HIGH TENSION/2003

If anybody reads this blog and my other my site on a semi-regular basis you will know that I am in no way shy about dishing out spoilers. I am usually prone to, however, not give away the big scenes. The ones that “take your breath away” so to speak. Well, I am warning you now, if you have not seen this film I am going to trash the ending totally. So you are warned. The reason I will explain when the time draws nigh. I was preparing to review the film P2 by director Alexnadre Aja and while researching it I ran across this earlier effort by him, downloaded it and watched it on my iPad2 the other night. I will get to P2 but I decided to write about this one while it was still fresh in my mind. Of course P2 will only become more and more distant and blurry, but what I forget I will get back from reading the scene by scene synopsis on Wikipedia. That always refreshes one’s memory. I liked this film really. Not a great film by any stretch, but it was working fine for me until the utterly absurd and aforementioned ending. Again, we will deal with that shortly, but for now let me say what sort of worked for me about it, and what other things did not.

First off the ultra-violent effects, all  practical FX –meaning basically, for horror films, old school make-up, no CGI as far as I can tell- are superbly handled, by Giannetto De Rossi who did a lot of the gory work for Lucio Fulci.Heads are sheered off by book shelves, throats are slit by razors, chest are hacked with axes, faces are beaten with barbed wire covered fence poles and people are cut to pieces with a huge power saw. Oh, and severed female heads are used to as fellatio tools then discarded out of truck windows like an empty bag of McDonald’s lunch. Yea, it’s a little over the top and not really necessary to anything in the story later, but it was done well and had a pretty unsettling feel about it. That happened in the film’s first ten or so minutes. But the scene, like I said, was not necessary really except as an attempt on Aja’s part to be shocking and extreme, as much of the newer French horror seems to be trying to do. There is an even a term for this, the New French Extremity Movement. And I okay with gore and violence, but there was something a little too much with that scene. The film, as just mentioned, is French. From what I understand there is, of course, a full French version with subs out there, and a fully dubbed and edited American version. I got an unedited version but the dialog is about 50/50 French and poorly dubbed English. And not only that, I did not have subtitles for the French parts, but I managed well enough and was able to follow the film’s “deep” storyline.

And while the storyline is nothing original by any stretch of the imagination it is handled, for the most part, well enough. School gal pals Marie (Cécile De France ) and Alexia (Maïwenn) go to Alexia’s parents place in the country for the weekend of relaxed study, to get away from the pressures of university life and prepare for some upcoming exams. Well we know what city kids traipsing off to the country for some relaxation means in horror films right? That’s right, some psycho-sexually twisted serial killer shows up later and ruin everything. The killer in this film –played by Philippe Nahon- is a pretty creepy and slimy, no doubt about that. He makes quick and gruesome work of Alexia’s family –even her  little brother the ‘cowboy’- and takes a bound and gagged Alexia off in his rusty, evil serial truck –that looks a lot like the serial killer truck in Jeepers Creepers- for some private fun and games. He does know that Marie was in the house and is now hiding in the truck, waiting for the chance to free her understandably panicking friend. There are all the close calls and tense moments you expect there to be and quite honestly they are handled fairly well. Aja (Mirrors, The Hills Have Eyes) can handle tension and shock better than many these days I would have to say. During the scenes where Alexia and Maria are not talking the language shifts to French and sounds much better. I am not in any sense anti-dubbing as far as films go, but the English scenes sound horrible, like something from one of those poorly dubbed Giallo films form the 70’s or something. But those old dubbed films sometimes can eb fun, but here I think the original language stands up much better. The film moves long just fine and one is waiting for the showdown between Marie and “Le Tueuer” the killer. We witness her character transforming from terrified and fragile to pissed off and ready to crack the bad guy’s head wide open. And eventually she does. The final conflict scenes are not that bad, though I felt let down when the serial killer pulled out a portable power saw and revved it up. It was obviously a poor substitute for a chainsaw and I just am so burned out with chainsaws and their poor substitutes. But it does lead to some run of the mill suspense and not so run of the mill graphic gore.

NECRO GIRLS/JET NOIR

 Most of the wonderful females that make it to the Pin Up Girl category here at the Uranium Cafe or at the Necro Girl category over at my other blog Necrotic Cinema are often actresses and models way past their prime, if not, sadly, already passed away. I am trying to keep their memories alive and miss the way women used to look I guess. Strange maybe. Recently I decided that women still alive and in full bloom deserve some recognition as well, and my post on model Katja Cintja a while back was my first such post. For this post I want to introduce not only a very beautiful and exotic lady from Britain, but a genuinely talented and hard working one as well. At a mere 24 years of age the exotic Jet Noir is in the midst of launching her music career with her special style of dance beats and lush techo. She has a haunting and powerful voice and she is an instrumentalist as well, having learned guitar, violin and piano as a child. She is involved with film soundtracks as well now and works with the coolly named Acrahnoid records in the UK. I know some people don't like dance beats and techno stuff. I am a rock-n-roller at heart myself, but I like this stuff really. I am too old and have lost my coolness so I can't really get into the culture around it, but I think a lot of the music is great and is of a soundtrack nature. She is branching out into modeling and has done some acting in videos and an independent film shot in the US. She is a post contributor to the Domain of Horror as well.

She has a classic Goth look with a hint of the old horror hostess vibe. And she is pretty darn nice as I had a small chat with her on Facebook earlier. Typically when I try to chat with somebody who is a bit famous they send me a link to their website and never chat back. She is cool though and got back and chatted a bit, like the legendary Arch Hall Jr. did. Ted V. Mikels just sent a link, but I still worship the guy. Like I am the only person trying to squeeze a chat out of that man. I am embedding a player featuring tracks from her EP at Bandcamp called Sensory Overload. She has other styles as well –some being rather ethereal in sound- and you can find her promoting her work with vigor on various sites on the net right now. I only found about this person a couple days ago and I hope this post brings her and her work into the lives of the readers of the UCafe and Necrotic Cinema. I think she is so talented and cool (and still young and alive!) that I am posting this pierce on both blogs. A first I think. 

 Here is her Facebook Page for further information:

JET NOIR AT FACEBOOK

And of course, this posts is loaded with titillating pictures of Ms. Noir. But don't let her pretty face and healthy body keep you transfixed on the surface charms. She is bright and dedicated and super talented. Hope to see her in some professionally produced videos or film roles soon.

MORE JET NOIR HERE

PRIMAL/2010

I am finding myself more and more getting into Australian horror films and leaving the viewing with a sense of satisfaction. The truth is I watch a lot more movies than I get around to reviewing. But I could easily increase the number of films for my Australian Horror category if I sat my mind to it, which I’m probably not going to do so let’s not even get our hopes up. The newer Ox horror films have many of the elements of “good” 80’s American, and in particular the “exploring the wilderness and backwoods” type films that got really trite and became nothing but parodies of themselves in the end. The Aussie films also run with the old body count formula and handle it well enough, better than what is coming out of the so called independent straight to DVD horror movement in the US right now. The whole nature of the Aussie wilderness and outback help set the stage for the films. Desolate, hot, brutal and full of enough natural dangers that you hardly need a serial killer or flesh eating monster to increase the tension, but it doesn’t hurt to add that little extra bit of terror. And for the most part, not all the time of course because Australian cranks out it share of duds, the acting and direction in this films is above average for low to medium budgeted horror films. I would put the acting and direction up against most of the stuff coming out of the bigger studio horror releases in the states, like some of the newer films coming out of the once reliable Lionsgate Films. And so that brings us to this post’s feature, Primal. Now there is an America film that was also released in Australia under the title Primal. Do not get them confused. In fact I reviewed the film The Lost Tribe, also from 2010 to make matters more confusing, here at NC way back in the blog’s early days. It did not fare well as I recall. Why? Because it was a rancid turd of a film, that’s why. And while this Primal has its fair share of flaws I can give it a hearty recommendation so long as you are not expecting Macbeth or something.

A group of young friends pack up their SUV and head out into the Australian wilderness to get a look at, and in one case write a world changing thesis, on some 12,000 year cave paintings. The group is made of of the same damned characters you see in all these films, no matter what country the film is from. The macho alpha male, the horny, wise cracking but never gets laid male, the quiet brainy guy, the slutty dirty mouthed blonde, the nice girl and the smart gal with deep issues who wind up being the leader. Jeesh. Missing here would be the stoner and dumb jock and the black or Asian guy who dies first. But so what. In fact you just don’t like or connect with any of the characters in any real way, so you sit back and wait for them to start dropping like flies. You already know who is going to get it and who is going to make it to the end. You’re sure if this is going to be one of those “no one survives at the end” flicks, which is the only twist this genre can throw at us anymore. “Whoa! Didn’t see that coming! Everybody died. Now that’s some ending! Gotta give ‘em credit for trying something new there.” Ever get tired of hearing that? “Well, they tried something new!” Yea, and failed. Anyway, I will say this, other than a moment of really bad CG effects at the end, the ending here is pretty clever in terms of the film’s last line. Really worked. Nothing new, but it worked.

The group reach the secluded if not secret –like one of those lost valleys in a Tarzan movie- little forest and find the cave paintings we are introduced to at the film’s beginning. Now we know how some of those hand print paintings were really made. Idyllic at first, things start looking pretty bad when a girl is bitten by a saber toothed rabbit. Really. And too bad there weren’t more saber toothed rabbits, or man eating koalas or blood sucking wallaby’s. This is the only such beast we encounter other than tiny ravenous ants or something and leeches. And about those leeches. You just should not go swimming in waterholes in places where there are known flesh eating rabbits. But try telling that to blonde floozy Mel. After a boob flashing dip in said pond Mel develops a fever, loses all her teeth and has the dead saber toothed rabbit for breakfast the next morning. She turns on the group, of course, and the movie goes into survival mode fro here on out. I guess I will voice one of my few major objections –other than some really bad CG effects that should have been left out- about the film here. It is the sound the now transformed Mel makes when she screams. It is obviously some sort of computer enhanced sound and it reminded me of the screeches made by the vampires in 30 Days of Night, and I didn’t like those annoying sounds either. It is just so obvious the sound has been altered with some sort of software. And another issue is with the make up of the now mutated person. It consists only of some ill-fitting teeth prosthetics. Again reminding me of the vampires in 30 Days of Night. But they are so poorly made you can tell the person is wearing them even when they have their mouths closed, like those old glow in the dark vampire fangs you could get a Halloween time. The lips protrude out and you just know somebody id wearing fake teeth under there or they are sucking on an orange slice. But there is nothing else. And also, whenever Mel appears she is soaring through the air in some pose like she just bounced off a trampoline and her arrival is accompanied by loud music and that digitally enhanced screech. And you know what? It never scared me one.

PENNY DREADFUL/2006

There is another film out there with the title Penny Dreadful. This is the 2006 film and is not to be confused with the 2005 film with the exact some name which I have not seen. Kind of wish I had not seen this one really. I could tell it was a hitchhiker/slasher film set in the deep woods somewhere. I have seen plenty of those, can’t even remember all of them. Usually have a little fun with them. Don’t expect that much from this sort of film. Some gruesome torture and maybe a little flesh eating, nothing too extreme.  But after seeing too many I guess I am apt to expect something that at least brings the film up to the level of a middle of the road hitchhiker/slasher flick. No such luck here. In fact I was sort of hoping the title somehow was going to tie into the British horror story books that were called Penny Dreadfuls, but I could tell by the poster art that that was a long shot. In fact it was a no shot. The Penny of the title (in fact you could have just left the word Penny out of the title and you would have a good one word review of the film) is a whiny, nervous, neurotic teenage girl. She is so whiny and annoying that she makes Belle of the Twilight films look like Margaret Thatcher in her prime. The character is played by the cute to look at Rachel Miner, but looks aren’t everything. She is known mostly for her TV work and her acting skills, which are not that bad really, seem more appropriate for small screen work than for lead work in a motion picture. Well, unless the film itself is not really not worth watching and then it does not matter much. Penny suffers from some sort of fear of automobiles that finds it source in her witnessing both her parents die in a car wreck when she was a kid. She needs to get over this phobia so she can stop riding her bike all the time.

Well to the rescue comes best selling author and condescending, patronizing therapist Orianna Volks (!) played by Mimi Driver. The dialog between Penny and Orianna is the worst of the film. In fact it is the only dialog in the film really.  Orianna all but slaps the piss out of the pathetic Penny and we almost want her to, but I guess that would violate some professional ethics. She figures all Penny needs is a long ass road trip with her prickly personality, back to the scene of the accident that traumatized her for life and then she will be all okay and can rid of that silly bicycle. Of course that is a really bad idea. When your gas is pumped by people like Michael Berryman –the actor from the original The Hills Have Eyes who suffers from a rare disease that leaves him without things like teeth, fingernails, sweat glands or hair on his body and a naturally creepy appearance, but the guy has a fine brain and kind personality- you know you should have maybe stayed home and rode your bike on Xanax instead.

Dumb ass doc Volks gives a lift to an obviously troubled hitchhiker for no better reason than that she almost killed him while bitching at Penny again. The scene of the three of them in the car together trying to get some small talk going is simply awful. Poor dialog and acting and directing and editing. May as well complain about the music too I guess. No tension is created whatsoever. When the guy pulls out a skewer of raw meat and offers the snack to the ladies it comes off as nothing more than a cheap shot gimmick. In fact everything in the film starts going downhill fast from here. Cardboard characters are introduced for no other reason than having them killed off later. The death scenes are weak. Not violent enough to make the long wait worth it all. There is even a naked boob shot. Totally cheap. Boobs were hip in the 70’s and for some of the 80’s and for Troma type films now, but it is just another cheap shot. Don’t get me wrong, I like boobs, but they are not going to help this film. And in the end the weakest aspect of this already weak entry into the hitchhiker/slasher oeuvre is the slasher himself (or herself? Seems to be some gender ambivalence going on here and the character is played by actress Liv Davies but I was never clear what was going on). Just not a scary slasher in any sense and when he/she laughs it is like one of those old scary movie TV hosts, complete with echo and reverb on the laugh as well. Most of the movie is spent watching goddamned Penny cry and shiver and squeeze her little rubber toy and control her breathing. Too much time is spent watching her alone in the car doing nothing but shaking and crying.  It was during this part that a really bad thing, in terms of my movie watching habits go, happened. I began fast forwarding the film and looking to see how much time was left. Honestly, nothing was happening. I did not know if I cold take one ore arty close of her wide open eye from different angles. I expected the ending to be weak but it was worse than I thought. Who cares who the director was. Dreadful, just dreadful. 

(THE) REEKER/2005

I am about to totally spoil this film, so if you hate spoilers stop reading. I hate to read spoilers myself, but I seem to have no qualms about employing them. Why? We are talking about formulaic horror films and for the most part and I figure out endings in the first ten or fifteen minutes anyway. Sometimes I try not to and still do. I did not figure out the ending to Reeker (or The Reeker) but it is only because I did not think it warranted much thought and the film was more than a bit bewildering as it went along anyway. It is hard to reason how a film might end when you not sure what the hell is even gone at the moment you're watching it. So, the deal here is that everybody, well almost everybody, in the film is dead. And you don’t find that out until the final few minutes of the film. Somehow that is supposed to suddenly have the film all fall into place and make sense. It doesn’t. And the reason I spoiled the film –other than neurotic compulsion- is that the ending simply does not work. In some films it does. The ending where the person is either dead or in some sort of coma and they are having an artificial reality fed to them somehow. Like the film Vanilla Sky with Tom Cruise. Whether you like that film or not the way it is done works a bit. Not perfectly maybe, but suddenly you starting piecing things together. In the 2005 film Reeker that does not happen as there is not that much prior to the film’s ending that really has you wondering what is happening. Not in a positive way anyway. There is no reason that everybody has to be dead and nothing in the film would have you accept the ending as anything other than a cheap shot ending. And sure horror film’s are infamous for cheap shot endings but I hate it when a half way decent horror film is ruined by a pseudo-pretentious ending. I figured the ending might have something to do with the fact everybody is near Area 51 or that some of them are doing psychoactive drugs. But nothing of the sort. It has to be that they are all, in fact, dead. Running around doing stuff all on their own but they are all dead.

So there, I ruined it all. But I am not saying the film is not worth giving a single viewing. It seems to start off well and you get the sense something is going really happen. There are creepy moments that sadly go nowhere and the realization at the end that they are in some nether world where anything can happen only makes you more frustrated because the situation is never really explored and/or exploited by the filmmakers. Typically films where it all winds up being someone on drugs, or dead or in a coma -or even where it all winds up being the worst of all possible endings, a friggin' dream!- filmmakers can go a bit overboard with the hallucinations and weirdness and effects. Does not happen here.

What does happen is a group of teens are headed for a rave or party out in the desert near Area 51. One of the kids, an annoying frat-boy, decides to steal thousands of dollars worth of psychoactive drugs from the sort of drug dealer you don’t even want to steal one extra pill from. The group has the asshole frat-boy’s more sensitive frat-boy buddy, two hot babes (one played by Arielle Kebbel) and the standard horror movie character you can never do without… the blind guy! Yea, there is a blind guy tagging along for some reason. When the full of herself gal from South Africa Gretchen decides she cannot tolerate too many drugs in her car –a few okay, but not too many- she decides to leave frat boy/asshole Trip out in the desert to fend for himself. The rest of the group insist she at least take the jerk back to the diner they had stopped at earlier and she decides that is not too unreasonable, since he would probably die of exposure out in the scorching wilderness, though it he probably deserves it. Upon getting back to the junction and diner/hotel they find it abandoned. 

THE FINAL DESTINATIOM FILM SERIES

In this post I am not really to go into all that much detail about the five films here. For one reason it would make the post just too long and I do not really want to do five individual posts on the films. Another reason is that films are actually pretty well known and I am assuming that, unlike many of the films I choose to write about here, a lot of people out there have seen them all or seen some of them. In fact I had long put off seeing the films simply because they seemed too popular, or at least too well known. I just assumed I would not like them. I also thought, for some reason, that they were based on some sort of RPG. I don’t know why I thought that but typically I do not like movies based on computer games. I am just going to keep the post short and sort of sweet and then move on. I am not really in a mood to analyze the films that deeply as I am still fighting a bad cold and should I choose I can always return to the films later, though that is not likely to happen.

I was rather surprised with the Final Destination films. I watched them all back to back (except for FD 5 which I will check out tonight) and felt the first three films were fairly clever and entertaining. The fourth film was total crap really. I have read that the fifth film is pretty good and that the CGI effects are not as cheesy as they were in the fourth film. Oh, sometimes I use the term “cheezy” and also the term “cheesy”. Cheezy, to me, is good bad. Campy and fun. Cheesy is simply bad bad and no fun. Not that that is all that important, but I just want to clear that up in case one person out there ever noticed that.

The theme of the films is the same in each one. A group of people (usually made up of mostly high school students it seems) avoid being killed off in some sort catastrophic event when one of the group has a premonition and panics. People are killed off in truck loads in airplane crashes, roller coaster wrecks, traffic pile ups and stock car accidents. In the fifth film I understand a bridge collapses. The accidents all look pretty good and the deaths are violent and usually mix up CGI and practical effects with good results. I was not unhappy with the use of CGI in the first three films but they got pretty shoddy in the fourth. By the way, the fourth film wound up being the most financially successful of the franchise, perhaps due to the fact that it was shot in 3D. But 3D effects look pretty dumb for the most part without the 3D glasses (and even with them) and the image of things like a pair of floating scissors pointing at you is obviously just a cheap gimmick. But again, it is has made the most money of the five films so far. The worst does the best in this post Milli Vanilli world we live in. 

 What happens next is that Death, the entity whom we never see except as a passing shadow or wind, has to correct the balance of things as the people who were marked for death cheated him. Death manipulates elements in the survivor’s life in order to kill them off, in the order that were to have died in originally. Of there are some wild stretches here and one needs to turn on their suspension of disbelief to let the film move along smoothly, but the way it is done for the most part works out fine for the most part. The camera zooms in and out on common day objects and events that may or may not be part of the web events that will culminate in the eventual death of the marked survivor. Sometimes a survivor makes it and it seems the chain of events have been broken, but it is not the case really and Death return to collect his due eventually. There is a fatalistic tone to the film and it seems a drag you can beat the final outcome. By the fourth film I had resigned myself to the fact that one gets out alive. Even if they do in one film they will be killed off by the end of the next one. In the first three films anyway the deaths are graphic and well done. Lots of people getting squashed, impaled, eviscerated, and who knows what. By the fourth film the deaths had become mere gimmicks and a means to show off the 3D effects. I will finish the last film later tonight and have a sense it will be okay, at least from what I have read online.

The acting overall is not bad. The deaths are often violent and gory. The scenes where death begins to set things into motion are well done. The stories move along but of course there are problems. In the third film, for example, I just did not really like any of the teenagers except for the jock guy. At one point I was actually rooting for Death to have a rude, finger flipping girl killed off as she was being dragged by a horse and was really disappointed when she was saved by the jock at the last moment. When you are wanting the main characters to be killed off in a horrendous that is not a good thing. Sometimes things are just too over done really. You wonder why they can’t all be killed off by a heart attack or a brain aneurysm. Why does it always have something with a gas oven or a nail gun. But then that would be no fun now would it.

SPLINTER/2008

The 2008 horror film Splinter was directed by Toby Wilkins, whose history in film has been more in the special effects department than behind the lens as director. Sadly his only other film worthy of mention is The Grudge 3 (which I have not seen), the rest of his film work being TV work and shorts. Too bad since Splinter is a stripped down horror film – a cast of six and filmed mostly within one location at a convenience store- whose success rests on some solid direction and acting, along with decent dialog and a believable and scary monster. When the film first came out I read a few bad reviews of it and put off seeing it until only recently. You cannot believe everything you read and some people are obviously just impossible to please. While there is a lot of crap coming out of the horror film industry these days there are good and watchable horror films as well and Splinter is one of them. While far from perfect or flawless it nonetheless move along and delivers the horror goods from start to finish.

With no more than six people in being listed in the film’s credits this is not going to be a teenage body count film, and that genre is still alive and well though it has been trussed up a bit and made less funny the films of the 70’s and 80’s. Everybody in the film seems to be 25 and up and plagued with “real life” problems other than what college will one go to now that high school is wrapping up. City slickers Polly and Seth (Jill Wagner and Paulo Costanzo) are having problems sitting up tents in the wilderness to celebrate their anniversary. Jill is obviously the hard one to please in the relationship and Paulo is trying his best, but he is more comfortable with test tubes than tents and mosquitoes. Jill hammers on him but she herself can’t get the tent up any better and after it is ripped they opt to stay in a hotel for the night. She does the driving –natch- since Pauolo cannot drive a stick. Hey, neither can I. While heading to who knows where they pick up and then are kidnapped by con on the lam Dennis Ferrell (Shea Whigham) and his super tweaker girl friend Lacey (Rachel Kerbs). The stereotypes are not over done and the ride in the SUV is filled with believable dialog and situations for the most part. Things turn for the worse when they run over a spiky creature who we met earlier when it killed a potato chip munching hillbilly. A tire is blown and we find out how whacked Rachel is when she is sure is some old dead pet of her come back. The spikes on this creature –which never find out anything about, long with the parasite that has infected it- not only blows their tire but damages their radiator as well. After it blows they all wind up back at the bas station/convenience store where the redneck was killed at the film’s start. And he is still there, but now he too has become a spiky, thorny creature that jerks and scrambles around in unnerving manner, and is very fast and very intent on killing the three people –yea, tweaker Lacey doesn’t make it- holed up inside the store now.

The film now becomes the three of them against the unrelenting monster outside and against each other. I guess if you want to push it it also becomes them against themselves as well, but I try not to take too many of these movies to that level. We’re not watching Lord Jim here no matter how good it gets. Here is where many a modern horror film may fall all apart, if they haven’t long since crumbled, but Splinter manages to hold on. The characters and situations never get corny or unbelievable. The creature, while locked outside, still poses a threat and is able to get inside –i.e. in the form of a torn off hand- and prevents the trio from leaving. When help arrives it is quickly dispensed with and their limited options for getting out seem like just one bad idea followed by another. Science geek boy Paulo may not be able to pitch a tent or drive a stick but he suddenly comes into his own when trying to figure out what the creature is and how to combat it, all the while being nagged by Polly of course who can’t find it in herself to tell the guy even once “yea honey, go on, we’re listening”. But in the end it is brains over beauty as Paulo figures out the creature is sensitive to cold and comes up with a pretty interesting and tension building method to go out and move a vehicle closer to the door. The film is has other moments like this where the trio try to get some chance at rescue but are thwarted by the creature in one for or another.