1970s American Horror Part Twenty-One

BLOOD SABBATH
(1972)
Dir - Brianne Murphy
Overall: MEH

In a post Charles Manson landscape, fusing hippies with the occult was ample fodder for D-rent exploitation movies, and cinematographer-turned-director Brianne Murphy's Blood Sabbath is of such an ilk.  A guy who looks like Stephen Stills plays a returned Vietnam veteran who is just minding his business in the woods when some naked women decide to molest him, (which he has an "Eww get away from me!" reaction to like all straight men would), only to immediate fall for a clothed water nymph who wakes him up and then swims away in the lake.  This kicks off the meandering plot where Anthony Geary tries to get rid of his soul in order to get laid, (don't ask), and some war flashbacks, Steve Graves overacting as a priest, stuff about sacrificing children in order to have a good harvest, and Dyanne Thorne being a red-robed, bosomy witch queen also happens.  There are plenty of naked women on display to slam home the sleaze, and the wacky musical score is appropriate, but the pacing is dreadful, the acting embarrassing, and production values are non-existent.

 

THE STEPFORD WIVES

(1975)

Dir - Bryan Forbes

Overall: GOOD

 

The noteworthy cult film The Stepford Wives is Bryan Forbes chilling adaptation of Ira Levin's novel of the same name.  The complaints against the movie, (namely its padded pacing), are warranted as it takes too leisurely of a time unveiling its more alarming components.  Especially now when the premise and very phrase "Stepford wives" is known in the lexicon, it is obvious what is happening from the get-go.  In this respect, it is less about the mystery and more about how the film perverts such themes of domestication and female complacency in a disturbing yet fantastical way.  In a lesser director's hands, the material perhaps could have come off as silly.  Yet Forbes manages to make sunny, upper-class white suburbia seem increasingly unwholesome, forgoing conventional horror movie atmosphere almost the entire way though.  How it manages to make the women nothing but sympathetic and the men the opposite even when both sides are persistently being polite to each other is yet another impressive feature.  It could bare to trim twenty-minutes or so, but as a feminist nightmare brought respectfully to the screen, it is effective.

 

DEAD OF NIGHT

(1977)

Dir - Dan Curtis
Overall: MEH

 

Trying to recapture the success of Trilogy of Terror from two years prior, Dan Curtis and Richard Matheson collaborate again on the television anthology film Dead of Night, (not to be confused with the outstanding British movie from 1945).  While the aforementioned movie was saved by a demonic Zuni doll, sadly none of the entries here garnish much interest.  The opening, Twilight Zone-esque "Second Chance" is the only one based on a Jack Finney story and it scarcely belongs with the other two, more straight-forward horror outings.  "No Such Thing As A Vampire" is utterly blood-less, but does feature an adequate enough twist.  The last segment "Bobby" is easily the most sinister and atmospheric, with a heart-skipper of an ending, though it works better on paper than it does on screen.  Instead of a two-foot doll chasing Karen Black around her apartment, it has an obnoxious zombie kid chasing Joan Hackett around her house after she toys with occult forces.  While nothing here is remotely bad, none of it rises above competent mediocrity either and save for a couple moments in the last story, there is nothing to linger for the audience after the credits roll.

2021 Horror Part One

WILLY'S WONDERLAND

Dir - Kevin Lewis

Overall: MEH

On paper, Nicolas Cage vs animatronic Showbiz Pizza monsters sounds fool-proof yet Willy's Wonderland rides that one-note gimmick into the ground.  Cashing in on the Five Nights at Freddy's craze, the short film The Hug, and the recent, R-rated The Banana Splits movie, the premise here comes off as pretty lazy to say the least.  For his role as the Janitor, Cage manages to be incredibly Nic Cagey despite the fact that he has no spoken dialog, screaming a few times and having a random dance-off with himself.  The over-the-top, bloody, (and oily), carnage is hilarious to a point, but also tedious and unengaging.  Director Kevin Lewis indulges in lens flairs to a criminal extent and the story is too barren to have anywhere to go.  This brings up the biggest faux pas which is that the plotting is utterly horrendous.  The completely illogical and arbitrary way things progress from point A to point B and how virtually none of the characters are remotely developed enough to explain their moronic and conflicting behavior is way noticeable enough to damper the proceedings.  For some viewers, it may get by on its knowing stupidity and Cage's subdued, yet still gonzo performance.  As a competent bit of filmmaking though, it is rather a failure.

 

HONEYDEW

Dir - Devereux Milburn

Overall: MEH

 

Essentially an arthouse version of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre or pick your backwoods-weirdo-hillbilly-horror outing, Devereux Milburn's Honeydew can scarcely be seen as necessary.  The presentation is strange before we ever get to our creepy, bible-quoting country bumpkins.  Unorthodox sound design, out of focus cinematography, and split screens show up earlier than the opening credits, at which point we are introduced to an unlikable couple who are also the film's protagonists.  While this is never a good sign in and of itself, things just get more uncomfortable and odd for the sake of odd from there.  Milburn thankfully keeps things shy of going full torture porn at least, cutting away from things no one in the audience could possibly want to see.  He still manages to pull off an impressive feat of making people eating cupcakes and drinking milk far more disgusting than most overt movie gore is.  The film seems to be attempting a quirky and disturbing tone which it certainly achieves.  The only question is who wants to watch something as ultimately unwholesome and narratively derivative to begin with?

 

JAKOB'S WIFE

Dir - Travis Stevens

Overall: MEH

Travis Stevens' follow-up to his effectively amusing and strange Girl on the Third Floor in Jakob's Wife finds him working with genre legends Barbara Crampton and Larry Fessenden with somewhat equally quirky results.  While Crampton's resurgence on the scene in recent years has mostly been reserved to shameless throwback offerings and Fessenden will pretty much make an appearance in anything with the "horror" tag on it, it is nice to see them in something more singular and interesting.  The film's themes of coming to terms with age, commitment, and complacency are refreshing and ideal for such veteran actors to sink into.  That said, it is a bit of a flawed offering.  Some of the performances are awkwardly weak, including the two lovable leads unfortunately.  A lot of this has to do with the amateur-level dialog though.  It is difficult to tell if it is supposed to be lame in a parody sense, but in any event, the humor falls flat as often as it connects.  It is violently charming in parts and manages to be entertaining for horror buffs without being insultingly nostalgic, but it is a bit clumsy in its approach.

2020 Horror Part Four

GRETEL & HANSEL

Dir - Oz Perkins

Overall: GOOD

 

Three films into his directorial career and it is safe to say that Oz Perkins has established an auteur style of his own.  Working exclusively in the horror genre thus far, his shamelessly stylized take on the Hansel and Gretel Grim fairytale, (here changed to Gretel & Hansel), is arguably the grimmest cinematic interpretation yet.  Hauntingly photographed with some inventive set design, cinematographer Galo Olivares makes imposing use out of literal darkness, which is only contrasted by Autumn colors, (sans one barren and effectively creepy cement basement).  The story primarily focuses on the Gretel title character who is twice the age of her brother Hansel and Sophia Lillis' narration helps provide the film with its story-like vibe.  Alice Krige's diabolical witch is the most imposing figure though, unmistakably creepy from the moment she emerges and only growing more so as things ominously progress.  It is perhaps a little too heavy on its sonic and visual aesthetics at the sacrifice of a more relatable story, but it is still properly eerie and effectively put together.

SPUTNIK

Dir - Egor Abramenko

Overall: MEH

 

While not particularly brimming with originality, Russian director Egor Abramenko's alien horror debut Sputnik is at least respectably made.  Set in the early 80s during the still-swinging Cold War, Oleg Malovichko and Andrei Zolotarev's script features the standard premise of a joyless, self-righteous military doing top secret experiments on a parasitic alien to use it as a weapon.  The plot then unfolds without any real surprises.  From a production standpoint, the unmemorable creature design and stock soundtrack could fit into any other contemporary film of a similar ilk and the diluted color pallet likewise dates it to the present era.  The performances are uniformly good though and Abramenko manages to muster some suspense within the conventional framework, particularly in the opening scene.  The story is less-focused with gore-ridden action or horror set pieces than it is with the emotional drive of the characters.  Yet this is somewhat of a problem as it inflates the running time a bit too much, becoming a little under-cooked and underwhelming in the process.

THE CURSE OF AUDREY EARNSHAW

Dir - Thomas Robert Lee

Overall: GOOD

The second full-length from Canadian filmmaker Thomas Robert Lee is the relentlessly despairing The Curse of Audrey Earnshaw.  Focusing on an isolated Irish commune in the 1970s, the film may as well be a period piece and the plague-ridden, bewitched characters suffer everything but the modern day comforts of the era they are technically in.  Lee uses rather familiar narrative components besides just a cursed village, with nods to something iconic like Rosemary's Baby to modern day masterpieces like The Witch.  Some of the occult-fueled set pieces may come off as a bit arbitrary to some, but the film does a handful of things decently with such material.  The supernatural mythology is kept completely vague which is admirable though it also teeters on the verge of frustration.  The performances and photography are as uniformly good as any other humor-less horror drama from recent times, but the musical score is quite overbearing.  While the soundtrack does give it an unshakable aura of ominousness, little suspense is gathered as several moments could have eerily benefited from a more quiet, subdued approach.  It is not the most clever film of its kind, but it is oppressively atmospheric enough to largely succeed.

2019 Horror Part Nine

BODY AT BRIGHTON ROCK

Dir - Roxanne Benjamin

Overall: MEH

After providing segments in both Southbound and XX, writer/director Roxanne Benjamin's first solo full-length Body at Brighton Rock over-extends itself just a bit too far to work.  The premise is interesting and quite fitting for such a small-scale, low-budget endeavor.  It opens with some retro 80s nostalgia on the soundtrack and Benjamin is quite unashamed to indulge in good ole fashioned camera zooms throughout.  A more comical vibe is also present early on, but things get serious before too long.  From that point on, it focuses entirely on creating the most psychologically suspenseful tone possible, though it only achieves this in fleeting doses.  The story is arguably too simple, allowing itself to spin its wheels while it is trying to wrack-up the tension and create a terrifying guessing game for the audience.  Shots linger long enough to slog everything down and after several moments that turn out to be nothing more than psyche-outs, the intended feeling of dread is ultimately deflated.  There are some good ideas and virtually the film's only actress Karina Fontes does solid work with the material at hand, but it is a near-miss in the end.

DEPRAVED

Dir - Larry Fessenden

Overall: MEH

While Larry Fessenden's modern day re-vamp of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein in Depraved is earnest in its serious, mostly humor-free construction, it is loaded with problems.  Filmed in New York and clearly made on a paper-thin budget, the characters are staggeringly underwritten, which is unfortunate as it focuses exclusively on them.  Because of this, hardly at any point does anyone's dialog or behavior seem either natural or logical.  Another issue is the weak performances, particularly a villainous Joshua Leonard who rattles off the bulk of the movie's pretentious dialog.  Fessenden seems to be heading somewhere up until a point, but the film's unfocused nature comes to bonafide trainwreck levels in its final act.  The confused spiral to the finish line is the cinematic equivalent of falling down the stairs while carrying fragile dinnerware, leaving both head scratches and embarrassed laughs instead of thought-provoking intrigue.  Such wretched plot construction and amateur drawbacks are a shame since this could have been an interesting, contemplative, non-genre-pandering take on such over-adapted material.

 

DOCTOR SLEEP

Dir - Mike Flanagan

Overall: MEH

Logically speaking, Mike Flanagan was probably the perfect filmmaker to adapt Stephen King's Doctor Sleep, a decades-later sequel to both the novel and film The Shining.  To his credit, Flanagan keeps many contemporary horror cliches at bay and like it or not, the fanboy reconstruction of the Overlook Hotel and key moments therein are technically impressive.  The director's overt sentimentality and seemingly allergic reaction to even the most minute ambiguity jives perfectly well with the author whose novel he is working with.  In this respect, the resulting movie here is a curious work, faithfully calling back King's seminal novel and Stanley Kubrick's equally paramount, yet wildly different film which King legendarily despised.  Kubrick's The Shining was all ABOUT ambiguity; leaving an audience with mountains of questions and things to obsessively puzzle over and in effect, stay permanently disturbed by.  Well, until now when Flanagan and company wrap everything up quite concretely.  Such an endeavor is certainly not for all tastes and the endless call backs, (particularly during the final act), recasting of key characters, excessive running time, and the expanding of a mythos that was very arguably better off left cryptic is all quite aggressively in conflict with at least the cinematic source material this acts as a follow-up to.  For those more on King's side of the fence though, it is pretty ideally realized.

2018 Horror Part Eight

LUZ

Dir - Tilman Singer

Overall: GOOD

 

One of the most unapologetically strange debuts the horror genre at least has seen in quite some time, Tilman Singer's Luz is pretentious to a fault though startling in its low-key ambition.  A thesis student film for Singer who wrote, directed, edited, and produced, it utilizes a micro-cast and only an equally small handful of locations.  While some of the film's eclectic qualities can be traced back to retro Euro horror, the approach is thoroughly avant-garde.  Multiple, incredibly stagnant takes, a completely incomprehensible story, fantastic yet highly unorthodox sound design, a percussive, ambient score, and trance-like performances make the movie a sensory overload that is relentlessly bizarre.  A few startling sequences are thrown in for good measure, though they are as frustratingly vague from a narrative standpoint as everything else taking place.  Even at a forgivable seventy-minutes in length, Singer ultimately stretches the laborious pacing to a breaking point and too many moments overstay their very weird welcome.  Still, it is a highly impressive work and if anything else, almost shockingly different from any other genre movie in recent memory.

NIGHTMARE CINEMA

Dir - Alejandro Brugués/Joe Dante/Mick Garris/Ryuhei Kitamura/David Slade

Overall: MEH

Predominantly speaking, the anthology film Nightmare Cinema is, well, a nightmare.  Every movie of this kind is uneven by nature and David Slade's excellent entry with the surreal and genuinely unnerving "This Way to Egress" sticks out jarringly amongst the other four hackjobs.  Mick Garris' closing segment "Dead" is textbook for the by-the-books genre enthusiast, meaning it is thoroughly uninventive and mediocre.  Joe Dante's "Mirari" fares little better by comparison, managing to be both quirky and predictable all at once.  As yet another goddamn slasher parody, the opening "The Thing in the Woods" from Alejandro Brugués jumbles its tone and features a truly abysmal performances from Sarah Withers.  The worst of the bunch is thrown smack in the middle though with Ryuhei Kitamura's mind-numbingly awful, laughably derivative and cheap "Mashit", which is pure "shit" alright.  One of the oddest components to this collection is the sporadic presence of Mickey Rourke as The Projectionist.  Clearly available only for about thirty minutes of shooting, he is awkwardly shoe-horned in only three of the five segments as a totally uninteresting Crypt Keeper, except Rourke's own mangled face is in a way far scarier than said Tales from the Crypt host ever was.

THE WIND

Dir - Emma Tammi

Overall: MEH

In her full-length debut The Wind, filmmaker Emma Tammi creates a gradual form of tension while ambitiously utilizing a fractured narrative.  Teresa Sutherland's script focuses heavily on themes of severe isolation, paranoia, and loss, setting itself in the barren, late 19th century American frontier lands.  The supernatural mythology is wisely obscured, forcing the audience to question everything just as the troubled characters do.  The feminist angle is not limited to the writer/director team as the film is also centered almost exclusively around female protagonists who are persistently reminding each other to be respectful and catering towards their men who are either aloof or refusing to believe the supernatural occurrences both insist on experiencing.  Though it is refreshing during its first two acts, the movie looses its compelling grip due to excessive use of flashbacks and flash-forwards and an almost jarring switch to more conventional, hackneyed horror cliches after predominantly having avoiding them earlier.  It is still a promising work, beautifully shot and performed, but the drawbacks come during the final twenty minutes which ultimately leaves the viewer underwhelmed and somewhat disappointed.

2018 Horror Part Seven

THE GOLEM

Dir - Doron Paz/Yoav Paz

Overall: GOOD

 

Utilizing a less-frequented yet once tried and true horror movie monster based off of traditional, Jewish folklore, The Golem is a uniformly good updating of such material.  Nearly a hundred years after Paul Wegener's seminal silent film The Golem: How He Came into the World was released, brothers Doron and Yoav Paz plus screenwriter Ariel Cohen have concocted an entirely original story here, not to mention an entirely different visualization of the title creature.  While the look certainly breaks the long established mythology of a giant, stone/clay, Frankenstein monster prototype, it is still effectively creepy and intimidating.  The Paz brothers stage everything quite seriously and cautiously, which is helped by excellent performances across the board.  Such a deliberate tone gives the film tremendous weight and even when the story indulges in violent set pieces, there is an emotional undercurrent that is never lost.  It is not just the through-line of the historically misguided demonization of the Jewish people, but also the desperation faced by such impossibly hopeless persecution, the loss of a child, and the testing of one's faith both personal and collectively.  The fact that it manages to be a solid and stylish supernatural monster movie on top of everything else is all the more impressive.

BRAID

Dir - Mitzi Peirone

Overall: MEH

 

The rather ardent debut Braid from writer/director Mitzi Peirone boasts a unique premise, but unravels a bit too pretentiously for its own good.  There is style in spades, from the inventive, ADD-ridden camera work, showy set design, twisty narrative, and overall arc of lunacy in the story itself.  Said arc bleeds everywhere into the presentation and unfortunately it makes for a bit of a meandering result.  None of the three lead characters are remotely sympathetic, coming off as both deplorable and insane, depending on when the script needs them to be.  The twist is not as clever as it otherwise would be, appearing both arbitrary and confusing instead.  Tone-wise, it becomes more mean spirited and nasty, even tapping into torture porn in a few instances.  It is a film that does not so much as leave too many open doors in its wake, but one that confuses its themes to the point of being unrecognizable.  Whatever Peirone intended is certainly impressive to look at much of the time, but it is also murky and somewhat aimless in the end.

GWEN

Dir - William McGregor

Overall: MEH

 

Heavily brooding with depressive atmosphere, Gwen is the full-length debut from English filmmaker William McGregor.  Though it only flirts with contemporary horror elements with a small handful of startling shots and images, its oppressively dour tone asserts itself rather dominantly.  A slow-boil with no actual payoff to speak of, things begin rather miserably and only progress in such a direction.  The presentation is utterly void of humor and given such material, the cast pulls off the rather impressive feat of portraying their characters compassionately in such hopelessly dour circumstances.  The technical aspects are all admirable, from the purposely unassuming cinematography to the haunting, cold sound design which only utilizes a conventional musical score in very sparse instances.  Sadly though, the film is just that; sad.  McGregor does not seem to have any other motive than to exhaust the viewer with a gradual and monotonous stream of miserableness.  The movie becomes a chore because of this, instead of perhaps the hypnotic, provoking meditation it may have been designed as.

2012 Horror Part Nine

FRANKENWEENIE

Dir - Tim Burton

Overall: GOOD

 

Arguably the most direct love letter to Tim Burton's childish love of horror movies that the director ever made, Frankenweenie serves as his somewhat inevitable full-length adaptation of his own 1984 short of the same name.  The hallmarks of Burton's work are as ever present as always here, hallmarks that themselves have always deeply been inspired by the genre films that permanently warped his quirky, harmlessly macabre aesthetics.  Misunderstood, outcast characters, nods to everything from Universal monsters, to Godzilla, to Rankin/Bass stop-motion specials, Danny Elfman's incessant and whimsical score, black and white photography with every shamelessly Gothic cliche in the book, etc.  It even has returning Burton alumni Catherine O'Hara, Martin Landau, and Winona Ryder on board, though oddly Johnny Depp for once took this project off.  For any fans of the filmmaker's work or kid-friendly, Disney fare in general, it is pretty impossible to find much fault with Frankenweenie, a film quite pleasing in its safe, predictable structure and auteur vision.

DRACULA 3D

Dir - Dario Argento

Overall: WOOF

 

The opening title sequence in Dario Argento's Dracula 3D sets the stage quite accurately; an incredibly cheap-looking digital intro with cornball music that would fit in something like a retro, dancing vampire toy for Halloween.  The schlock only intensifies from there and boy does it ever.  To be fair, Rutger Hauer is surprisingly understated as Van Helsing, the set and costume design is solid, the screenplay takes a significant amount of liberties with the stripped-bare source material to warrant itself unique enough, and being an Argento film, it has a few splendidly giddy gore sequences.  Every other aspect is pure, unintentionally embarrassing absurdity.  The post-dubbed dialog sounds like it was "written" by people with only the most rudimentary grasp on the English language or how human interactions work, the visual effects are almost inconceivably poor, most performances are sink-in-your-chair awkward, the pacing is oddly stagnant, and German actor Thomas Kretschmann's title character is probably the least memorable Dracula since ever.  Watching a movie like this from an always eccentric though once ingenious filmmaker whose cinematic output has only grown more hilariously clueless in recent times, it is necessary to try and appreciate it as the trainwreck oddity that it can only be.  That is if your want to laugh at it every step of the way which is truly the best one can hope for.

SINISTER

Dir - Scott Derrickson

Overall: MEH

Though it relies far too heavily on predictable and over-used horror tropes, Scott Derrickson's Sinister at least to a point boasts some decent ideas and production values.  Christopher Young's unorthodox soundtrack is a highlight, mixing strange electronics and ambient noises in quite different ways from scene to scene.  The cast and dialog are also stronger and more convincing than usual, particularly the dynamic between Ethan Hawke and Juliet Rylance as a struggling yet supportive couple.  The most promising aspect of Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill's script is the world building which creates an intriguing amount of detail surrounding an entirely fabricated Pagan deity which acts as a stand-in for the Bogeyman and Pied Piper.  Though the name Bughuul and Slipknot-member-look of said deity is rather silly, there are a handful of genuinely creepy scenes early on concerning him.  Things get more derivative as the story progresses when it turns into a "here comes the jump scare" game and ghoulish kids holding up the "ssshhhhh" sign and tilting their heads which are far more hackneyed than frightening.  Despite one or two clever tweaks to the formula, its primary objective is unfortunately that of a cliche work-out.