2013 Horror Part Six

EXTRAORDINARY TALES
Dir - Raul Garcia
Overall: GOOD

Spanish animator Raul Garcia combined several shorts along with a linking segment together to make Extraordinary Tales, yet another Edgar Allan Poe anthology.  Though Garcia directed and adapted each story himself, the digital animation style of each one is considerably different and all of them lend themselves appropriately to Poe's Gothic, macabre material.  Naturally, some are better than others with probably "The Pit and the Pendulum" and "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar" making the best impression and "The Fall of the House of Usher" and "The Masque of the Red Death" trailing a bit farther behind by comparison.  The most pleasantly surprising though is "The Tell-Tale Heart", due to it being narrated by none other than Bela Lugosi over a half-century since his death.  Lugosi's dramatic reading was presumably taken from a 1947 radio broadcast, but along with the props deserved to Garcia for scoring it here, he also manged to get horror heavyweights Sir Christopher Lee and Guillermo del Toro on board for further narrations.  The whole is pretty consistent, though the only complaint one could launch at it is due to the overwhelming familiarity with the material at this point.  All of the stories are iconic in Poe's catalog and have been adapted numerous times by now and Tales inadvertently becomes just slightly unengaging because of this.

PROXY
Dir - Zack Parker
Overall: MEH

Badly written and badly acted, Zack Parker's to-date latest feature Proxy pulls off once nifty surprise, but blows any and all of its potential everywhere else.  Just shy of halfway into the movie, something genuinely unexpected happens and up until that point, you could assume that Parker knew where he was going with the material.  Yet what follows this scene simply leaves all of its proposed questions dangling in the wind.  There are very disturbing events that go down in Proxy and more than one main character seems to posses layers to their psyche and motivation that the film itself only poses to you before moving on to something else.  The script is terribly illogical and it is the reason that Parker's would-be ambiguous story comes off sloppy and incredibly underwritten.  We are simply left thinking "well, I guess these people are just crazy".  It is hard to give a shit when the shits were not given to really dive into what is going on here.  The cast unfortunately does more to get in the way than not.  Joe Swanberg, (who has been rather stiff in a number of sub-par indie horror movies this century), is the biggest problem probably, but there are more peculiar, unconvincing line readings from the rest of the cast as well.  Everything seems off and unfinished and it is a tad insulting since there are some highly unpleasant visuals here that end up being totally not worth sitting through in the end.

THE RAMBLER
Dir - Calvin Reeder
Overall: MEH

A very confused, unfocused road movie, Calvin Reeder's The Rambler is a near textbook offender of style over substance.  It is filled top to bottom with meaningless, random dialog, emotionless characters, and freaky, unexplained visuals, but unlike a master like David Lynch per example, Reeder seems utterly lost as to what to do with all of his ingredients.  They are simply there to look at and listen to with absolutely zero attempt made to validate their inclusion.  Dermot Mulroney in the lead is so impassive to everything that happens to him that if he seems completely unmoved by it all, why shouldn't we also be unmoved?  The film's humor is dry to an absolute fault.  Mulroney meets people and walks into towns were arbitrary, horrifying things go down and in every instance he eventually just gets bored and picks up his guitar to walk off onto the next encounter.  It is not just that there is something missing to all of this; there seems to be EVERYTHING missing to it.  Either pushing the silliness or the horror elements further and having any relatable or natural characters present at all could have put things in some kind of penetrable framework, but The Rambler, (appropriately to its title), just rambles along and becomes all but offensively boring by the end of it.

2012 Horror Part Six

LESSON OF THE EVIL
Dir - Takashi Miike
Overall: GOOD

Takashi Miike is something of a Japanese Michael Bay; someone whose films are equal parts over the top, ridiculous, and panned by many critics, (Audition notwithstanding).  He is also one of the most prolific Asian filmmakers working and has more than several in the horror camp.  Lesson of the Evil is a very morally bizarre work as it makes itself lurk in such a disturbing premise that most filmgoers will be naturally uncomfortable throughout viewing it.  Yet Miike presents this distasteful outing with a hefty amount of headscratching oddness and the tone shifts seem to compliment it more than they logically should.  It is difficult to tell if Hideaki Itō's character is accidentally poorly written or deliberately poorly written.  Very curious moments like him fantasizing about having an American serial killer partner, (who also shows up as an eyeball in a shotgun), Odin's ravens, and the song "Mack the Knife" keep Lesson of the Evil from becoming an uninspired slasher movie, even if all the wacky details do not amount to having much meaning.  The combination of alarming subject matter, blunt violence, and seemingly irrelevant strangeness seems to be kept at a consistent boil where nothing comes off as too incompetent to crash everything down.

LOVELY MOLLY
Dir - Eduardo Sánchez
Overall: GREAT

In the last decade or so, a small number of filmmakers have upped their game and taken familiar source material and gone above and beyond in tweaking the formula more than enough to be worth one's time.  In addition to this, it is incredibly rewarding in a genre that needs more fresh juice than any that some of these films end up being rather frightening because of it.  Which at its core is ultimately the goal of any horror film; to actually be rather frightening  There is a lone jump scare in Lovely Molly and one may question a logical move here or there, but even horror movie cynicism cannot deny that everything else presented more than makes up for it.  Eduardo Sánchez of course was half of The Blair Witch Project's creative team and though his film output has been small compared to others, it is better to have a single movie like Lovely Molly emerge thirteen years later than a barrage of forgettable ones.  Speaking of Blair Witch, there are parts of the found footage formula on display here, but thankfully Sánchez does not rely on them, getting away with their inclusion by letting his characters put the camera down and then having conventional, handheld cinematography take back over.  These are mere stylistic details though.  The story is genuinely disturbed and it slowly escalates to a practically perfect ending, with excellent performances front to back.  This movie essentially shows that you can take a handful of commonplace horror ingredients and exquisitely reward the viewer's intelligence and patience while likewise creeping them out.

FOUND.
Dir - Scott Schirmer
Overall: WOOF

Making a movie that looks like it was shot on video with non-actors and no budget is one of those unfortunate facts of minimal filmmaking that sometimes there is just no way around.  Scott Schirmer has made a handful of independent horror movies in the same vein as found. and he deserves credit with doing the best with what he has got.  Technical aspects this noticeable though are quite an uphill problem to gloss over, especially when people with youtube accounts are making videos on their phones that are edited, acted, and more dazzling to look at than this.  There are other problems here besides budgetary ones though.  Essentially it is an exaggerated story about being picked on and fighting back when you are a kid.  Well kind of because it is also about having a schizophrenic brother, asks the question as to whether or not having dark interests will in turn make a dark human, and also racism very, very randomly.  So it is really a messy effort that tries to tackle on far too many things for its exceptionally modest budget.  Schirmer plays the entire film very straight which on paper is a good move, but it also makes several of its themes impossible to buy into when again, it comes off far more as a student film than a "real movie".

2011 Horror Part Five

KEYHOLE
Dir - Guy Maddin
Overall: GOOD

Once again Guy Maddin delivers another contemporary movie that seems floating around in a bygone, fictitious era.  Keyhole does not fit comfortably into any particular genre and any gangster, film noir, or haunted house elements present are as hazy as the story itself which seems to be re-imagining Homer's The Odyssey in the most indirect of ways.  The film has a claustrophobic agenda as it all takes place in a single house and characters appear trapped there either in locked rooms, by chains, or by circumstances.  Repeated viewings would probably unveil some missed details, but then again perhaps not.  Keyhole presents itself as an abstract look into something that can only be abstract; how ghosts unlock their sorrowful memories and regrets.  In this regard, Maddin has concocted a near perfect representation of such things since the challenging narrative can really only be as such.  The entire cast is appropriately low-key with the perpetually funny Kevin McDonald specifically providing some intended humor.  Horny specters and the sort of the nonchalant way the characters interact with either dead or living versions of themselves further shows that Maddin is still trying to have fun while confusing and tantalizing his viewer's brains all the same.

DETENTION
Dir - Joseph Kahn
Overall: MEH

Prolific music video director Joseph Kahn mostly self-financed Detention, a film which does everything in its power to be both as obnoxiously hip and genre-defying as humanly conceivable.  Credit where it is due though; the movie is wildly unpredictable.  The humor works when the rug is relentlessly pulled out from under you as the story goes to so many ridiculous places at such a frenzied pace that you give up keeping up.  Unfortunately, all that leaves you with is trying to stomach the non-stop bombardment of retro pop culture references.  They never cease and they never become tolerable.  As much as Kahn is cleverly twisting expectations by bouncing the film though self-aware slasher, sci-fi, and high school comedy avenues ad nauseum, the film's undoing is by how desperately hip it is perpetually attempting to be.  The phrase "trying way too hard" is virtually screaming at you the entire time and it gets in the way of all of the surprisingly decent character construction and the inventive, morphed structure.  Still, Detention's redeemable qualities almost make it recommendable and different audience types may find its flaws more bearable than others.  So if you are up for nothing going according to plan and dance scenes set to "MMMBop" and "Everybody Dance Now", by all means check it out.

THE WOMAN
Dir - Lucky McKee
Overall: WOOF

A highly uncomfortable premise and arguably even more uncomfortable presentation, The Woman is unabashed torture porn and ergo difficult to find any merit in.  Lucky McKee also has the odd yet interesting May under his writer/director belt, (and even re-cast Angela Bettis here), and he is collaborating with Jack Ketchum on his novel of the same name.  The film is also a sequel to Offspring in that it utilizes the same title woman Pollyanna Mclntosh in the lead.  Watching the movie with or without seeing the proceeding one makes no significant difference as the follow-up focuses on a new crop of characters; an agonizingly dysfunctional family and one of the most despicable father-son relationships you are likely to ever see in a movie.  With nothing thought-provoking getting through, The Woman becomes a very rough waiting game for these horrible, horrible people to finally get killed and in the mean time we are just watching them be horrible.  When this finally happens, the experience was exhausting enough that any comeuppance delivered is too little, too late and the empty, dirty feeling you have left sitting in your brain is not likely to shake off any time soon.  It is the most common problem with the sub-genre, namely "what is the point to making or watching a movie like this in the first place?".  It is indeed difficult to come up with any answers.

1990s American Horror Part Ten

THE EXORCIST III
(1990)
Dir - William Peter Blatty
Overall: GREAT

It is a shame really that William Peter Blatty's directional adaptation of his own novel Legion only teases as being great, since this is one of the worst offenders of studio interference hampering the end product and reducing its effectiveness.  Blatty scored a chance to get behind the lens after original Exorcist filmmaker William Friedkin dropped out, but once everything was shot and finished, production company Morgan Creek threw another four million dollars at him and insisted he completely re-shoot the ending to include an actual exorcism.  To do this, an entirely unnecessary character was added and the final priest vs demon showdown springs up out of nowhere and resembles something more out of a schlocky action movie than anything else.  It is a jarring finale, but The Exorcist III works almost perfectly up until that point.  George C. Scott takes things seriously and is very George C. Scotty, but there is not a weak performance to be found anywhere.  Blatty concocts a number of very tense sequences with long, music-less takes and lots of dialog-heavy monologues that are often creepy without going overboard.  There is the occasional indulgence in genre cliches here or there, but Blatty uses them more as sprinklings as opposed to entirely relying on them.  It is as good of a squeal to an iconic horror movie as can be made, even with its forced-upon flaws in place.

THE MANGLER
(1995)
Dir - Tobe Hooper
Overall: WOOF

By the mid-nineties, Tobe Hooper had been delivering dud after dude for over a decade and even after his team-up with John Carpenter in Body Bags the previous year, he still managed to make one of the most if not the most infamous, abysmal entry of his career with The Mangler.  Based off of one of the sillier Stephen King writings that really had no business being adapted to the screen in the first place, The Mangler fleshes out its running time and overstays its welcome in doing so with a barrage of moronic plot details and a story that only gets stupider as it goes on.  Since the basic premise is "laundry machine is possessed by a demon or something" to begin with, the battle is all uphill with no winners.  Every performance is so exaggerated and every line of dialog is so incredibly embarrassing.  Those are the easier things in the movie to laugh yes, but Hooper is sadly lost trying to make any of it riveting even in a trainwreck capacity.  Because the story is so vacant, things only escalate because the movie needs to end at some point and so many laughable revelations occur that you would think the film was missing scenes if not for the fact that it is crystal clear from the opening few minutes that indeed nothing clever was ever going to happen.  You would like to believe that everyone involved knew they were making a piece of shit, but it does not come off as self-aware as it needed to and instead it easily could be the worst Stephen King adaptation there ever was.

DEEP RISING
(1998)
Dir - Stephen Sommers
Overall: MEH

Easily forgettable and downright criminally formulaic, Stephen Sommers' Deep Rising is the type of stupid, loud giant monster movie that does everything in its power to re-invent no rules whatsoever.  Very akin to the Mummy series which Sommers would dive into next, the director is mostly interested in getting as many quips and implausible action movie moments out of his script as possible since there is nothing here even a five year old would be scared of.  Water action movies are inherently moronic anyway and the structure of a bunch of unlikable bros with giant guns, a loveable dork, a wise-cracking hero, a love interest, and a villain for some reason besides the giant sea creature all scrambling to escape a doomed vessel in the middle of the ocean hits every beat it is supposed to.  You could say that the film is not even trying, but that is the thing; it IS trying very hard to adhere to everything that is expected of it.  It is necessary to completely turn one's brain off when watching a splashy, explody dumb-fest like Deep Rising and if the viewer is capable of such a thing, rewarded they shall be.  The film is not insulting in anyway, but just pointless for anyone who has better things to do with their time.

1990s American Horror Part Nine

DEF BY TEMPTATION
(1990)
Dir - James Bond III
Overall: GOOD

In his to date only directorial effort, writer/actor James Bond III's Def by Temptation was distributed by Troma of all companies, but it bares little to no resemblance to the infamous studio's work besides the unmistakable lack of budget and mistake-ridden acting.  It is an ambitious film, but not in any kind of shock-value way.  Instead, it is more so in its hefty plot involving an aspiring preacher who literally gets tempted by evil and has to live up to his family legacy.  Or something like that.  The movie bounces between silliness involving dudes in bars using terrible pick up lines and Kadeem Hardison, (I'm Gonna Git You Sucka), busting James Bond III's character's balls about being a fish out of water country boy in New York.  It does not hold back when it goes full horror though.  There are a number of moments that do not particularly make sense, (like how a TV set comes to life and eats someone), but Bond plays with conventional vampire tropes intriguingly enough and always comes back to his more sincere, religious themes to try and elevate the movie above mere blaxploitation trash.  It is hit or miss though in this regard as the acting and editing have a student movie vibe for sure, though it is mostly a fun balancing act that clearly comes off as a labor of love and interesting if admittingly flawed.

ALIEN 3
(1993)
Dir - David Fincher
Overall: MEH

Lingering in development hell for a handful of years with a laundry list of screenwriters on board at various times to get it to a satisfactory level, Alien³ still ends up being the first botched entry into the franchise.  Set on an isolated space prison, the script allows for violent men to scream the word "fuck" at each other ad nauseam.  Yet it also allows them to have meetings about "what's the plan?" every twenty or so minutes while the alien picks them all off slowly and predictably.  Sigourney Weaver is there once again, but for the first time she is simply going through the motions as Ripley since it is the same old "how are we gonna kill this thing?" scenario once more.  Sure this time the characters are left unarmed and defenseless, but it is still a formulaic ordeal and the added ingredient of angry speeches by the inmates and a plot that takes too long to get going simply drags down the entire presentation.  The CGI is incredibly poor and worse yet completely pointless as the guy in an alien suit still looks fantastic and accomplished everything it needed to in the previous installments.  So why make him an embarrassing cartoon for a handful of shots now?  David Fincher in his full-length debut tries as he might to make it all intense and heart-racing, but Alien 3 ultimately just ends up proving further how incredibly great the first two movies were in comparison.

LOVE GOD
(1997)
Dir - Frank Grow
Overall: WOOF

Besides also directing a documentary about Jewel of all random people, filmmaker Frank Grow's sole effort Love God is the type of absurd disaster that is so obnoxiously pretentious that it becomes impossible to immerse yourself in even on a minimal, car wreck curiosity level.  Things are annoying from the very first shot and an "Oh no, is this what the movie is gonna be like?" panic immediately sets in.  Edited at a parody-esque, MTV frantic pace and relying almost entirely on uncomfortable closeups, the movie also has one of the most incomprehensible scripts you could ever imagine.  There is a large, black man in drag, a blue woman who thinks she is the Hindu goddess Kali, a horny nurse, a crazy horny Asian doctor, a guy who is compelled both to make sculptures out of chewing cum in addition to reading things and then destroying whatever paper they are on, a guy who acts like a ten year old's version of a crazy person who pauses to squeak when he talks, a homely girl who does not talk but also cannot stop grabbing and kissing people, and then a bunch of rubber monster demons show up.  The film's on screen text is also read really fast out loud for the entire movie which grows as irritating as you would think.  It may be something that would be fun to watch while on drugs, bit it is also just relentlessly and tediously stupid, lacking all self-awareness to be intentional in its results.

1990s American Horror Part Eight

BRAIN DEAD
(1990)
Dir - Adam Simon
Overall: GOOD

The Bills Paxton and Pullman together at last.  Genre screenwriter/director Adam Simon does not have the most impressive of resumes, (the infamous Carnosaur and the screenplay for The Haunting in Connecticut are among his lackluster credits), but his work here is solid.  Taken from an initial script by frequent Twilight Zone writer Charles Beaumont that was original commissioned for Roger Corman some two plus decades earlier, Brain Dead does indeed act as a classic, topsy turvy, reality-morphing bit of psychological horror that is toyed with enough to not take itself that seriously.  It is impressive how the film leisurely moves along up until a point where it relentlessly begins to mess with the heads of both Pullman's main character and the audience.  The cliches of lobotomies, identity confusion, nightmares, and threatening loony bin doctors and orderlies are given free reign here, but it is a fun ride watching reality persistently get morphed in both funny and freaky ways.  For his role as the corporate sleazeball to Pullman's victimized doctor, Paxton is ideal as he wisely never comes close to going over the top as he is wont to do.

H.P. LOVECRAFT'S: NECRONOMICON
(1993)
Dir - Brian Yuzna/Christophe Gans/Shusuke Kaneko
Overall: MEH

A combined effort from Brian Yuzna, (Society), Christophe Gans, (Silent Hill), and Shusuke Kaneko, (several in the Gamera franchise), with the great Tom Savini on board for practical effects and make-up, as well as no shortage of recognizable faces such as Jeffery Combs and David Warner, H.P. Lovecraft's: Necronomion, (Necronomicon: Book of Dead), wildly attempts to be sort of a be all end all film adaptation from the much cherished author.  Unfortunately, it comes off as a schlocky mess.  Many horror films around the late 1980s and early 90s particularly had an unmistakable "direct to video" quality, and the B-movie-ness here is oozing from every frame.  The effects are practical which is nice, (Savini never drops the ball in such a regard, after all), but they are also laughably over the top.  So anyone who thought that Lovecraft's stories were severally lacking in oozy globs of gore and goo, this is the movie for you.  With a few exceptions, the cast plays it cool, but the incessant musical score and big, bold effect shots kill any possible potential to create a properly eerie mood.  The scripts for each story are pedestrian as well, with plot holes, flashbacks within flashbacks, and time travel thrown in, apparently since the framing story takes place in the 1940s and the last segment is set in modern day.  So regrettably, this is more dumb than effective.

EMBRACE OF THE VAMPIRE
(1995)
Dir - Anne Goursaud
Overall: WOOF

Leaning hard into the fluffy and melodramatic aspects of blood-sucking undead cliches, editor Anne Goursaud's directorial debut Embrace of the Vampire doubles as that direct-to-video movie where Alyssa Milano takes her clothes off.  On that note, it is arguably the most direct-to-video movie that the 1990s ever produced, laughably cornball in its every nuance.  Three different screenwriters are credited and judging by the results, it appears that not a one of them has ever gotten laid, been to a bar, been to a college party, had friends, or talked to real people.  Spandau Ballet's bass player Martin Kemp, (who is a dead ringer for The Karate Kid Part III's Thomas Ian Griffith), licks a door at one point, shoots lightning from his hand inexplicably, and chews the scenery as the nameless, hopelessly romantic head vampire who narrates a never-ending series of platitudes that seem as if they were plucked from a twelve year-old goth's diary.  The plot is as horrendously schlocky as the presentation which is saturated in syrupy keyboard music as Milano plays a virgin who gives into her wild side, lots of people seem horny, and nobody at any instance behaves like an actual human being.  It is as D-rent as sleazy B-movies get, with so many hackneyed components that any viewer would die of alcohol poising while playing a drinking game centered around spotting them.

1990s American Horror Part Seven

BASKET CASE 2
(1990)
Dir - Frank Henenlotter
Overall: MEH

Made a full eight years after Basket Case yet picking up right where said film left off, Basket Case 2 is equipped with a heftier budget and more absurd tone overall.  Now is this a good or a bad thing?  A little of both probably.  Not only has the title character's new design improved, but an entire family of comically deformed oddities are present, including a female basket case, a frog man, and a guy with protruding teeth over a foot long.  An unmistakable homage to Todd Browning's Freaks, Basket Case 2 portrays the "normal" people as the villainous ones and casts sympathy over the family of physical abnormality outcasts, even as good ole Belial is still out to brutally murder everyone.  The movie drops a few notches though due to some illogical details like the main characters surviving the first film to begin with and a newspaper photographer who has ample enough time to run away screaming yet decides to just shoot a bunch of pictures as his pursuers very slowly ascend on him.  The whole thing gets out of control at times with an eye-ball rolling, over the top moment from Annie Ross's Grandma Ruth and easily one of the most ridiculous sex scenes ever filmed.  While these instances are indeed hilarious, the surprisingly creepy and low-key menace of the first film is all but abandoned and surely missed at parts that could have afforded to be less schlocky here.

INNOCENT BLOOD
(1992)
Dir - John Landis
Overall: MEH

Nearly getting by alone on its hilarious premise, (French vampire vs. mobsters who also become vampires), and highly recognizable and funny cast, John Landis' Innocent Blood misses some opportunities along the way.  Most of the dialog should be a lot better, where some scenes could benefit from a good quip or two while others that have such one-liners fall flat more often than not.  Anne Parillaud has a few enduring moments as the undead seductress, but her line delivery is a little too foreign and stiff, plus her character is really only sympathetic because she is narrating the film that she is in as her backstory and motivation are completely glossed over.  Robert Loggia on the other hand is a joy to watch as he plays yet another raving mob boss, (this time succumbing to the blood sucking munchies), and watching Don Rickles of all people go through the same thing is as great as it sounds.  Landis still has a keen knack for throwing actually frightening details in his horror comedies, (even comedies as particularly goofy as this), and the vampire's demonic voices, glowing eyes, and superhuman abilities all come off excellently.  The movie is a bit overlong and sloppy near the middle and the ending seems hastily written, but you cannot say it fails to contain a worthy amount of memorable scenes.

THE NINTH GATE
(1999)
Dir - Roman Polanski
Overall: MEH

The, (most likely), last pure horror outing from Roman Polanski was his adaptation of Arturo Pérez-Reverte's novel The Club Dumas, here dubbed The Ninth Gate.  Probably because the century was ending, the late 90s boasted a slew of Satan/apocalypse summoning films backed by major studies.  The combination of the legendary director behind the lens and co-writing, household name Johnny Depp in the lead, and the occult heavy trend of the day make The Ninth Gate seem like a sure bet.  It fails to live up to its expectations though as it is too long and too underwhelming to stick with you.  Polanski is intentionally toying with horror cliches here as the movie has a comedic tone with the filmmaker particularly interested in making fun of pretentious, devil worshiping millionaires trying to summon the Dark One and getting their orgies on in black robes, in front of giant demon statues, and with red interior decorating everywhere.  Yet just like his Fearless Vampire Killers from three decades prior, the humor usually is not humorous enough.  Filmed entirely in Europe, (because you know, Polanski's whole not being able to set foot in America ever again thing), many beautiful, real life locations are used.  Yet the awful rear projection seems unnecessary and distracting.  The ending kind of blows up in your face, leaving practical questions as to what on earth is supernaturally going on as well as what Depp's character's role in all the unholy hoopla truly was.