nicholson has been known to defend his work as bringing back the exploitation films of the past and that he doesn’t make these films to titillate or please, but to garner a reaction from the audience.
There are some glaring technical issues with the sound and the soundtrack to this film is seemingly random and forgettable.  As far as the technical issues are concerned, this film would fit comfortably in the Troma library (actually Lloyd Kauffman makes a cameo as Melvina the Tranny).  However, the vibe of this film isn’t the fun romp that many of Kauffman’s films are.

Having said all that, amidst the technical issues and the hyped-up violence and gore, I found myself getting into this film.  After getting over the initial shock of the abortion executed with a hanger and a hooker’s head getting totally demolished in the door of a truck, I found myself being interested in Hanger and his attempt to adjust to his new life.  I ended up really enjoying this film to spite its faults.  At times, the film seems to be at odds with itself.  On the one hand, it is fairly obvious that Nicholson’s intent is to blatantly shock the viewer, and on the other, there is an interesting story of vengeance going on that definite stands out as being unique from other films in the vengeance genre.  The former quality of this film runs the risk of smothering the latter.  I think that if the viewer is able to overlook, or at least absorb, the shocking scenes and Troma-esque symptoms of budget limitations, that this is a film worth checking out.

Richardson, who started his career in films in the make-up and special effects department of such notable films (and television episodes) as The X Files, Stargate SG-1, The 13th Warrior, and Final Destination, seems to be on a mission to create the most brutal, explicit and controversial films imaginable.  From Plotdigger’s Facebook page: “Plotdigger’s mission is to create mind boggling and amazingly graphic horror films that will leave the viewing audience with a lasting impression”.  I think that Hanger is true to this statement regardless of whether or not you actually enjoy the film.

Well folks… never fear, I’m here to tell you about a man who has figured out how to overcome the challenges a micro budget presents to create very entertaining films. Tom Berdinski, director of The Italian Zombie Movie parts 1 (Zombie Abomination) and part 2 (Zombie Atrocity) as well as the short entitled The Giant Rubber Monster Movie: Sascratch Versus Afrodesious, is the man who has got the philosophy of creating micro-budgeted film making conquered. I’m not going to review his films in this article. Instead I’m going to highlight the man himself. I mean… It’s not every day that someone figures out the recipe for making great micro-budgeted films. It seems that for Tom, it involves one part homage, one part great writing, another part camp, and a healthy dose of comedy.  I was very interested in his latest project in that it seemed to be quite a detour from the formula he had with his IZM set. Tom was kind enough to answer some questions that I had about his background and his newest project: The Giant Rubber Monster Movie.

Why did you get into filmmaking? Any pivotal moments in your life where you decided that this is what you wanted to do?

I’ve been making movies, really, for as long as I can remember.  I got my first 8mm movie camera from my grandfather when I was 8 years old and immediately started making science fiction and horror movies.  At that time, I was fascinated by giant monsters, Gamera in particular, so my friends and I went out and caught a huge snapping turtle, plopped him on my train board and starting making movies!  Soon thereafter (probably because live snapping turtles under hot movie lights are a bit gnarly!) we got into claymation and puppetry pretty heavily.  Our biggest “hit” among the 3rd and 4th  graders in those days was “Kongo Versus Batzork” – a sort of “King Kong Versus Godzilla” monster mash cramming every special effect we could dream up into 3 minutes of Super 8.  I also saw the Christopher Lee/Peter Cushing classic “Horror Express” at some point in my early elementary years and made my first zombie movie featuring a huge (miniature) train wreck on some contaminated ground that somehow causes all the passengers to turn into zombies.  Pity we never finished that one.  We did, however, perfect our unparalleled intestine recipe at the ripe old age of 10!

You started with IZM 1 & 2… which were rooted in practical zombie and gore effects. What made you want to switch gears and create a sci-fi/horror extravaganza full of digital effects?

I think it was the challenge that motivated me…  A little background: Filmmaker Jason Hoover of Jabb Pictures approached me and 9 other indie filmmakers after a convention with this idea: 10 indie filmmakers making 10 different shorts all with the same synopsis – A meat eater terrorizes a small town.  (The resulting DVD is called “The Collective” and all the filmmakers sell it at conventions.)  I agreed but I wasn’t sure what kind of movie I would do.  I’m sure Jason thought I’d make a zombie movie, but I didn’t have any zombie “short” stories in my head (Heck, my last zombie story, The Italian Zombie Movie took two movies and  three hours to tell!) but I really wanted to participate.  Well, believe it or not, there are actually a lot of green screen and CGI effects in The Italian Zombie Movie.  Most were practical, but when we couldn’t get enough zombies to show up, or some actor wasn’t available, we composited or CGI’d them in.  Few people have noticed that.  That gave me the confidence to “relive my youth” and take on a brand new giant monster movie – My meat eater would be a 200 foot tall giant fly!  I figured I’d be the only filmmaker to take that approach!  To add to the challenge, I decided to invite some of my favorite horror hosts from all over the country to participate via green screen.  I was VERY fortunate that Marlena Midnite, Robyn Graves, Roxsy Tyler, the cast of Count Gregula’s crypt and my villain, Dr. Sigmund Zoid, all agreed to do it all for free – And they did it sooooo well!  They shot their own scenes, tweaked the dialog to fit their styles (Gregula wrote his own scene entirely) and sent me their footage to composite.  It was a great experience and one I intend to repeat!

Speaking of horror hosts, I know you’ve worked with horror hosts in the past with Midnite Mausoleum. Where did the interest in horror hosts start with you, and how did you come to collaborate with so many horror hosts on this project?

I’ve always been a fan of horror hosts.  My first exposure to them was when cable TV made it into West Michigan in the mid 70s, but until the HorrorHound Weekend back in March 2010, I really only knew of a few: Elvira, Zacherley, Sammy Terry and a couple others.  At HorrorHound, we were promoting our Italian Zombie Movies and were fortunate enough to be seated right next to the horror host “alley” for lack of a better word.  I don’t know how many horror hosts were present – 50, 60 or more?  Anyway, horror hosts are fun and very sociable animals, so I got to meet many and chat with them.  For whatever reason, when I met Marlena Midnite and her director Blake Powell, there was an instant low-budget-horror-fan connection.  Just a few weeks later, they emailed me saying how much they enjoyed my movies, and coincidently, I had just watched their campy Midnite Mausoleum DVD and loved it!  We started talking and decided to work together to put my Italian Zombie Movies on their TV show – and the results were AMAZING!  The jump in my DVD sales after that showing was huge.  It was obvious to me that Marlena, Robyn and the rest of the horror hosts all have great followings, and working with them would be a great way to get my movies further out there.  Since that initial exposure on Midnite Mausoleum, my movies (IZM and/or The Giant Rubber Monster Movie) have been on 100 Years of Monster Movies, Alternative Realities TV, Ormsby’s Cinema Insane, The Monster Channel, Roxsy Tyler’s Carnival of Horrors, Count Gore de Vol’s Creature Feature and more are in the works!  After the success of IZM on Midnite Mausoleum, I really wanted to incorporate horror hosts into my next movie, to reach an even broader audience.  Fortunately for me, the feeling was mutual and I was able to get many of my favorite horror hosts to act (or appear) in The Giant Rubber Monster Movie.  Most of the reviews I’ve seen have indicated their appearances were the highlights of the movie!

We met at Horror Hound in Indianapolis this March. I noticed you were walking around in your Sascratch costume. I also noticed that you are planning on being at more horror conventions in the future. What are your thoughts on Horror Conventions? Do you get good receptions from the guests at the conventions?

I love horror conventions!  As a filmmaker, there is no better place to get in touch with your friends and fans from all over the country and to make new friends and fans.  There is no better place to meet reviewers, bloggers, podcasters, reporters, etc., than at horror conventions.  Most of the horror hosts I am friends with now I met at horror conventions.  I know it sounds cliché, but the nicest people I know make and/or love horror movies and attend these conventions!  Isn’t that crazy?  And Sascratch…  Well, that half-human/half-bigfoot unofficial mascot of IZM (and now the “star” of The Giant Rubber Monster Movie) has become quite the popular figure at conventions giving out IZM underwear, urinals, heck, sometimes even useful prizes like t-shirts and DVDs!  We always feel welcome at conventions and always try to help everyone else have a great time too!

I’ve only been to 2 conventions (both HHW Indy 2009,2011), but after both visits I spent the rest of the year recovering… How do you do so many and survive?

ANTITOXIN…

There you have it folks. Make sure to check out The Italian Zombie Movie’s official website, Tom on Facebook, and The Giant Rubber Monster Movie’s official Facebook page.

On a high level, this is a simple film. Based on Solet’s short of the same name, Grace tells the story of an affluent couple’s journey through the struggles of pregnancy. In the beginning, Michael and Madeline Matheson are dealing with seemingly mundane issues such as deciding on a delivery method and trying to placate an overbearing mother while doing what they think is right. Tragedy strikes when the couple are in a terrible car accident leaving both the husband and the unborn baby dead. Madeline decides to carry the baby to term and deliver naturally. During a very emotionally intense birthing scene, the seemingly stillborn baby is delivered. During a moment of privacy between Madeline and the baby immediately following the birth, Madeline “wills” the baby to life. This, seen as a miracle at first, soon leads to a disturbing chain of events catalyzed by the fact that baby Grace needs to ingest warm blood to live.

This film did a lot of things right. It seemed to give the viewer some kind of hypersensitivity to what was happening on the screen. It’s the intense sounds of even banal activities set the canvas for the uncomfortable events that are in the foreground of the scene. The realism and intensity of these events can leave the viewer emotionally exhausted. The story takes on agonizing subjects head-on and isn’t afraid to place the viewer directly in the midst of the events. Everything from a meal which Michael and Madeline shared with Michael’s parents, to the actual birth scene, will leave the viewer sullied.

Another thing that this film did right was the way that it handled potentially divisive topics that exist to propagate the story and didn’t let them become a distraction to the viewer. These topics included veganism, homosexuality, traditional medicine versus a holistic approach, and even political ethics. In the September 2009 issue of Rue Morgue Magazine, Solet said “My intentions are to entertain you. There are certain ways I like to do that, but I’m definitely not a filmmaker that’s trying to tell you who you should sleep with, what you should be eating, or how you should deliver your child. I’m much more interested in getting under your skin, in hitting you, not just in the gut, but in the heart and the mind.” Solet is very successful in getting under the viewer’s skin.

This film will also leave the viewer with many questions. Questions such as what, exactly, made Grace the way she is? What force gave her back her life after being dead in the womb for several weeks? Solet leaves us no hints as to what the answer to these questions are. All we, as viewers, know is that something is wrong with Grace from day one and something is happening to Madeline as she tries to cope with her unconventional child.

If there was a weak point of this film, it would be its resolution. However, the weak ending may be a product of the masterful way in which the rest of the film was presented. It would be difficult to come up with a different conclusion to this story that would stand up to the rest of the movie. Solet skillfully arranges the scenes of this film that deal with topics, though very human, are very troublesome. He delivers one of the most realistic portrayal of heartbreak, sorrow, and human desperation mingled with pure horror in such a way that this film will stick with the viewer long after the credits have ended.

For More Information:

Grace’s Official Site

The first step in the hunt for free horror entertainment, is learning what the public domain is and what it has to offer. Wikipedia.com defines public domain as “a range of abstract materials—commonly referred to as intellectual property—which are not owned or controlled by anyone. The term indicates that these materials are therefore “public property”, and available for anyone to use for any purpose.” The only question now is: How do I get my hands on these free films?

Many companies have gathered works found in the public domain, repackaged them, and then sold them as a pack of many horror films. Millcreek Entertainment has put together multiple collections of horror and sci-fi films and sold them for pennies per movie. However, if you would like to find public domain works completely for free,  The Internet Archive is a great place to start looking. The Internet Archive (Archive.org) is an online resource that provides a collection of links to download films, texts, and audio.

On Archive.org, you can find a landing page that is the portal for horror and sci-fi films. Here is the gateway to find films by luminaries of the genre such as William Castle, George Romero, Roger Corman, Dario Argento, Peter Jackson, and many more. There are many formats available; however, the most common formats are MPEG4, MPEG2, and OGG. Before downloading any of these films, it’s a good idea to read some of the comments that have been posted. These comments may give the downloader important information such as an idea of the quality of the file to be downloaded.

Films, however, are not the only thing that can be found on The Internet Archive. Horror novels can be found in both text and audio format. If you’re a fan of Bram Stoker, H. P. Lovecraft, or Edgar Alan Poe. These works are typically read and recorded by volunteers for organizations such as LibraVox. LibraVox has a mission to “to make all public domain books available as free audio books.” Their noble efforts give us hours and hours of free entertainment. Although these volunteers are not professional audio book readers, the quality of the readings are typically very good. The quality of the audio file itself is also very good in general.

The resources discussed in this article hardly scratch the surface of horror entertainment that can be found on the World Wide Web for free. This will be the first of many articles to be found here regarding free horror entertainment and where it can be found.

As a second part to the series of articles regarding resources to get horror entertainment for free, this article discusses the little-known resource which is audiobooks in podcast form. It’s amazing how many very talented writers are willing to write, record, and release their works for free using the podcast or other episodic technique.

There are a couple of things that one must know when choosing a podcast audiobook:

• Understand that these books in podcast form may be released on a chapter to chapter basis. There may be a wait between each chapter’s releases.
• A podcast book may have chapters released before the author is finished writing the book. This may mean nothing, but it may mean that the author may not finish the book on schedule and may leave you hanging.
  • Typically, an author will let their listeners know whether or not a book is completed. Some popular podcast book websites will allow a search parameter to only display finished books.
• Free podcast books are typically read by non-professional readers. Sometimes it is difficult to notice a difference between this book and an audiobook read by a professional, but other times it is fairly obvious.

As far as horror fiction is concerned, Podiobooks.com has a good collection of freely available audiobooks ready to be downloaded in episodic form. The quality is higher than the typical book in podcast form because there is a set of guidelines that each author must conform to in order to have his work published on this website. There are also many podcast audiobooks that are waiting to be found by searching in iTunes or just in your favorite search engine.

This resource is very deep and there are many books to choose from. However, since many of these authors’ haven’t quite made their names into a household staple, choosing a book may be tricky. Here are some book suggestions to get you started:

• Sleepwalker – Keith Latch , author of the chilling book Cemetery Things and his latest Bestseller, has released his podcast audiobook entitled Sleepwalker on podiobooks.com. Sleepwalker is a mystery/horror novel that Sleepwalker tells the story of a newspaper editor with a dark secret. Keith does a great job of keeping his readers guessing as to what is really going on and always delivers on the scares.
• The Zombie Chronicles – Escape – The first book in a forthcoming series, James Melzer treats us to a very interesting and unique story about zombies and a government conspiracy. James Melzer does a great job reading the book. This book is full of scares, intrigue, and humor.
  • All Kinds of Things Kill – a nine story anthology, Robert R. Best (http://www.robertrbest.com/) shows his readers how flexible and talented he is. Every one of the stories in this collection is engaging. The reader of these stories does a wonderful job translating the thoughts and emotions that Mr. Best intended to be shared to audio form.
  • FETIDUS – The Damned Heir – James Durham not only has written one of the most unique books that I’ve listened to, but he adds his voice talent and his original music to the production. FETIDUS stands for The Foundation for the Ethical Treatment of the Innocently Damned, Undead and Supernatural. FETIDUS is an advocacy group fighting for the rights of all sorts of supernatural and undead beings.

These short descriptions that are here in this article really don’t do any of these stories justice. This column will dig deeper into some of these free podcast audiobooks with reviews and a deeper plot synopsis. Hopefully this column will also have interviews with some of these authors in the near future. These books all have a high level of quality and professionalism but this is not unlike many of the other books available. The books mentioned in this article are just a small sample of what horror stories are available for free both in podcast form and on podiobooks.com.

It has been said that the best zombie movies don’t actually focus on the zombies themselves, they focus on what is going on around them. For instance, 1968’s Night of the Living Dead was an account of the group dynamics between a set of survivors thrust in an environment where the dead have risen from the grave instead of focusing on the zombies themselves. In fact, George A. Romero, writer and director of this classic film, never states what the cause of the zombie breakout was. Deadgirl is a film which follows this same approach. Deadgirl is a story of a group of high school outcasts who have stumbled upon a situation that leaves them questioning their morality.

The story begins with a couple of high school friends named Rickie, played by Shiloh Fernandez, and J.T. played by Noah Segan who decide to cut class and end up exploring an abandoned mental asylum. They make their way into the basement of the asylum, and after running into and overcoming few precarious happenings, they are shocked to find the body of a seemingly dead woman shackled to a gurney with a plastic bag over her head. Without giving away any more of the plot, the rest of the film details the choices that are presented to these young boys and the consequences of their actions. The unfolding of this story leads the audience through a chilling chain of events that leads to a morally desolate and alarming result. This is a film that is meant to leave the audience shocked and disheartened, and it does so very effectively.

Apart from a few minor instances of secondary actors losing their focus, the acting was surprisingly good. Noah Segan, who played J.T., turns in one of the most disturbing performances in recent horror film history. His portrayal of a sociopath who has found a new addiction and will do what it takes to protect it is absolutely genuine and daunting.

The overall film was excellent. Although there were moments of levity and humor, the overall atmosphere was dark and foreboding. Unfortunately, some of the humor came at poorly-timed moments which were off-putting. There are an abundance of themes explored in this film, but most of all, this film will leave the audience asking what they would do if placed in the same situation.

For More Information: Visit Deadgirl’s web page

From Devil’s Due publishing, Hack/Slash tells the story of Cassie Hack, an troubled and abandoned young woman who grew up in Western Wisconsin. Her father left her and her mother shortly after Cassie was born. She was raised by her overbearing and eccentric mother who was a lunch lady at the local High School. Cassie was an outcast and some of the kids in her school felt it necessary to pick on her.

Soon, at Cassie’s High School, students started being reported missing. This was going on, perhaps not coincidentally, as the lunch lady started serving some kind of mystery meat to those students who chose to eat school lunch. Well, Cassie’s mother was the main suspect, and as the authorities confronted her in the lunchroom, she plunged her head into a pot of boiling gravy and killed herself.
Cassie was put into the foster system and free of her mother and her past life. However, it wasn’t long before the more disappearances were reported and Cassie knew that it was her mother come to enact more vengeance from beyond the grave. The Lunch Lady was back and Cassie, who felt responsible for the killings, hunted her mother down and killed her. Since she had nowhere to go and little chance for a “normal” life, she took it upon herself to travel the world hunting slashers. Slashers come in two varieties: those who died in such a fit of rage that they have come back from the dead to kill and those who are still alive but insist on killing for whatever reason.

Along her travels and hunts, Cassie comes upon Vlad, a huge disfigured man who happened to be in the same business. They met as they were hunting the same slasher at the same time. Little is known about Vlad except that he was cast into the garbage as a baby and taken in by a kind Butcher. This butcher raised him and taught him to cope with his disfigured appearance. He also taught Vlad how to use knives as weapons. Cassie befriended Vlad and they began travel together. Vlad is the muscle, in somewhat of a gentle giant capacity and Cassie makes the decisions. Both Cassie and Vlad are very dangerous.

This series is already somewhat mature. In 2004, Hack/Slash was born as a series of self-contained comics called one-shots. Since then there have been a collection of one-shots, a series with 17 issues, and a set of trailers and special issues. All of these issues can be found in a few different collections, including two Omnibuses which encompass most of everything that has been published to date.
Hack/Slash is continually presenting new, original slasher stories where the slashers themselves vary in size, look, preferred killing method, and back stories. That, along with the different environments and situations that Cassie and Vlad find themselves in is where the strength of the series really shines through. Over the multiple issues, Cassie and Vlad have run into some familiar faces such as Chucky, from the Child’s Play Series, Herbert West, as portrayed by Jeffrey Combs in the Reanimator series, and even the Suicide Girls. Although there have been some cross-over with other horror icons, most of the slashers found in the series are completely original and unique.

Writer, Tim Seeley, has a great knack for coming up with interesting slashers and environments. The art and lettering are done by a plethora of artists. Both the story and the art is of the highest quality. If you are looking for some horror comics, regardless of how familiar you are with comics in general, Hack/Slash is a great set of stories that will definitely entertain.

For More Information: Visit Devil’s Due Publishing

I would like to to take a few lines to thank Mike and Sam for all of the great entertainment they have given us. Cadaverlab was one of the first horror podcasts I listened to it is one of the even fewer I would download and listen to even if I wasn’t interested in the covered movies. It was an honor for me to be part of the show during Sam’s first hiatus and doing Friday Night Frights has been a lot of fun.

Mike and I have messaged back and forth several times and he has been very kind and generous to me. Beyond that, however, I’ve never met him or Sam, but the show felt like getting together with a couple friends and just shooting the shit about movies for a couple hours a week. For someone like me who doesn’t really have friends like that, it was a very nice experience that I will miss greatly.

So, goodbye Cadaverlab and best of luck Mike and Sam with your lives and with any other projects you may get involved.in. Because of your efforts with Cadaverlab, I’ve had several hours of entertainment at times when i really needed it, more laughs than I can count, exposure to movies I might not have heard of and I’ve gotten to talk with a great bunch of folks on the forum and the facebook page. Thank you both very much for all you’ve done. I think I can safely speak for all of the labiens when I say that you will be missed.

Now, lets go watch Santa get his peener cut off and have some grapefruit juice. Oh, don’t forget to catch Mike in his next project. He is reprising his role as the main character’s dad in the Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs sequel.