BEYOND THE GRAVE/PORTOS DOS MORTOS/2010

I have been meaning to get around to saying something about this interesting film from Brazil for a long time, but I am just not an enthusiastic blogger these days. But I am trying my best. I want to first thank producer Isidoro B. Guggiana for trying so hard to get me a screener of Beyond the Grave for me to try out. The guy sent me two DVDs and one was lost here in China and the other was returned to him. The mail system here is a joke and I am frustrated over never getting important papers from the IRS I need. Well, lets not get off onto a China tirade right now. He finally got me an online screener version though a hard copy of the movie would have been great.  I have been offered a couple screeners but after the people promoting the movies found out I was in China they gave up and never sent it to me because of the high postage rates and my warnings to them that stuff vanishes here in the mail. But Isidoro came through and this is my first ever screener review here at The Uranium Café.

Beyond the Grave is written and directed by Brazilian filmmaker Davi de Oliveira Pinheiro and while it does not on the one offer anything totally new (what can anymore) it actually takes a few motifs from horror and action films and tires into a strange little bundle that might described as a “spaghetti zombie” film. And while there are zombies in the film I would not really say the movie was focused on zombies and zombie killings. The story is more of an occult or Satanic type drama than a “shoot ‘em in the head” zombie thriller. The story is set in the near future and the world is in a shambles for reasons I never quite understood. I am not certain if it is due to something nuclear, chemical/biological or even other-wordly. Riding through the back roads of Brazil in a sleek looking black Ford Maverick is the vigilante hero we only get to know as The Officer. He is searching someone or something known only as the Dark Rider. The Dark Rider is able to inhabit the bodies of people and is released upon death of the person to go into a new body. Actually, I am never clear on who the Dark Rider is but it does not matter. The element of uncertainty does not detract from the story. He hooks up with and befriends as best he can a couple of wandering teenagers. Together they team up with a trio of survivors in what seems to be an abandoned school and united they seek to face and destroy the Dark Rider. While the story does not center on the zombies (or “Returners”) they are an issue and contribute to death and tension when one least expects it.

The film is directed and shot well enough and the music score works with what is happening on the screen. It has an old school Italian horror movie feel to it and the version I saw was subtitled from (I assume) Portuguese into English. I am certain the references to old Westerns and even Samurai films are intentional homage’s. In fact, really, the film seems to be more of a modern Western and even crime film than a horror movie most of the time. But make no mistake, there are monsters and evil spirits enough to make this one creepy enough for the underground horror crowd. Do not know how easy or difficult this may be to find in the States but if you can find it give it a viewing. I am including the official Lockheart Films trailer to give you a sense of what it is about.

BEYOND THE GRAVE TRAILER

THE POSSIBLE RISING FROM THE DEAD OF NECROTIC CINEMA

I have no idea what is up, but I am just getting more and more followers to this blog over at its Facebook Page. I tried to kill it but it won't stay dead. In fact it has more followers than The Uranium cafe has there. While I am really not in the mood to blog the way I used to it seems there is a market out there still Necrotic movie reviews, with the emphasis being on newer, modern horror films, with an often scathing tone running through the reviews. It is a bit odd. I have moved over half of the reviews here over to the UCafe and was considering disabling this blog when all of that was done. But I dunno, seems like I may continue with some blogging here after all. everyday NC has a follower or two. I like it. While the glory days of my manic blogging binges are over I still like to write and the next time I want to do a modern horror review it will be posted here. May still double post stuff over to the UCafe, to had some color to that site which is suffering from my blogging apathy as well. I am not writing much have I have yet to swear off blogging. The day may come. But I still enjoy it. Have watched gobs of stuff, most of total drek and deserving of an Uncle Bill review. Yea. I think Necrotic Cinema is alive again. In an undead sense of course. 

THE DEMISE OF NECROTIC CINEMA

I have been mulling this over for a while and I have come to the conclusion it is time to retire Necrotic Cinema. I am struggling with blogging as a whole and have lost most of my passion for it really. Most, but not all. I really like the blog but after several years at it I have yet to get even 100 posts completed. it does not mean I do not want to do posts and have a zillion (give or take a billion) in the plump draft folder, but to be quite blunt I just am having a hard time giving a fuck any more. I seem to still give a shit, but the giving a fuck part is really becoming a burden. In the end my main blog is and always has been The Uranium Cafe and that has become a burden as well for me and I am wrestling with retiring it as well. As a sort of compromise I have decided to expand The Uranium Cafe (always baffles me whether or not to capitalize the indefinite article there) and allow more modern movie posts there as well now. I tried to keep it an obscure movie blog and it will still be that, but when I think about it a lot of the modern movies I gravitate towards -horror and other types- are pretty damned obscure by most standards so I will simply merge the content really. I may even move over some of my cooler posts from here to there to get the ball rolling as they say. I have no intention of deleting the blog and if you found your way here you can still support the concept of Necrotic Cinema (where some movies are better left buried) and visit The Uranium Cafe, where old and new drek are pandered with willful and wanton abandon. RIP NC.

LOVE BITE/2012

Another British horror/comedy here. Love Bite, directed by TV director Andy De Emmony in one of only a couple ventures onto the big screen, is well made and well acted for a horror genre film and starts off well enough. The sex starved lads of sleepy Rainmouth are on a rainy summer holiday and all are hoping to lose their virginity this summer. On this point one poster compares the film to American Pie. Maybe since the filmmakers are British they can be forgiven, but that is probably not the best film to compare your work to. Three of the guys are hopeless dwebs but handsome and polite Jamie (Ed Speleers) would have no problems attracting the farer sex if he did not associate with his annoying mates all the time. And of course being the handsome and polite chap he is he is more the romantic and committed type, looking for lasting love and all that. Enter into the pie making community of Rainmouth two new characters: the sexy and worldly (and possibly lycanthropic) American Juliana (Jessica Szohr) and the werewolf hunting Sid (Timothy Spall) and the action in dreary Rainmouth soon gets going at a breakneck speed, right? Wrong. The movie gets stuck in its weird Porky’s world of the boys desperately wanting to get their cherry’s popped and repeated instances of that dry British humor that is funny in doses, but soon gets too, well, too dry and Britishy for my taste. The big problem, the big, big problem, is that the werewolf itself is not introduced into the film until about the last twenty minutes or so.  And then in that last stretch of film the makers try to shove a twist or two down your throat to spark things up but it is too late. The last scene in the diner (or whatever they are called in England) seems like it was stolen from The Howling as far as I am concerned. I had no issues with the revolting horny British young guy story line, but that is basically all the film is. It never really becomes a werewolf story. There are funny enough moments and it never gets as grossly over the top American Pie really but a film like this needs the monster in it before the half way mark really. You don’t want to show a monster too early but you don’t want to show it too late either. I lost interest and paused the movie and finished it the next day just to do this review about it. This definitely had potential but by the mid-point I was losing interest but held on in hopes of a bigger bang the makers were holding in store for the viewer who hung in there, but it never arrived. I can't even find any scary screen captures to liven the post up a bit. 

TORMENTED/2009

This “slipped under the radar” British horror film by Jon Wright hit me in the hit places so well that I watched it twice in one week. Well, the first version I watched on a Chinese streaming site called PPTV had over 20 minutes of the film cut from it, including all the death scenes, and so I wanted to see what I may have missed, but that was not the only reason I rewatched it. The film is very well made on all fronts, including direction, editing, acting, and score. While not a perfect horror film in any sense, if there is really such a thing, the movie delivers all the goods using a pretty simple premise; bullied teenager returns from the dead to wreck havoc and revenge on his tormentors. It is never explained why he is able to return from the dead and there is no occult subplot (thank God) to muck up the storyline with. I have long felt too that British films in general deal with the whole social class issues better than their American counterparts, were the class struggle concerns are not as relevant or explored storylines. Seems a lot of films like this have come out in Britain since the late 50’s and the old b/w angry young man films of the 60’s are some of the best movies ever made. And there is some element of that class struggle in Tormented, though it is more amongst the members of some sort of elite prep school meaning most likely they all come from money. But here we have the more modern spin on things with the conflicts being between the upper preps and jocks, and the nerds and emos. But the film presents the conflict with elements of snooty British snobbery that you just do not find in American high school type dealing with the same themes. But to be clear, the movie is not really addressing any such issues on a deep level, anymore than it is addressing the problems with bullying. In fact that social issue things are not the reason I watch horror movies, not all. I watch horror movies for the tension and jolts, and to be quite frank, some blood and a bit of gore delivered in just the jut doses at just right time. And it is in that department that Tormented sits well with me. And as well as the horror and violence, it has some of that special dry British humor you either like or do not like, and which fortunately I like a lot when it is done right as it was in Shaun of the Dead. But Tormented is not meant as a spoof or parody of slasher or high school body count films, and while imbued with black humor and at times campiness the film over all takes itself pretty seriously. That can backfire on many horror films, but I do not think it does here despite a glitch or two every now and then.

Poor geeky fat kid Darren Mullet (Calvin Dean) is so bullied by the school’s popular crowd, led by pretty boy Bradley (Alex Pettyfer) that he is ultimately driven to commit suicide. He secretly holds a love for head girl Justin (played just right by Tuppence Middleton in her first role) and it is the last straw when she appears turns against him along with the gang of evil preppies. A party is help after Darrel’s funeral and Justine develops a quick romance with slightly nicer preppie dick head Alexis (Dimitri Leonidas) and soon Justine herself in with the popular crowd herself. There is basically one death and one deafening of an emo during the first half of the film, but the deaths start piling up quickly in the film’s second half, and they are a batch of grisly demises to say the least. The relationship between Justine and Alexis is actually handled rather well, and the role of asinine, spoiled Bradley is played to the hilt by Pettyfer. We do not see much of ghost/killer Darren or what happened with him and the bullies until later in the film, and as is often case you find yourself rooting for the bullied kid and hoping he gets all the bastards even if you have learned to like one or two of them. Does he get them all or not? I think you can check it out and find out for your self. It does have a twist of an ending, but not a ridiculous one that seems tacked on later in the editing room, the way many such slasher films end off these days. I saw another British bullying/suicide film recently as well called Truth or Dare and I want to review that one soon, maybe next, as there are some comparisons I want to make between this film and that one, and why I think this one worked better in the end, though truth or Dare verged on the edge of becoming a great horror/revenge movie. In closing I will say that I have not seen Tuppence Middleton (wow, I love that name) in anything else but and trying to find something. She was great in this one and was simply lovely to behold. The films listed for her on IMDB do not look at that great in a way and she certainly seems like a good actress able to do more than slasher material. I can recommend this film. If you are fan of slasher films with a bit of gore you will like it I think, and if you are not I doubt it will do much for you, but if you’re not why the hell are you reading this friggin’ blog in the first place?!

 

NECROVISION/TV IN CHINA/THE FOLLOWING

I like watching TV shows when I can get them to stream on my iPad here in China, as that is only one of three ways I can see any real TV here. There are no American or foreign shows to mention of here in China. Okay, they have Sponge Bob I think. All TV programming is done by the communist party and the only network is CCTV and the local variations on it that are still the same thing -news reports about perfect China is- but with specialty shows on local tourist attractions or food  basically. CCTV really sucks and I never watch it really unless I am holed up in a hotel somewhere and bored shitless. There is some outside programming and in particular the soap operas from South Korea are popular here, but the commie government deems them as a threat to something  like a harmonious society too and they too are getting restricted more and more. So the other options are these; 1) Buy the full season on pirated DVD discs. The episodes are ripped from HD TV recorders or whatever it is that captures them and complied onto a diskc after a season completes. Problem is DVD stores here are getting fewer and far between and the quality can really be bad at times, especially the audio. I hardly buy DVDs here anymore as the quality is just getting poorer and poorer. I still get one now and then, but the newer option has become 2) streaming movies and TV. I have to correct myself and say that I discovered most of the movies and TV shows they show here (not all) are not actually pirated. The streaming companies here like PPTV, TuDou, AiQiYi and SoHu (to name only a few) pay big bucks to outside suppliers or distributers to use the shows legally and so advertise over them legally. A big commercial here lately is one with Brad Pitt promoting a car. Yea, Brad Pitt did a Chinese TV commercial and I saw a Johnny Depp on a billboard advertisemtn the other for a car. For the streaming sites to legally use that commercial the programming itself should be legal too or there can be issues. I found out a lot about this recently when The Big Bang Theory was banned in China and all streaming sites (like the above ones) was ordered that they must stop showing this subversive show immediately or face serious consequences. Why is Big Bang subversive? Who knows. The government here only has to say it is. Or not say anything other than “take it down” and that is it.

But there can be other problems with streaming TV here as well. And a big one is the lousy ass Chinese Internet. I read somewhere that China was developing a super high tech Internet that would be superior to anything in the US or Europe or South Korea. Well, maybe that is fine for the commie party fat cats who will have it and want to flaunt it and proclaim "we are better than thewest again!", but the rest of the people here, Chinese and foreign alike,  are all stuck  with ADSL type connections that are dial-up speed at best back in the States. For some things I manage quite well, but for watching movies and TV it can be hit or miss. Mostly miss here lately. The shows just stream so slow as to make them unwatchable. So that leaves one with the last option and that is 3) downloading via bittorrent type sites. I am good at this and used to be quite the ripper and uploader as well. I am able to find the shows, like Big Bang, and can even find Chinese subtitles (http://shooter.cn)  and pair them up with the AVI or MP4 file for my wife to follow. She can speak English but it can be hard to follow native speakers when they speak quickly, a problem I have trying to listen to Chinese native speakers to be sure. So subs help. And for the most part that is what I do to get shows and movies (I also download old movies from Youtube now and in MP4 but maybe more on that another time) but the glory days of bittorrents (R.I.P Demonoid) are over and I worry about all of that, but for now I get my TV shows via this method. My wife does not watch most of them really. She does not like cannibals and guys who wear masks made from the flesh of teenagers faces the way I do. Ah, go figure.

So here are a few shows I have been watching (or trying to watch) lately. Actually, only one show for this post as my intro went on a bit longer than I intended. Some new coffee beans, sorry. This show here I gave up on before the end of the first season. It is called The Following and is put out by FOX TV. It stars the reliable Kevin Bacon as burned-out  FBI agent Ryan Hardy, who is dragged in from retirement to seek out serial killer and cult leader Joe Carroll, played, I think, with tongue firmly in cheek by James Purefoy. The whole FBI/cop in retirement or semi-retirement because of of a dead partner or because they shot a kid with a water blaster one night in Compton being cajoled into returning to duty because they are the only one who can do it formula is getting pretty goddamned old to me. "I need the old Bladerunner." But Kevin Bacon handles it okay. I like the guy over all and the fact that a lot of the cool old movie actors from the 80’s and 90’s who are turning up in these TV shows now (like Kiefer Sutherland and Laurence Fishburne) is welcome to me. Those guys can still act better than the new generation and while they are not spring chickens they are still young enough to carry a good drama or action lead and even have a believable romantic relationship, but they are also old enough to be totally jaded and worn out with life and all it's bullshit. And Bacon’s Ryan Hardy is just that and an alcoholic to boot. I got pulled in to the first couple shows but soon got burned out with the strain on my suspension of disbelief with the continuous implausibility’s and plot holes. 

For one thing the entire premise is too unbelievable for me. That the character of Joe Carroll could be so charismatic and his followers so needy and easily misled and manipulated that they all could develop a murderous Charles Manson like family built around the writings of Edgar Allan Poe is not something I swallow easily. And not only that, but to develop the cult-family while Carroll is still in prison -and meets many of his followers via prison visits- for murdering some sorority girls one night takes it even further from the realm of believability. And that night not only finds Carroll doing a soroity house Ted Bundy routine but has him stabbing Ryan Hardly in the heart and  therefore having Hardly need a pacemaker implanted in his chest. The pacemaker thing seems totally unnecessary and leads to some goofy situations really later in the series, like where a female killer tortures hardy with some batteries she hovers over the pacemaker. And that is really only part of the issues for me. Hell I could handle that stuff. But it gets keeps get getting deeper and deeper in terms of what I can sit and accecpt. My malarky meter was always in the red.

That this cult could be so powerful that they have technology that is beyond the FBI’s is ridiculous. Carroll calls Hardy and taunts him constantly on some satellite but the dopey, stuck n the stone ages FBI can never trace the calls because the bad guys are so smart and organized and one step ahead of the cops and feds. But when a call is made from Hardy to Carroll’s ex-wife in a witness protection program -who Hardly loves but can’t commit to cos’ he is a distant brooding loner and he will just get her hurt in the end cos' everybody he loves dies... and, and she does die later- and a window of a few seconds opens up on the phone line security because of a virus the cult memebers put there and the feds can't get off  the killers trace the call immediately and are there as quickly with machine guns and armored vests shooting up everybody in broad daylight. The family also stays in a huge multi-million dollar mansion somewhere in Virginia or Delaware. This is a palace, and they can stay there because one of Carroll’s top followers is the local sheriff. As if being a local small town sheriff suddenly means you have access to places that look like Buckingham Palace. And that is another issue I had. The family is not located in the mountains of Idaho or the deserts of Southern California or some mountains in west Pakistan. They actually seem to staying about a twenty minute drive from the FBI headquarters and never get caught at anything until after the fact, and sometimes not even then. 

You never know who is or who is not a family member. Well, okay, after a while you do. Once you catch on it is a story gimmick that some of people you least suspect are members then you started getting the hang of figuring it out pretty quickly. Could it be the helpful cop or FBI agent next to you? Or the kind, committed gay couple next door? Or maybe your trusted nanny? Or even the friggin’ president of the United States himself! I don’t think I even finished the entire first season now that I think about it. I may have been thinking when I went into this that there would be different stories over the back story of Hardy’s tainted past and drinking problems and inability to love and trust and stay focused on his chakras. I thought it would be a profiler show like Criminal Minds. In Criminal Minds the back stories not explored deeply enough really (these new shows are only like 40 minutes long, compared to the 50 minutes old TV shows were, so you cannot explore too much as a commericial break is needed all the time) but there was not a stretched over all the episodes story that focused on Edgar Allan Poe and a murder family built around him all the time. I love Poe, but I cannot except the premise of a frenzied murder cult built around The Raven or The Tell Tale Heart. That’s like saying people today even read Poe. I have my doubts. And what about the local sheriff with the hillbilly accent? Am I to assume he is an avid Poe reader? I now Poe was asouthern gentlman and all himself, but I don't think the sheriff here is the type to get all sucked into a Poe cult.  Yes, one has to suspend disbelief to a degree for most any movie or TV show I know. There has to be plot holes in order for the story to move along briskly. People are going to do things they would not do in real life or no one is going to die or get kidnapped. But enough is enough. And in the end I just did not buy the villain enough to continue watching. Purefoy’s acting style and weird accent from another time and place just began to annoy me. And there was one last major problem; I was watching ths via streaming TV here and it got so slow I could not finish the last episode I watched. It did not intrigue me enough to download and finish it. Bad sign. I could possibly watch a few more if the streaming worked again, but I doubt I will download this odd little series. 

TV show reviews coming up: Hannibal, American Horror Story,  Bones, Criminal Minds, The Big Bang Theory. Stay tuned!

THE BONE BOYS aka THE BUTCHER BOYS/2012/KIM HENKEL

Guess what everyone! Kim Henkel has written and produced a new film. And further guess what! It sucks. You may know the name of Kim Henkel as co-writer of the original The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Or you may be one of the 99% of the people out there who scratches their head and mumbles "who the hell is Kim Henkel!", like I did. He went on to do nothing much else to speak of over the next few decades of his career but that is still something cool to have on your horror movie resume, that you helped Tobe Hooper create one of the greatest -and one of the most ripped off- horror movies of all time. And at the end of the day I am a fan of the TCM franchise in general. I can’t say they are all great films but I definitely look forward to a new installment. Henkel was also the writer on the okay TCM: The Next Generation from 1994, but really I do not see why the name Kim Henkel would be any sort of real endorsement of any film being made in 2012. Nor would I see why the names of directors Duane Graves and Justin Meeks would turn any heads, but the reviews of the film The Bone Boys (the few ones favorable I read which I highly suspect are being written by people associated with the project or had to sit through a free screener of the film and feel driven out of guilt and a desire for more free screeners) seem to heap praise after praise on these guys. Meeks directed some indie horror film called The Wild Man of the Navidad I have wanted to see but which I cannot get my hands on but will once Cinemageddon has another free leech period. It is “praised” by the indie crowd but  the stills do not even look that great really, but it is a “bigfoot” type movie so I want to check it out. 

Before going into this chunk of drek I want to say one thing about Tobe Hooper, which maybe I have said here before or tried to. I sure don’t like all of his films but to be quite honest I think he did better work than The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Arggh! The heresy some are screaming now! But every time the poor bastard does a new film it gets compared to TCM and then shot to bits. “When will Hooper do another classic like TCM!” Well I have long felt that the original TCM was a great little low budget film. It works for me, but it is hardly the only thing Hooper ever did worth watching. I feel Lifeforce, and Invaders from Mars and even films like The Funhouse and Eaten Alive are decent little horror films and cuts above what others are doing. And his one return to the TCM franchise –The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2- was met with bitter reviews as well, though I kind of liked that one myself. So, what I am trying to say to all the “Hooper’s only good film was the original TCM” is “fucking get over it geeky fan boy!”. 

And why all the chit chat here about TCM anyway? Well because Kim Henkel is none too ashamed to exploit that film here in The Bone Boys/The Butcher Boys. The references are all but in your face and that is okay since so many hillbilly slasher films pay homage (a euphemism for blatantly ripping off something better) to the original TCM. And if you were co-writer of the original film then surely you would have some right to do that in your new screenplay. I guess. Might have more credibility if you had tried to do something else in the nearly four decades prior, but lets over look that for now I guess. But the goddamned tagline for the flick is “The 'spiritual sequel' to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre”. So rather than the film containing clever little references to TCM in a tribute sort of fashion it is blatantly exploiting the first film in a cheap way. And well, that annoys me. The film follows a group of teens, led by Sissy (genuine Texas girl Ali Faulkner) around the back streets of the still wild and wooly San Antonio Texas (where I lived for about fifteen years of my life, and where, long with locations in  Austin, the film was shot) where they run afoul of a gang of white guys in leather jackets and greasy hair that resemble something more out of an S.E. Hinton novel than a gang you would actually see in the run down warehouse districts of San Antonio. Or any other city in North America. Or the world for that matter. The local macho Mexican gangs and even the hard boiled drug cartel savvy San “Antone” cops fear these guys and let them do as they wish. Which is utterly unbelievable. In the end the gang is just some guys with knives and guns and the fact that they evoke such terror in the gangs and cops hastens the film on its downward spiral into scene by scene disbelief and irritation. I am sure if you were a young person of 18 or 20 and have only seen a few such films this thing may strike you as wild and crazy and too much to endure. Maybe this "roller coaster ride" will take your breath away. But if you’re a jaded old movie fart like myself you will find yourself rolling your eyes up in annoyance more than covering them in fright.

THE LORDS OF SALEM/2013/ROB ZOMBIE

Before going too deeply into what I thought of Rob Zombie’s new film The Lords of Salem I think I should preface things a little. Overall I like Rob Zombie as a musician and filmmaker. I love his stuff with White Zombie and here and there as far as his post White Zombie music goes, but for the most part no big issues with me there. I also liked his video work and could tell from the music videos he directed he had an eye for setting up shots. Then he went on to making movies and things got a little more blurry for me. I had to wait a long time here in China to find a copy of House of 1000 Corpses and can’t say I disliked the film at all. I think I have watched it 3 or 4 times. It has all of the kitschy hillbilly horror references and sordid underbelly of America gags I would have expected from Zombie. However I just did not like Devil’s Rejects and the last part where the Firefly family or whoever they are go charging on forever in their convertible while Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Free Bird plays alllll the way to end was simply unenjoyable to say the least. I was never a fan of the Halloween films to begin with so I went into the Zombie prequels with a negative bias. I am not here to review those films but one day may give them a go. They were not that bad really. In the end though I just don’t know if I needed to know about Michael Myer’s twisted childhood and if knowing anything about it now makes me any more interested in his character. I just never liked those films all that much and Zombie did not help me to cuddle up them any more. So a couple years back I began reading about a possible Rob Zombie remake of The Blob and my ears pricked up a bit. I just felt he could have done something with that, but suddenly there is not a blob film and instead we have a slow paced take on those old Satan films of the late 60’s and 70’s. And the problem is those old Satan films were simply some of the worst films ever made in terms of stories, direction and acting. They are for the most part all considered camp films at best and while they certainly had their time in the sun, and let me just say I have seen my fair share and just watched a couple old Satan flicks during the last couple weeks here, the sun has long since set on those movies. They are more something to be explored (and no doubt ruined) by somebody like Quentin Tarantino. 

The reviews on The Lords of Salem seem to divide the masses a little, with many people hating it for no other reason than Rob Zombie’s names is attached to it and others claiming Zombie has matured and come of age as a filmmaker. I have no issue with Rob Zombie being the film’s creator and it is the sole reason I sought the film out. I guess I am not really a film critic in any real sense and so I may not be able to see any techical maturity going on here. There are obvious references to filmmakers like Polanski, Kubrick and even Ken Russell but does that mean Zombie can tell a story or work a camera in the same fashion as those guys? I would not say it would be fair to compare but the praises the film is getting is for the fact that those influences are so apparent. But in the end Zombie just does not pull off an engaging or convincing story. Rosemary’s baby is a slow burn of a film but is never boring and I have seen that film near a dozen times I am sure. Once was more than enough with The Lords of Salem. And now I must  touch on a particular problem with the film before I go any further. It is a serious prejudice I have and its presence in the film makes it hard for me to accept the film. In fact this little problem crops up in every single Rob Zombie film and the problem has a name, and that name is Sheri Moon Zombie. I thought she was sort of cute and trashy in 1000 Corpses and I had no idea who she was at the time. But that was about it for me and her. She lost the cute part and I soon realized the trashy aspect was not acting. In Lords of Salem she is utterly covered in grotesque tattoos, is emaciated and unhealthy looking and sports a mane of grungy dread locks that look infested with lice and cigarette smoke.  I don’t care if her acting has improved or not, I just can’t stand her. Maybe as a supporting actress that is killed off in the first reel (like in the Tobe Hooper version of The Tool Box Murders) but in the lead role of a film she is a distraction for me.

In the film she play radio DJ Heidi Hawthorne who co-hosts a late night rock show in Salem Massachusetts with the two Herman’s, played by Jeff Daniel Phillips and the ageless Ken Foree (of immortal Dawn of the Dead fame). Guests on the show include people like a bearded Bruce Davison playing Salem witch trial skeptic Francis Matthias. We all know what happens to skeptics in horror films by now don’t we?  Heidi receives a slice of vinyl by a group calling themselves the Lords of Salem and when the music is played she basically zones out. She is soon getting pulled into something wicked and evil but I am not sure what. It all happens so slowly and confusingly I began feeling like Heidi when she hears the Lords of Salem music most of the time.  Her landlady and the landlady’s sisters (including a still lovely Dee Wallace Stone) are all up to no good and like to sit around sipping fresh tea and blurting out words like “fuck” and “cocksucker” all of the time for shock value. Something is up with the “vacant” room number five, but I never did get what it was, and soon (well, okay, not too soon really) a connection is made between Heidi and the old Reverend Hawthorne who presided over the original witch trial and… and… what the hell did I watch? Some old AIP Vincent Price movie or what? In the end the film is nothing but an old Satan film done up with slick modern editing and a cool score by John 5 (of Rob’s band and formally of Marilyn Manson) and some nasty words by old ladies and lingering shots of Sheri Moon’s ass. Lots of stereotype old hags praising Satan or the dark one or somebody, and hardly any violence to speak of. And that is about it. Things seem to build to nothing and the last scenes add no closure to the film whatsoever. One reviewer, who loved the film, praised it for the how it left him thinking after it was over. It left me thinking too. Thinking about what a boring ass turd of a film I just sat through hoping something was going to eventually happen to make it worth my while. Just like all those old Satan flicks basically sucked, so does this one. Honestly, the only Satan film that rose above the muck was Rosemary’s Baby. It is simply a good movie, period. The Satan touch didn’t hurt it and every Satan film since then has tried to do Rosemary’s Baby and none have ever come close, including The Exorcist.

THE PURGE/2013

The Purge is a home invasion movie that reminds me a lot of Sam Peckinpah’ Straw Dogs, Bryan Bertino’s The Strangers and David Fincher’s Panic Room. Of course there are plenty or other such films as well and the home invasion type story is a whole sub-genre in itself of the horror and/or action film. The basic idea is to have some reasonably decent people -a family for example- being terrorized and eventually invaded by evil, threatening forces from outside and inevitably from inside their sanctuary. Most zombie movies have this situation introduced at some point into the story. Almost all of these films rely heavily on the viewer being able to accept some degree of implausibility in order for the story to move along. Something has to happen to make the sanctuary less than impenetrable, like in Panic Room where Kirsten Stewart’s young character has diabetes and leaves her insulin outside the actual panic room, forcing mom Jodie Foster to have to go outside and retrieve it and in the process having to deal with a psychotic Dwight Yokem. If not for this they would never have to leave the panic room and there would be no film. The same sort of implausibility’s happen in The Purge, written and directed by the agenda laden James DeMonaco,  and I will address them in a moment, of course, but those little film gimmicks asking the viewer for a little suspension of disbelief are not the real problems with this film.

In the far distant future (like a whole nine years from now) America’s New Founding Fathers –white ultraconservatives who still believe in that nasty Christian God and like guns and hate unemployed people of color- have solved the nation’s problems with unemployment and crime by implementing the brilliant idea of a once a year purge night, where for twelve hours anything goes. You can rape kids, burn down houses, murder homeless people, or anybody for that matter, marry your gay lover,  stomp on hamsters and stand in your front yard and smoke weed and it is all totally legal from seven at night to seven the next morning. Almost anything goes but political leaders with certain status are protected from acts of violence, no doubt the God-fearing, gun-totting Founding Fathers themselves. There restrictions on what types of weapons can be used and it is not made clear, but I would assume they mean no atomic bombs or anthrax.  I am really not a fan of political message movies and in particular when they are also horror films. I just don’t like them for the most part as they tend to sing to the choir , either the choir on the right or the one on the left and, like The Purge, beat their messages into your head with a ball-ping hammer. And that is where this film falls apart for me almost from the very beginning. More time and energy is spent trying to drive home DeMonaco’s anti-gun and anti-conservative values messages than is spent trying to make the actual invasion itself believable and exciting. So anyway,  who the hell  is getting invaded and by whom and why?

Security expert James Sandin (Ethan Hawke) has done well for himself and his little family selling home security and protection  supplies in order to protect the people who can afford all of that, decent rich white folk, from the dangers of Purge Night. He and his wife Mary (Lena Headey) give much lip service to being supporters of The Purge and of “releasing the beast” but you suspect their hearts are not 100% into the affair. While it is not stated explicitly one gets the sense that you do not really want to speak out against Purge Night and seem like you do not support the new "America reborn" agenda. There is still the voice of dissent from the left, maybe all residing in Seattle, who claim that the real purpose of the Purge is to cleanse society of its unwanted lower members; the poor, the unemployed, the sick, the homeless and all those other filthy sorts conservatives and God believers, as we all know, want eradicated. The Sandins have two horror movie stereotype children, their daughter the smart allecky but ripe16 year old Zoey (who spends the whole movie in her fetishy school girl uniform) and the geeky Charlie who makes remote controlled little robots out of burnt baby dolls that have night vision camera installed in them. Good thing he has this hobby as the robot, named Tim, becomes an important part of the film later.

Yes, the Sandins have done well for themselves, so well that the neighbors are envious and bitter about their success at having the largest “castle” in their little neighborhood of millionaires. The snide inferences about this mass jealousy of course needlessly telegraph the film’s plot in the second act and general ending. As Purge Night (I do not know if that is what it is called in the movie or not) begins things waste no time in going bad for the Sandins. First Zoey’s boyfriend shows up inside the house of the security genius after “lockdown” and wants to settle –as in “just talk”- to James about his relationship with his daughter. Well we’ll say this character ends up written out of the script pretty fast and I think it was a total waste of a character that could have used later on. On top of that, at almost the same moment, Charlie sees a black man –yes, there is suddenly a poor, urban black man in the middle of this elite white community in a suburb of LA that no doubt requires a long commute in an SUV to get to from the city- who is bloodied and screaming for help. Charlie unlocks the house’s security precautions long enough to let him in and accelerate the plot. As James and Zoey's beau exchange a few words and many bullets the black fellow escapes into the recesses of the Sandin’s fortress like house.

And there you have the motive for the home invasion; a group of yuppie like white, twenty somethings show up in freaky masks –ala The Strangers- and want the Sandins to turn over the dirty, filthy homeless black guy and let them have their government sanctioned fun with him. If not, they will huff and puff and blow the house down and get him and exact violence on the Sandin family for not complying. The group is led by the smiling and trying way too hard to be evil (I'm just going to have fun playing the villain in this one!") Australian actor Rhys Wakefield, who somehow manages to look creepier with his mask off than he does with it on.  And there you have the rest of the film basically; the Sandin’s crawling around in the dark with guns and flashlights looking for the homeless guy in their house, and the gang of masked yuppies waiting outside for the equipment to arrive so they can effortlessly pull the doors and windows off the Sandin’s secure castle, then getting in and then having the Sandin's crawl around with guns and flashlights  in the dark more looking for the invaders. In fact, I want to just say this, the ease with which the house is broken into and the intruders gain entry was just too much to accept. In truth, the film is never a film about keeping the invaders out since they all but waltz into the place.

And here is where things just get too hard to accept at times, even for me who employs beaucoup suspension of disbelief per film. 1) That the house would be that easy to break into just using chains and jeeps to remove the doors renders the whole security angle pointless. Wouldn’t this have been something Sandin’s company would have considered at some point? 2) That the gang of thugs would really waste all their time on Purge Night trying to get this one homeless guy when they could have let it go and killed off twenty or thirty more homeless people instead makes no sense. 3) That Sandin would not have planned better with contingencies like a panic room for example is too big a hole in his character's professional perfectionism. 4) That his neighbors of years would be so envious of his success that they would want to torture and kill him and his family in cold blood is stretching the whole "we are all potential killers" concept too far.  5) And that the Sandin’s would be able to fend off all the machine gun packing attackers in their house as everyone just ambles around the darkened hallways is unbelievable. What the director does is sort of his version of those kung fu movie fight scenes, where a guy fights 40 other kung fu masters, but only one or two at time while the rest hop around waiting their turns. Other wise they would kill the son of a bitch in a minute.  Same gimmick here really. Often gunfire and screaming erupts in one room while James fights off the attackers. It never seems to occur to the other invaders in the house to run to that room and see what is up, rather they decide to ignore the commotion and continue walking around in the hallways, “looking” for somebody to kill. Hey, maybe there is somebody to kill where all the gunfire is coming from and from where your partners are screaming in pain. Just a hunch.

MANIAC/2013

This is my first post here at Necrotic Cinema in quite some time, since October of 2012 to put a time frame on it all. Lets hope I do not take such a long break again anyway soon and I have plenty of films in the draft folder to explore. The last film I reviewed was 2003’s High Tension, directed by Alexandre Aja, who happens to be the producer of this post’s rather intriguing film called Maniac. I am no stranger to the original Maniac film and reviewed it some time ago over at The Uranium Café. I will have to mention that film a bit more later on and be forced at times to make comparisons between the two films, but let me get on with my introductory babble and get it out of the way. I like to skim over the opening credits of films to see what I can catch and noticed that William Lustig also helped with producing this remake, and C.A. Rosenberg is listed as one of the screen writers on Wikipedia, this being noteworthy as he helped to pen the original script along with film star Joe Spinell. Film director Franck Khalfoun only has two other films under his belt, Wrong Turn at Tahoe, which I have not seen yet,  and the fairly decent thriller P2.  When all is said and done I have to say that while I did not dislike the film I am not going to rant about what a stylistic work of genius it is or that it is the best study of a serial killer ever made. On some levels the film worked well enough for me but not on all by any stretch. In fact I stopped the watching the film initially as the whole extreme POV (Point Of View) gimmick –and I did get the feeling in the end was an artsy-fartsy gimmick- got on my nerves. So lets explore that a bit since that is what most of the ranting –pro or con- is about with this film. (I will not be doing much of a synopsis on this film for two reasons: 1) I will assume most readers of this blog are sick enough that they have the original more than once, as I have, and 2) I am trying to explore some new ways to write about films that do not involve too much story retelling or spoiling scenes for people who have not seen the film yet.)

The original 1980 film Maniac was not the first thriller/horror film to have the story told from the killer’s point of view. It is not a long list of films however and off the top of my head I can only recall Michael Powell’s excellent film Peeping Tom as being focused on the killer as the main character. That is why the original Maniac, as well as the remake, are not really slasher/body count films in the strict sense of the term, where the focus in more on "developing the characters" before the masked, identityless killer begins knocking them off one by one. It can probably get a little weird to see into the world of a demented serial killer like Maniac’s Frank Zito. One does sort of wonder what do slashers and stalkers do when they are not hacking up women or teenagers. Well Frank likes to sit around and cuddle with mannequins adorned with the bloody scalps of his recent victims and cry as he remembers his mommy. In the original we get to see sleazy, oily Joe Spinell doing all of this, but in the remake what happens is the whole film –except, I think, for a couple brief scenes- is that the story is not only told from the POV of the killer –played by possibly miscast Elijah Wood in this case- but from inside his friggin’ eyeballs. This becomes either a stroke of brilliance or a goddamned nuisance, depending on your temperament as a film viewer. I tried to give it all the benefit of the doubt but in the end it just got boring and annoying for me. It certainly could have worked at times, but in the end I just wanted to see the actor playing the killer and earning his paycheck.

I also got a bit creeped out with all the victims staring at me and talking to me directly. I know, I know we can go on about how that was the director’s intent and how it gets you thinking and starts dialogs and all that crap, but in the end it just did not work for me as a story telling method. As one reviewer noted, it seems like one of those weird interactive video games, and in this case I am some sort of totally freaky serial killer scalping girls and impaling them repeatedly with my Rambo knife. It reeks more of gimmickry and film school experimentation than good narrative film making. And in the end why even have a name actor in the lead role? You get glimpses of Wood staring back at himself in mirrors –mirrors that are often cracked, you know, like representing a cracked tortured personality or something- for a few seconds and that is it. In some interviews he remarks how it was maybe the hardest role he has ever done. What? I don’t buy that for a second. The only acting he does for the most part is to stare back at himself with a confused, terrified expression. Okay, that can be hard I guess, looking terrified and confused. It is actually my normal expression so I think I could have done this role. And I certainly look more like a deranged serial killer than wimpy little Elijah Wood.But then I look more like a serial killer than most people I know do but that is nothing to be proud of I guess. Lets move on.

Okay, so what about the good points of the film. And it has some to be sure and I can recommend the film over all unless you're a total wuss. But the film has its good moments, and yet don't all psychotic, misogynistic slasher films? Some of the good points are actually also the same ones that annoy me above. I do like the “from inside the killer’s eyes” approach, but just not for 99% of the film. I also think I may have bought Wood as the killer more if I had actually seen him in some scenes. Wimpy guys want to stalk and terrorize vulnerable women too. I like Wood as an actor but I am not sure about this film being the right vehicle for him to shake off the good boy image he is saddled with. Although he was a serial killer in the Sin City film as well but that was an odd little role at best.  But his actual lack of physical presence made me forget all about him. Oh yea, that was probably one of the director’s intentions as well. Making me explore my own dark fantasies, and trying to blur the line between myself and Frank. Damn, so clever, got me there you damned geniuses.  The cinematography and editing are fine, as are the sets which in this film have moved from New York City to Los Angeles. I prefer a good old school New York twisted, serial killer film myself, but LA works okay here. However I must note that I think the music score is simply fantastic. Composer Rob created a fine 80’s synth type score with all those classic sounds and pulses, and haunting little simple piano runs. There does not appear to be a soundtrack available yet but I will be snatching it up when and if one comes out. I have read that there is one but it is not available in the US or France, the two countries that collaborated on making the damned film.  I also like how some of the story, which is hardly a scene by scene remake of the original film and that is good, moves the situations into modern times with cell phones and online dating services. In one scene Frank hooks up with a pretty, though overly tattooed, young lady who he meets online. Over drinks she says she is so happy he did not turn out to look like what she thought he would. And what would that be? Long hair, fat and with bad skin. An inside joke and reference I would imagine to Joe Spinell’s unkempt appearance in the original film, and to Joe Spinell’s unkempt appearance in real life as well.

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.