Random George A. Romero - In Memoriam

February 4th, 1940 - July 16th, 2017

Another undeniable horror icon has died, this time the father of the modern zombie film George A. Romero from lung cancer at the age of seventy-seven.  Romero directed seventeen feature length movies over just shy of five decades, nearly every one of them in the horror genre.  A Pittsburgh native who also attained Canadian citizenship later in life, Romero shot most of his work in and around his hometown, utilizing family and friends with help behind and onscreen on multiple occasions.  He was an independent filmmaker whose debut Night of the Living Dead unknowingly changed horror cinema permanently and remains one of the genres most paramount works.  Few horror movies are more important historically and fewer still are any better.  One of the only others that comes close is Romero's own sequel Dawn of the Dead, which is just as beloved and legendary still.  The man could have died from lung cancer having just made those two iconic films and his legacy would still be staggeringly important.

To get some of the negative honesty briefly out of the way though, Romero was far from a flawless filmmaker.  His last three works in the Dead franchise, (also the last three films he ever made), are unfortunately incredibly poor for various reasons.  Overdone, misguided, and confused, the director's usually present social commentary was a detriment to these last few movies, whereas it was an intellectually pleasing component to his earlier ones.  Also the zombie reassurance in popular culture was in full swing at this point, (playing a major role in Romero reviving said franchise to begin with no doubt), and certainly for me at least, I was also burned out on it which did not help any.

At least he kept Sex Machine around.  As he should.

I find occasional missteps earlier in Romero's filmography here or there as well, (I'm not a fan of The Crazies, per example), but he also made the masterpiece Martin and several other fun, gory romps throughout the years.  So even when not turning the horror film on its ass and forever redefining what the genre could do, in general and by average, he was damn good at what he did and he did a good, impressive amount.

Upon hearing of his passing to that great, big shopping mall full of the dead in the sky, I immediately set out to watch/re-watch some of his films I was less familiar with.  Essays have been written endlessly as to the significance and excellence of Night of and Dawn of the Dead, but I wanted to look at some of his early 80s-early 90s collaborations and adaptations that certainly merit discussion.  If not for their cultural significance, then just because they by-and-large were enjoyable horror movies.  Which ultimately was what George was most interested in giving us.  I appreciate that profoundly and fully recognize the man as one of the absolute finest horror filmmakers we will ever have.  Cheers good sir.  May you walk the earth once more and feast on human flesh at your leisure...

CREEPSHOW
(1982)
Overall: GREAT

Both a tribute to the horror books of EC Comics and therefore a pre-curser to the Tales from the Crypt HBO series which debuted seven years later, George Romero and Stephen King's joint effort Creepshow is good, nostalgic fun.  An equal level of wicked disturbingness and joy can be found particularly in the "Father's Day" and "Something to Tide You Over" segments, particularly the combination of drowning and being buried alive in the latter by Frank Drebin himself Leslie Nielsen.  The rest of the movie follows the anthology horror rule perfectly, as in some of the stories are stronger than others.  "The Crate" is the weakest since the monkey monster has not aged particularly well, (pretty much looking like a child in a Halloween costume), followed close by "The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill", but at least that one is wrapped up pretty quickly and has a hilarious country bumpkin performance from King himself.  The pace of the entire film is quite perfect, as Romero and King keep it equally silly and gruesome throughout, never venturing too far in either direction.  As a comedy, this easily seems like the most all-out fun Romero ever had making a movie.  Another horror rule also applies in that Creepshow was sequeled out, each time getting a little to a lot less memorable.  Certainly the best for first in this case.

MONKEY SHINES
(1988)
Overall: MEH

A fairly unfortunate and flawed adaptation of Michael Stewart's novel of the same name, Monkey Shines was George Romero's first non-independent film, thought he still shot it in Pennsylvania as usual.  The fact that it seems both overlong and rushed is in large part due to Orion studio's interference with the finished product, which supposedly cut nearly half of the footage Romero shot from his lengthy, more in depth script.  It is sadly noticeable, where several steps forward in the plot seem to spring up out of nowhere and numerous character arcs appear sloppy.  At the same time though, hardly anything really exciting happens for much of the film and when it finally does get to the final act, the camp value appears to be amped up more than it should.  Then again, the film does have kind of a silly premise, though still an interesting one.  But when your main "monster" is a tiny little helper monkey, it is rather a labored task to make it menacing.  The studio also forced Romero into a groan-worthy "happy ending", not at all the director's style.  To his credit though, Romero's original intention could have perhaps made the end product more compelling.  Plenty of interesting ideas work here without the tone being all over the place, so it is certainly worth a gander.

THE DARK HALF
(1993)
Overall: MEH

Somewhere in between some of the best and worst Stephen King film adaptations is George Romero's second collaboration with the ill-fated Orion Pictures in The Dark Half.  Yet again shot in Pennsylvania and written for the screen by Romero, Half was shelved for two years before Orion had the promotion budget to release it, where it more or less came and went without much of a bang.  Which kind of makes sense after watching it, regrettably.  Most of the problems lie in the story itself, (yay, another author protagonist!), which is not one of King's most original or interesting ideas.  Timothy Hutton's duel role is amusing, but it is difficult to decipher if he intended to do a spot-on Michael Keaton impression or not, which gives his bad guy performance perhaps an accidentally hilarious quality.  The movie is plenty gory, (which is something Romero is reliable at delivering, even without his trusted sidekick Tom Savini for this go-around), but it is also very dull in the scares department.  There are several "GOTCHA!" jumps and "people doing dumb shit in horror movies" moments, making it a bit too cliche of a vehicle for Romero.  Still, the director was long-past re-inventing the wheel at this point, so this is fundamentally an innocent, average horror outing with some redeemable moments.

2016 Horror Part Two

BEYOND THE GATES

Dir - Jackson Stewart

Overall: MEH   

Jackson Stewart's silly throwback Beyond the Gates deservingly garnishes the same complaints that other such movies do.  Namely, the nostalgia-for-nostalgia's sake presentation the fuses an overtly goofy premise with retro aesthetics and clashing tonal issues.  Campy horror does have its place of course, but when it is in a movie that features serious character arcs that are completely pointless to the camp, (and ultimately take screen time away from more over-the-top goofiness that could be on screen), it is a matter of trying to have its cake and eat it too.  Trying to have realistic characters with relatable problems with a concept such as a 1980s video board game coming to life with details like a cartoon character creep straight out of a Goosebumps episode operating an all-things-occult store too, is just insultingly dumb.  Barbara Crampton's welcomed return to genre cinema deserves better material than this, that is for damn sure.

THE ALCHEMIST COOKBOOK
Dir - Joel Potrykus
Overall: GREAT

One of the more inspiring horror/comedy/whatever outings in recent memory is Michigan-based filmmaker Joel Potrykus third offering The Alchemist Cookbook.  Minimally and entirely shot in the woods with a barely two person cast, most of what unfolds on screen seems improvised and one would be hard pressed to spot any typical, overdone genre staples.  The slow-boil approach is taken here which can be tricky to pull off, even more so when almost just Tysheeb Hickson is onscreen nearly 100% of the time and never ventures too far from his living quarters.  Hickson's performance as a man suffering from a mental breakdown where his eccentric and erratic behavior is as funny as it is increasingly unnerving to watch, is fantastic though.  Better still, there is something else going on in those woods that becomes increasingly unnerving to watch and listen to.  The sound design in this film is outstanding and the small number of "those" moments deliver on every level of horror movie enjoyment.  What Potrykus and his tiny crew and cast accomplish with such minuscule ingredients here without any need to shoot it as yet another hand-held-camera film, is very, very admirable.  This is the kind of outside the box thinking and execution that the horror genre more than any other can benefit from.

UNDER THE SHADOW
Dir - Babak Anvari
Overall: MEH

What differentiates Iranian Babak Anvari's feature length debut Under the Shadow from other "stressed out mother protecting her daughter from supernatural forces" type fare is essentially the specifics of the premise and setting.  That setting being the Iran-Iraq War, namely the War of the Cities period of air raids regularly bombarding various urban areas.  The cast is caught right up in all of this and similarly to how most people watch haunted house films while getting aggravated and thinking aloud "leave the house already", such is the case here even with no evil specters interfering with their sleeping schedule.  The bombs are enough to convince one to leave or so one would think.  Anvari gets away with crafting kind of enough of a backstory and motivation to keep his characters where they are and keep them tolerating what they tolerate, but there sure is a whole lot that has been incredibly played out at this point here.  This inclues but is not limited to far too many boo scares, imaginary "friends", a kid with a doll, nightmares that seem real, the main protagonist possibly just going crazy, a sinister fairy tale, and a "this ain't over yet" ending.  The movie never derails itself though and keeps it together in the final act, so it gets a competent if still predictable pass.

Wonder Woman

WONDER WOMAN
(2017)
Dir - Patty Jenkins
Overall: MEH

As has been the case a few times before in recent memory, a sequel of sorts, (or a prequel in this case, doubling as the forth entry of DC's cinematic universe), appears to be more pleasing than it is.  This of course is based heavily on the "quality" of the installments that came before it.  Wonder Woman follows Man of Steel which most people loathed, Batman V Superman which EVERYBODY loathed, and Suicide Squad which this here reviewer could not even stomach to sit all the way through, (brave as we were, me, my wife, and a buddy of mine managed to hit the fifty-one minute mark only).  You go into Wonder Woman with those films as its predecessors and the bar is set so very low that simply seeing a competent, Point A to Point B script will suffice.

This is pretty much what WW delivered.  As opposed to Suicide Squad and BvS, (yes I will be comparing these films to each other often, as DC is insisting we must), this here movie actually felt like a movie and not forty-five movie executives sitting around a huge table tweaking every nook and cranny of their property for maximum audience appeal.  To the best of my knowledge, the only re-shoots that took place here were due to Gal Gadot being five months pregnant at one point and understandably, a waiting period to wrap it up was a logical move.  Yet it at least felt like no test audiences were quizzed time and again, coupled with DC having their nervous little brains firing at all hours of the night trying to make their franchise as witty and enthralling as Marvel's, all with less than half the time and effort spent on it.

Still the winning team.  Suck it DC!

Wonder Woman in fact seems like a genuine, old fashioned movie with a story to tell.  There is a brief intro and outro setting up that it exists in the same world where Bruce Wayne found an old timey picture of her, then a long origin story, then some fish-out-of-water stuffs, (as a Goddess amongst the world of men for the first time, this is necessary to depict), then an inner-challenge to overcome, then a CGI-exploding fight to the death.  All the proper pieces in place.  No part of Wonder Woman seemed messy and little seemed forced to make it something it should not be.  It was a competent superhero movie from front to back, playing all the rules to a tee in pretty much every frame.

So all that being the case, I kept asking the question throughout if I was actually enjoying myself while watching this.  And if I constantly have to ask, one could argue that the answer is probably not a positive one.  What I realized very clearly is that all the safe, appropriate, superhero movie stuffs that is all dependably interwoven into this genre by this day and age was in fact most of the stuff I did not like about Wonder Woman.

Linda Carter must be spinning in her grave.  Or dueting with Tom Jones.  Either/or.

The modern, blockbuster Hollywood film has long surpassed the two-hour mark now and Wonder Woman is not an exception.  For the first time though that I can remember while sitting in the theater, I really felt it.  I could not help but be very bored during all the island of Themyscira stuff, with Diana's elders talking about her true destiny being kept from her, the dangers of war and men, the history of their gods and peoples, all the honor and duty that comes with it, etc.  These are the backstories and ideals that make many a superhero and it has been in Wonder Woman's comic book DNA for decades upon decades.  So why did I have such a problem with sitting through it finally with a character that should have had her own movie made much sooner ago than this?

The answer I would reckon is what year this is and how long we have been getting used to so many, many superhero films as moviegoers.  Simply put, we have seen all this before, just not with Wonder Woman.  So, is it enough that this time the female, Amazonian comic book character is the one we are watching on screen for the first time in her own staring vehicle?  Many people, (comic book dorks like myself included), seem to say, sure, why not and they are probably right.  For a lot of people, this is enough.  Shit, for most people even the fact that this was not a shot for shot remake of BvS is enough.

Never forget.

I have said this before on this blog, but I really do want to keep my expectations a little higher for this genre of film.  Yet it not limited to the origin part of the experience.  With that chunk being what it was, by the time we got to the meat of WW, I was already waiting for it to be over.  Sure the middle of the movie did have the better fight scenes and the most humor that worked, but that was already like an hour and a half in.  Once the ending battle was upon us though was when I really started to get seriously peeved at something else.

Along with the always annoying lack of color in these movies which may as well go full black and white by this point, the dialog in the finale was the other part of WW that definitely made it fit in Batman V Superman land.  Saying "I believe in love" right before delivering a super duper, deluxe CGI laser blast to the chest of thine enemy is a moment that is as laughable as an "Aw shucks, both our mom's are named Martha" one.  Also, you actually could have taken all of Ares dialog once he revealed himself and swapped it for another baddie in pick-any-other comic book movie and it would have seemed 100% in character and in place.  Am I bitching about this kind of shit being phoned-in and by the books?  Yes.  Yes I am doing that.

The most colorful moment of the film right here.  Not exaggerating.

Speaking of textbook villains, we once again have Danny Huston as the only thing he ever seems to get cast as, this time as a Naz...sorry, I mean World War I General Erich Ludendorff.  He is so very evil-German-man that Stephen Spielberg may as well have handcrafted his performance.  There is a moment where he and his crazy, mad scientist partner Doctor Poison, (comic book characters sure have silly names don't they?), manically laugh at how "terrible" their hydrogen-based gas weapon is once it is proven successful in a lab.  All while loud, "bad guys doing bad guys stuff" music blares and the camera pans back from them.  Unless this was meant to be intentional, Batman & Robin-esque schlock, pretty sure the filmmakers fucked up a wee bit there.

Also, did it strike anyone else as rather funny, (*cough* embarrassing *cough*), that when Diana was at her lowest point in her punchy/throwing tanks fight with Ares that the one thing that made her scream in anger, rise up, and realize that the plot needed her to epiphanize her awesomeness was the death of that man with the pretty eyes who kissed her earlier?  Even in a film about and named after the most iconic female superhero of all time, leave it to a dashing man to truly show her the way.  Yay feminism!

Chris Pine you ole dreamboat you.

This is all harmless nitpicking though, to be fare.  Lame, one-dimensional villains, hokey dialog, and a muted color pallet to the point of "why bother shooting in color to begin with?" are all sadly the norm now.  As is the film's running time.  As is the computer generated-ness, even in a 1918-set period piece for this here go around.  Yet should any of this stuff be taken for granted and just dealt with because superhero movies nine times out of ten seem to follow the same rules?  If dough, tomato sauce, and cheese are what every pizza is made out of and someone keeps eating pizza who does not like dough, tomato sauce, and cheese and keeps bitching about how it tastes like it did last time, should that person stop being a doo-doo head and just enjoy his fucking pizza already?  Sorry, I had pizza for dinner while writing this.  Moving on.

None of my problems with Wonder Woman made me angry in the least, (Batman V Superman took care of those emotions).  Even fewer here made me utterly baffled, (which is where Suicide Squad comes in).  Instead, I yawned a handful of times, got restless in my seat, and innocently enjoyed most of what I was seeing.  Yet the pessimistic feelings I had towards it were a shame really.  A shame that it took until 2017 for christ sake for a beloved, incredibly popular comic book character, (who happens to NOT be a man), to get her own full length movie.  Twenty years ago with the exact same plot and execution, this movie could have been a game changer.  Yet coming out when it has, it is simply very competent and very better than the other films the same company that made it have recently produced.  That is the best you can say about it and the most fair assessment it deserves.  Wonder Woman certainly deserves better circumstances, if not necessarily a better film.

Up next, the three and a half hour music video for "We Are Family", "Holding Out for a Hero", "We Are the Champions", "We Will Rock You", "My Hero", "Let's Get It Started", "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger", "Raw Power", "Heroes", "I Need A Hero", "Superbowl Shuffle", "YMCA", "All My Exes Live In Texas"......

1970s Czech Horror Part One

WITCHHAMMER
(1970)
Dir - Otakar Vávra
Overall: GOOD

On the surface, Otakar Vávra's Witchhammer, (Kladivo na čarodějnice), is yet another thoroughly dower witch trial film, one that remains so very depressing due to how little of its story is glamorized from its actual historical context.  That particular context here was the Northern Moravia witch trials that took place in the 1670s, specifically here surrounding the fate of priest Kryštof Lautner.  Because these mass, church sanctioned persecutions, tortures, and murders were all likely worse than anything some screenwriter could fabricate for dramatic effect, watching any movie with this subject matter alone can do wonders to ruin your day.  The film gets some extra subtext from the era it was made though, where Czechoslovakian Communist show trials were hardly something just from old history books to meditate on.  As a horror film, this pretty much does not qualify, at least in a conventional sense.  Yes there is nudity, gore-via-torture, deplorable villains, and a clear sexual repression subtext, all of which make their way often into said genre.  In this case though, it is the very serious tone that sets it apart from something like Ken Russel's The Devils per ludicrously-over-the-top example.  Not for the faint of heart, but such movies rarely if at all are.

VALERIE AND HER WEEK OF WONDERS
(1970)
Dir - Jaromil Jireš
Overall: GOOD

Arriving somewhat later in the Czech New Wave, Jaromil Jireš' very otherworldly Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, (Valerie a týden divů), followed his The Cry and The Joke, both seminal films in said movement.  Compared to Juraz Herz' fantastic The Cremator, Valerie is certainly the more "horror" out of this New Wave's offerings and whether you watch it with a large or nonexistent knowledge of film history, it is very bonkers.  "Dreamlike" is a word that is impossible not to use when describing this movie, deliberately so surely.  As surreal as can be and well under an hour and a half, Valerie endlessly jumps from moment to moment, where characters are or may appear to be different characters, monsters, or victims, and they all seem to be aching for the love and affection of the title character, played by a whimsical, thirteen-year old Jaroslava Schallerová.  The soft, bright lighting and often lovely music and scenery go very against the horror movie type, even if they naturally seem part of the same world here with a Nosferatu like, gruesome vampire, a witch burning, and heavily cobwebbed catacombs.  In other words, there is no rule book being utilized and it is a marvelous thing.  Much of Valerie reminds one of both Lemora: A Child's Tale of the Supernatural and the USSR classic Viy, but it really exists in its own universe; a universe more horror films could afford to visit now and again.

MORGIANA
(1972)
Dir - Juraz Herz
Overall: GOOD

This adaption of the Alexander Grin novel Jessie and Morgiana from Juraz Herz basically plays like a full length Tales from the Crypt episode, which is a good thing for genre buffs.  Many of the elements in Morgiana are very commonplace; twin sisters (both played by the same actress) and a rivalry over their parents inheritance leads to much sinisterness.  There are some nice hallucination scenes and occasional suspense is maintained as to how exactly everything is going to play out, though the one sister that is doomed seems predetermined from scene one.  That is mostly because there is a clear villain here, down to the obvious "one of them dresses in white and is cheerful and the other is in black and is a total bitch that everyone is afraid of" motif.  Still, having a simple as can be story with virtually zero humor or camp value aside, it is certainly told beautifully.  Herz has a way of moving his camera around that is quite enticing in and of itself, be it with flowing close-ups and zooms to numerous point-of-view shots, representing the feline title character in this case.  This is also one of those "soft focus/vibrant colors" 70s films and as a period piece, it is both Gothic and pretty all at once.

1970s Sergio Martino Part One

THE CASE OF THE SCORPION'S TAIL

(1971)
Overall: GOOD

Sergio Martino's second giallo outing The Case of the Scorpion's Tail, (Tail of the Scorpion), came out before the superior All the Colors of the Dark which upped the typical knife-stabbing stalker plot with some occult details.  This one still prevails as a more conventional giallo, if not necessarily a landmark in the genre.  There is plenty of wonderful scenery around Athens, Greece and Martino and cinematographer Emilio Foriscot utilize a hefty amount of claustrophobic and killer-point-of-view camera work that flash things up a bit.  The murders are not Argento level ridiculous/awesome, (nor should they be exclusively expected to be), but a few are rather brutal and inventive enough.  A nasty eye-gouging takes place as well as a guy hanging from a roof for dear life who looses his grip in a slicey way.  The script effectively has every character and audience member guessing as to who the black leather clad murderer is and depending on how much of a genre expert you are, you may or may not see the obvious/not obvious/back to obvious twist coming.  Even without going too overboard, (which is certainly welcome where giallo is concerned), this one is plenty sexy and contains a high body count to pretty fairly cross it over into recommendable terrain.

TORSO
(1973)
Overall: GOOD

Giallo or otherwise, perhaps Sergio Martino's most well-known movie Torso, (I corpi presentano tracce di violenza carnale), has a deserving reputation as a slasher-pre-curser and one of the finer ones at that.  So much that has sadly become cliche is front and center here, particularly the misogyny that is oozing in nearly every scene.  It is one thing that women who show their boobs get brutally murdered and then have those very same boobs sliced and diced up at a steady rate, but it is another that nearly every male in the entire film is audibly gawking at every woman on screen, licking their lips whilst creeping on them, or simply beating them up.  This is all more laughably inappropriate than offensive in a modern context and no one could mistake that there is a direct line from this to all the countless, slasher nasties that came in droves starting around the early 80s.  What is excellent about it though is not the gore and copious amounts of naked ladies on the screen, but how stylishly directed it is.  Martino has a flair for racking up the tension and toying with his audience, keeping the killer's identity misleading and killing-off main characters by means of great set-pieces.  Even something that seems eye-ball-rollingly stupid like a clumsy girl falling down the stairs actually comes back into play later in a major plot point way.  Slasher movies need not be a thing anymore and certainly need not follow any of the "rules" that beautifully work here, but this is a borderline-excellent example of when this stuff was still exciting and intelligently done.

THE MOUNTAIN OF THE CANNIBAL GOD
(1978)
Overall: MEH

The jungle cannibal tribe horror sub-genre was in high swing around the late 70s when Sergio Martino got the chance to make an entry into it with The Mountain of the Cannibal God, (La montagna del dio cannibale, Slave of the Cannibal God, Prisoner of the Cannibal God).  Stacy Keach and a forty-two year old Ursula Andress are this movie's version of A-listers and the latter gets lathered in goo while naked, so it certainly delivers the exploitative sex appeal.  Speaking of exploitation, there is also some horrible animal mutilation, bestiality, and one guy's gentiles get forcibly removed.  This is all on top of the standard orgy and human organ feasting moments such movies are required to have.  So it hits all the marks, plus a few extras for the audience who goes for these gross-out things.  Unfortunately (or not depending on one's tastes and stomachs), most of these nasty moments come within the last twenty-minutes, leaving the near hour and a half before it to plod and plod along.  Martino does his best to keep the pace up when you could fit the script for this movie on one page probably, such as with some nice handheld camera work during some jungle rapids scenes.  Still, it does not keep the film from being disastrously boring until we get to the actual cannibals.  Still, the shock value near the end nearly makes the whole ordeal worth it.

1960s Italian Horror Part Two

SLAUGHTER OF THE VAMPIRES
(1962)
Dir - Roberto Mauri
Overall: MEH

One of the more unremarkable Gothic horror films to come out of Italy in any era, Roberto Mauri's tiny-budgeted Slaughter of the Vampires, (La strage dei vampiri, Curse of the Blood Ghouls), is utterly textbook stuff.   The plot could have been written by a five year old who has seen any "dashing vampire slowly drains the life out of a pretty maiden in a castle" movie.  German television actor Dieter Eppler's nameless lead vampire is a walking cliche in every detail and the husband who does not know what is going on, his wife who is turning into a helpless, bosomy vampiress herself night after night, the doctor who has all the answers that lives a days carriage ride away, and the peasant caretakers and maids all likewise hit every required, run-of-the-mill mark.  None of this nor the music, scenery, or silly dubbing are any better or worse than any other countless movie of exactly the same kind before it.  So this is basically the "problem", in that the film adds absolutely zero new to cinematic vampire lore and adheres to such things so strictly as to be utterly redundant.   It seems like a competently, quickly, and cheaply made, double-feature, export, B-movie theater-filler and that is because that is absolutely what it is.  For genre purists only.

NIGHTMARE CASTLE
(1965)
Dir - Mario Caiano
Overall: MEH

Barbara Steele back again, this time working with Mario Caiano, who tailor made the wonderfully titled Nightmare Castle, (Amanti d’Oltretomba), explicitly for her.  Caiano, (a long time Gothic horror and Edgar Alan Poe fan), wrote the script with Fabio De Agostini and it is more or less a re-design of Mario Bava's Black Sunday or various other "evil doctor has a crazy wife in a haunted castle" type Italian genre movies.  So. it looses some points for originality.  That and the soundtrack is occasionally frustrating.  There is a happy little ditty that one of Barbara Steele's dual-characters plays on the piano that gets thrown into random scenes here or there and it becomes increasingly jarring.  This is made more obvious by the fact that the movie's most successful moments are the spooky ones that play to zero music.  Heartbeat's and some creepy, ambient humming during ALL the "scary" scenes instead of just some of them would have excelled the whole film tenfold.  Steele as usual is laughably dubbed but pitch-perfect otherwise as an alluring scream queen.  As mentioned, she plays two roles here and they both cover opposite ends of the spectrum.  It is definitely worth seeing for Steele fans, but just falls to the slightly below average level as a supernatural mad-scientist/ghost story

MALENKA, THE VAMPIRE'S NIECE
(1969)
Dir - Amando de Ossorio
Overall: WOOF 

Before he went on to make the beloved yet wretchedly-paced Blind Dead series, Amando de Ossorio did something remarkably terrible with his first outing in the genre, the Spanish/Italian joint-effort Malekna, the Vampires Niece, (Fangs of the Living Dead).  Hardly anything works here.  If you are forced to come up with any highlights, it is that the Italian women are heavily chested and easy on the eyes, (Anita Ekberg is present in the lead after all), and some of the sets look rather spooky in a classical, cinematic horror sense.  A combination of an awful script, almost unlistenable dubbing, some of the worst editing there is, and two completely different endings floating around, (neither of which make any sense), result in this film being one of the most absurd in all of European genre inema.  Which is saying something.  Multiple times it seems that large chunks of scenes are missing and the longer the movie goes on, the more it spirals into baffling terrain.  There is comic relief that is absolutely head-scratching and Ekberg's title character may be the dumbest horror movie dame of all time, just as much as Julian Ugarte's Count Walbrooke is one of the dumbest vampires.  No nudity or blood either for what it is worth.  Moving on...

2016 Horror Part One

THE LOVE WITCH
Dir - Anna Biller
Overall: MEH

Anna Biller's The Love Witch is a blatant throwback that recalls a former era of bright colors, Gothic scenery, the occult, clunky dialog, the zoom, screechy violins on the soundtrack, burlesque dancing, and oodles more from late 60s-early 70s genre films.  Aside from the bygone era window dressing, the script is loaded with problems that have nothing to do with it being an unimaginative rehash of older genre cinema that was also loaded with problems.  To say that Biller's work here is unimaginative would be an untruth though.  Her second majorly released movie that filters such B-movie sub-genres through a feminist lens, (the other was 2007's sexplotation semi-parody Viva), what Biller does with the sets, costumes, music, editing, and actors is visually impressive.  Nearly every shot truly looks like it came from the intended time period.  There are also modern cars, modern cell phones, and at least one modern toilet though that throw it into a contemporary setting which in effect makes it confusing at best and uneven at worst.  Issues persist with sub-par acting, lousy dialog, a few dreadful set pieces, and the unforgiving length.  This movie drags along several times and quite easily did not have to be two hours long.  Such random scenes like a spontaneous, Wiccan Ren Faire in the woods and an even more embarrassing one in a bar where angry, 21st century villagers go into a "burn the witch" frenzy are just bad bad, not "good" bad movie bad.  

LIGHTS OUT
Dir - David F. Sandberg
Overall: WOOF   

The premise to Swedish director David F. Sandberg's full-length debut Lights Out has nothing going against it, but certainly nothing going for it either if that makes sense.  Vengeful ghost/insane asylum/family dysfunction/stupid kid, your standard fare to be sure.  It also does that really annoying thing where at one point nobody in the movie is a skeptic anymore and the mystery as to what is going on is long solved, but they all continue to not openly talk about the supernatural stuff that is going on.  In addition to this, more plot revelations unnecessarily take up screen time.  The execution by Sandberg is also very unremarkable, be it even annoying.  There are jump scares a plenty, an insulting lack of logic, and would-be scary things are unintentionally comical instead.  The ghost itself is one of those creaky, lanky, lightning fast moving, head-tilt things that makes loud noises out of nowhere and how any modern audience completely over-exposed to such cliche-adhering specters can still be frightened by them is anyone's guess.  The whole movie falls into such a predicament where it is so genre-pandering as to deflate any of its intended creepiness.

DON'T BREATHE
Dir - Fede Alvarez
Overall: GOOD

This is quite an improvement for filmmaker Fede Alvarez over the teeeeeeeeerible Evil Dead remake he unfortunately debuted with.  Don't Breathe has a few minor script holes here or there, (one character should jhave died or at least been crippled several scenes earlier than he finally was and why would a man doing this shit in his basement install a security system that automatically alarms the cops when triggered, per example), but nothing anywhere takes you out of the movie because Alvarez does a superb job in structuring the film.  It becomes very clear why the movie is called what it is as this is one of the most tense thrillers in recent memory.  As history proves, it is a tricky genre to pull off where characters more often than not are doing idiotic things that make the audience laugh in frustration instead of feeling mind-numbing dread like they are supposed to.  No good horror movie is complete without some kind of mystery and the reveals for this one is almost comically disturbing.  Though this is not a total game-changer, it is still a skillfully put-together, supernatural-less horror movie that gets nearly everything spot-on in its construction.