tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-197134532024-03-14T09:15:53.178-04:00DreamscapeFringe-Film review and VHS CultureGregory Josephhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10028442903379055090noreply@blogger.comBlogger68125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19713453.post-41234526945942132182010-07-24T00:38:00.000-04:002010-07-24T00:39:44.910-04:00New BeginningsGO HERE:<br /><br /><a href="http://waxmask.blogspot.com/">WAX MASK</a>Gregory Josephhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10028442903379055090noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19713453.post-65789536418517249242009-10-08T19:41:00.003-04:002009-10-08T19:46:46.605-04:00The October Ordeal III 02: Daughters of Satan (1972)<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVooMNPHBSxRQtnZTB_0RL5Y7as1DtGrw3CrnOiavUTPGpS01pHyFOWUDn7pgf9bOWNG2iAmUGam39DowhEnCjM4675gCxcfxs8cH7z_pu8iuVjgOQcTEB7zXd2Z0xfKVmpee7/s1600-h/combo_daughters_of_satan_poster_011.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 265px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5390378625872952706" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVooMNPHBSxRQtnZTB_0RL5Y7as1DtGrw3CrnOiavUTPGpS01pHyFOWUDn7pgf9bOWNG2iAmUGam39DowhEnCjM4675gCxcfxs8cH7z_pu8iuVjgOQcTEB7zXd2Z0xfKVmpee7/s400/combo_daughters_of_satan_poster_011.jpg" /></a><br />While the title <em>Daughters of Satan</em> seems fit for a Jean Rollin or Jess Franco production, <em>Daughters</em> is an American film, notable for featuring Tom Selleck’s first lead performance, and also for being one of the only films directed by veteran Television director Hollingsworth Morse. Selleck plays Jim Robinson, a buyer for a New York art museum, hunting down paintings and other artifacts in the Philippines, where the film was actually shot. While this casting now would be labeled “off-type,” it’s not unusual for 1972, the year <em>Daughters of Satan</em> was first released. While Cassavetes, Ashby, the American Zoetrope crowd and others were changing the way American film-goers thought about leading men, genre cinema was still catching up, and Selleck, with his classical Hollywood image, is a typical lead man for this era of horror cinema.<br /><br />Of course, there’s nothing wrong with casting a handsome man as the lead, but there is something strange about the consistent casting of hunks as nerds, a confusing institution which creates its own particular archetype in horror and science fiction. Elsewhere on Dreamscape, this phenomenon is discussed in my review of Brian Yuzna’s <em>Society</em>. In the 70s, it wasn’t uncommon to throw a pair of glasses on Selleck or McQueen for a few scenes and hope that this would be enough to sell the character as an academic.<br /><br />While Selleck gets the most screen time, and Jim Robinson is clearly marked as protagonist, the crucial character in the film is his wife Christina (or Chris, as she’s most often called), played as temperate and ethereal by Barra Grant. While Robinson’s life in the Philippines is all-business, Chris spends her time as if on a lazy, extended vacation. Perhaps apologetically, Jim buys her a painting of a witch burning, specifically because the central woman in the painting bears a striking resemblance to Chris herself. Thinking her reaction will be amusement, Selleck gives it to her—wrapped even—as a gift. Instead of being amused, she’s disturbed on a deep, spiritual level by the painting, feeling more than a bond of resemblance to the figure in the painting. Her reaction is so sympathetic that she believes she can recall specifics about the place and time of the burning.<br /><br />While the basic plot of the film has something to do with destiny and reincarnation, the film is more about the relationship between Chris and Jim. Occult 70s relationship drama is an interesting horror sub-genre, which includes such moody films as <em>Burnt Offerings</em> (1976), <em>The Mephisto Waltz</em> (1971) and the later <em>The House Where Evil Dwells</em> (1982), which also deals with concepts of time and destiny. Unlike those films, however, the relationship here is underdeveloped. While she is beautiful, and an appropriate gothic presence, Grant’s performance is tranced-out and disinterested, in a fog of confusion and uncertainty. While Selleck is workmanlike, his performance at least adequately conveys that of the arrogant Western predatory academic—whether or not this is intentional.<br /><br />As the mystery deepens, Nicodemus, a dog similar to one seen in the painting, appears at the Robinson home, heralding the arrival of a maid whom looks suspiciously like one of the <em>Daughters</em> in the painting (this is four years before the Satanic guard dog/nanny pairing found in <em>The Omen</em>, mind). As characters come into the film, and facts about the actual burning are revealed, the painting changes. Incremental changes keep the film from swinging too heavily in any direction, a move designed to build tension gradually. <em>Daughters of Satan</em>’s narrative plays out in the deliberate style of an Ace Gothic or Avon novel from the 70s (novels which also blend Occult intrigue with relationship drama).<br /><br />While the genre of supernatural romance is often bloodless, Daughters of Satan is surprisingly gory and transgressive. The film opens with a mean-spirited scene of a nude Filipino woman being whipped at a Black Mass—a scene which will be replayed—and features gratuitous extras nudity and gleefully blasphemous lines such as “Deny Christ… Spit on him!” (A full year before <em>The Exorcist</em>).<br /><br />Despite his consistent presence, Selleck as Robinson is a clueless bystander in the story. The character himself a weakness, because due to his imposed screen dominance, Chris is never properly characterized, thus her character’s esoteric stress and transformation lack weight and impact. With material so flimsy, the best Grant can do is play the part of the beautiful, wounded, confused and passive wife, which is a major misstep, not only because of obvious sexism, but because it’s Chris’ story, really, and a more active character would have improved the film. Because Selleck effectively steals her rightful screen-time, the film betrays both halves of the relationship. If this were a Giallo, Robinson would be a minor character, serving only as a reactive force, necessary to move certain scenes, while Chris would at the center, an active instigator of her occult dilemma.<br /><br />While the film’s emotional core is anemic, <em>Daughters of Satan</em> is at least powerful visually. The film is beautifully shot, with diffuse lighting typical of the genre, psychedelic and eerie music, location sets, and creative shot compositions, with the usual amount of Dutch angles and impulsive camera movement in the ritual scenes. While Morse cut his teeth on economic television-making, this film doesn’t feel at all like TV. Its vibrant imagery, elaborate set-pieces and languid pacing hardly reflect Television convention.<br /><br />The esoteric narrative kernel of the film is interesting at least: a second chance for some preordained demonic process to complete itself. The mystery of the film is neither rewarding nor engaging, nor is Robinson’s quest to solve the mystery of the magic painting. The detective scenes of Jim wandering about town are totally devoid of tension. There are incidental characters, including the shop keeper from whom Jim buys the witch-burning portrait, the Robinsons’ psychiatrist, and the third witch from the painting, Kitty (Tani Guthrie), who, in one scene, attempts to seduce Jim by casually disrobing in front of him, an act which neither party comment or act upon. The plot movies slowly, however there is neither a feeling of despair nor the impending danger that should accompany such an occult transformation or realization as presented. Instead, the film is merely dull; this is a middling, indecisive, if nicely shot and composed film.<br /><br />The final scenes of <em>Daughters of Satan</em> feature Chris in the exact position as the woman from the beginning of the film, nude, being whipped by Satanists, dedicated to fulfilling the recreation of the Coven burnt at the stake years ago. Why exactly this must happen is unclear. Ultimately, it’s hard for the audience to sympathize with Chris, as her character is so slight.<br /><br />This clumsiness also renders the final reveal impotent, as a twist ending can only shock through earned viewer investment. While visually the film is strong, it is only recommended for those whom are interested in horror that is both domestic and supernatural.Gregory Josephhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10028442903379055090noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19713453.post-26285428489797913022009-10-01T23:53:00.002-04:002009-10-02T00:15:19.471-04:00The October Ordeal III 01: Pinocchio's Revenge (1996)In the wasteland of straight-to-video and small-run 1990s genre cinema, “horror versions” of classic folk tales and fairy stories proliferated. In the 90s, shelves were crowded with titles like <em>Leprechaun</em>, <em>Rumpelstiltskin</em>, <em>Snow White: a Tale of Terror</em>, <em>Jack Frost</em>, and <em>Grim Prairie Tales</em>. These films either slot a folk creature into slasher frame-work, or play up strange and vicious elements of classic myths—an act, in this context, both transgressive and traditional. This reaction likely has to do with the last great era of hand-drawn Disney animation. While there is a point to be made that folk tales from around the world have been Christianized generally, and diluted even further by Disney, the films are often uninspired, supplying only gore and cheap laughs in place of what could have been cultural reclamation of the genuine creepiness of Grimm’s fairy tales or various Slavic myths. Interestingly enough, there were many live action iterations of classic tales during the decade as well, even a Jonathan Taylor Thomas/ Martin Landau vehicle simply titled <em>Pinocchio</em>, which remarkably came out the very same year as <em>Pinocchio’s Revenge</em>, in 1996.<br /><br />Kevin S. Tenney’s <em>Pinocchio’s Revenge</em> appears, from box art, title and trailer, to fit the <em>Leprechaun</em> formula—with a <em>Child’s Play</em> twist—it’s wholly different film. This uniqueness is thanks to writer/director Tenney, creator of the underrated <em>Witchboard</em> series, and director of <em>Night of the Demons</em> and <em>The Cellar</em>.<br /><br /><em>Pinocchio’s Revenge</em> opens with the caption, “Tampa, Florida, five years ago”. In an economical opening sequence, a Patrolman finds a car on the side of the road, with a child’s lifeless body inside, and a man in the forest, digging a grave. While examining the area later, Police discover that the man, Vincent Gatto, was burying a large wooden Pinocchio puppet. After this short intro tag, a generic news reporter explains that Gatto worked as a wood carver before his arrest, implying that he built the doll, and brings us into the present day, outside the court room where Gatto’s appeal is being heard.<br /><br />While the sullen Gatto (Lewis Van Bergen) refuses to explain himself at all, his attorney Jennifer Garrick (Rosalind Allen) is convinced of his innocence. Her attempts are unsuccessful (partly due to Gatto’s uncooperative attitude), even though she believes he is lying, to protect a greater, perhaps stranger, truth. Before much can be discovered, Gatto is executed, although Jennifer is haunted by the case. She even takes the Pinocchio doll home to her daughter Zoe.<br /><br />If this scenario brings to mind a generic episode of <em>Law & Order</em>, that’s not far off. While <em>Pinocchio’s Revenge</em> is an interesting film in many respects, visually it’s rather uninspired, looking and sounding like a TV-movie. While this is somewhat fitting, as the film features many such procedural scenes set in offices and court rooms, the difference between the visual integrity of Tenney’s <em>Witchboard</em> (photographed by <em>Dream Warriors</em>’ Roy H. Wagner) and this film is immense. Cinematography here is by Eric Anderson, an experienced TV DP, who delivers a simple, serviceable image, rather than the rich atmosphere of Tenney’s earlier films.<br /><br />The relationship between Zoe and the wooden Pinocchio seems at first like a subplot, or a <em>Child’s Play</em>-inspired position for a killer doll to inhabit, it becomes much more. Zoe (Brittany Alyse Smith) is a disturbed child, dealing with not only the separation of her parents, but bullying at school. The crucial weakness of the film is Smith’s performance; however the TV-movie Mise en scène forgives this problem somewhat. Acting is generally poor, with Allen’s performance being the best, even if just above serviceable.<br /><br />Zoe’s therapy scenes are important to the film, and serve as place-markers throughout, as Zoe becomes further unhinged. While her mother and psychiatrist initially see the Pinocchio marionette as a coping mechanism, it soon becomes clear that the presence of the doll is a negative force in Zoe’s recovery. If I’m being obscure about the doll, this is because the film is obscure about Pinocchio by design. His true nature is never really explained, and it makes as much sense here to assume Zoe is talking to a hunk of wood as it is to guess that Pinocchio is container of some sort of possessing demon. It is never suggested that this is Pinocchio the literary figure, as the character is only tangentially related to the film, and is never linked thematically. Whether he can actually talk and move, or we are privy to Zoe’s delusions, is mysterious. While he is silent for the first forty or so minutes of the film, when he does eventually speak, Pinocchio is voiced by veteran voice actor Dick Beals (best known as Davey from <em>Davey & Goliath</em>). In the few scenes where Pinocchio is seen to move, he is played by a young Verne Troyer in his first role.<br /><br />While the mother-daughter relationship is the focus of the film, there are many peripheral characters, whom really only exist as victims or potential victims. Most important to the film's central mother-daughter-doll core is Sophia (Candace McKenzie), the Garrick’s Italian nanny. Also in the mix are Jennifer’s co-worker Barry (veteran television face Ron Canada)--who serves only to gift the doll to Zoe in the first place--and Jennifer’s boyfriend David (Todd Allen), whom is hardly developed at all. Sophia however, has many scenes, including the only real moment of humor in the film: after Sophia finds Zoe and Pinocchio waiting for her outside the shower, Zoe tells her mother, referring to Pinocchio: “He’s curious about ladies’ bodies.”<br /><br />Two characters in the film serve to define the central ambiguity of the film. First is the aforementioned Psychiatrist, Dr. Edwards (Aaron Lustig, character actor whose resume is stuffed with similar roles), and an unnamed priest (Michael Connors) who outlines (by his very presence) one possible Pinocchio theory, whereas the counter is presented by the scientific authority of Dr. Edwards. Clearly this device serves to condone differing audience reactions. This becomes undeniable considering the film’s conclusion.<br /><br />Whether or not Pinocchio is possessed or alive, it’s clear that Zoe needs him to deal with abandonment issues. From here the film makes a connection between Gatto’s son and Zoe, which leads Jennifer to think that Gatto may have been protecting his disturbed son, whom she thinks had committing murders of his own. She fears Zoe is enacting a sympathetic duplication of Gatto’s son’s ordeal. At this point three interpretations are possible, and the audience is invited to decide. A frustratingly ambiguous ending endorses this ambivalence.<br /><br />There is no doubt that D.S. Tenney is saying something here; what this is however is somewhat mysterious. So much care is expended structuring the film that room for thematic resonance is small and specific. Regardless, the relationship between mother and daughter is believable and tragic, as is Zoe’s elementary school experience. This is in keeping with Tenney’s oeuvre, as <em>Witchboard</em> is essentially character-study and relationship-drama disguised as supernatural chiller.<br /><br />While this central question mark works structurally, its impact is lessened by the confounding choice of Pinocchio as a character. There is no great reason for the doll to be anything more than an original character, as this is not a retelling of the Pinocchio story, and the Pinocchio of this film is not the classic Pinocchio. Also, the title is nonsensical. The working title is a little better, <em>The Pinocchio Syndrome.</em> Better still is the UK title, simply, <em>Pinocchio</em>. The low budget (and low profile) of the film leads to believe that Tenney is to blame for this, especially considering that he wrote the film. It is possible that Tenney saw a market, and used a gimmicky premise to tell a personal and uncommon story.<br /><br />In the final third of <em>Pinocchio’s Revenge</em>, Jennifer asks her priest, “Do you believe in evil?” She asks because she thinks Gatto killed his son to save his soul. She wonders if demonic forces are speaking through Pinocchio, which in many ways is a more acceptable theory than simply believing her child is mentally unstable. The film’s final tag suggests some cyclical link to the “five years ago” intro, but this is never substantiated. Both the psychiatrist and priest survive the film, as if to preventing either theory from achieving dominance.<br /><br />Eventually the film reaches the climax of its slow-burn escalation, and a final confrontation is put in place. There is no denouement to speak of, and questions are never satisfactorily answered. The conclusion, interpretive elements notwithstanding, is nonetheless tragic, earned by the care with witch Tenney builds the central relationships of the film.<br /><br /><em>Pinocchio’s Revenge</em> is a unique, genre-mashing film, almost to fault. By keeping so much about itself obscure, the film risks locking viewers out rather than inviting their interpretation and debate. As an exercise, it narrowly fails in this respect. By making the conclusion of the film obliquely frustrating, critical tension is low, because any and all wild interpretations become valid. Despite this flaw in execution, <em>Pinocchio’s Revenge</em> is still strangely interesting, if dated and low-rent, with an emotional and spiritual core, allowing it to transcend the sub-genre in which it masquerades.Gregory Josephhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10028442903379055090noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19713453.post-26103826695377632822009-07-30T15:47:00.014-04:002011-05-31T15:57:45.276-04:00Death Warmed Up (1984)<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAgCezw-BQwEf23jELoswhKqm1GvsebC1lCHB257QJY4G2-Eb_X07zOy7o76D5EP97Qgg3wsQgNOCaDLw7hzHia-xhnLMAEWqL2MZKynqeQCWA_7wWLgH0HYtRG2QeNhKM04Ss/s1600-h/Clipboard012.jpg"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 287px; FLOAT: left; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5364348208572228850" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAgCezw-BQwEf23jELoswhKqm1GvsebC1lCHB257QJY4G2-Eb_X07zOy7o76D5EP97Qgg3wsQgNOCaDLw7hzHia-xhnLMAEWqL2MZKynqeQCWA_7wWLgH0HYtRG2QeNhKM04Ss/s400/Clipboard012.jpg" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><div align="left">(Spoilers throughout)<br /><br />David Blyth’s 1984 film <em>Death Warmed Up</em> has achieved some degree of notoriety for being one of the New Zealand’s first slasher films, if not the first. This is debatable—and not merely because such claims are always dubious—but because <em>Death Warmed Up</em> resists any sort of neat categorization. On paper, the film has a typical horror set-up, and contains all the constituent elements of a slasher, but somehow these elements never seem to come together in a meaningful way, and what is instead presented is a confusing and uncomfortable—although in many ways interesting—mess of a movie.<br /><br />Confusion should be the operative term here. The film opens in-media-res after some beautiful pop-art design-y titles (a bizarre through-line), wherein precocious sixteen year old Michael Tucker (<em>Dangerous Orphans</em>’ Michael Hurst) barges into some strange facility, where a woman shouts at him “Wonderful news about your father’s promotion!” as he rushes absurdly fast down a hallway. He stops at the door to some sort of operating room and peeks in. Mike’s spying is indicative of the absurd amount of voyeurism found in this film, and the first hint at the bizarre sexual undertones lurking behind practically every scene in the film. An unknown man (who turns out to be Mike’s father’s research partner Archer Howell) claps a hand down on Mike’s shoulder and leers “You’re all sweaty… let’s get you cleaned up.” Before Michael can respond, the scene cuts to a highly eroticized shot of him luxuriating in the middle of a large locker-room shower. This low-lit, steamy scene is the first of many which heavily sexualize Michael Hurst’s nude or semi-nude body. Dr. Howell (Gary Day) enters silently and sticks Mike in the ass with a needle, cradling him in his arms as he passes out, whispering “trust me”. The lighting in this scene is of a sickly yellow hue. Most of the lighting in this film is monochromatic, the color palette mostly consisting of reds, greens and yellows.<br /><br /><em>Death Warmed Up</em> is full of smash-cuts, and the first one comes directly after this scene of penetration. Michael is on the same operating table he spied earlier, thrashing about while the camera hovers around his crotch as he turns into some sort of mind-controlled zombie soldier. Following another smash-cut, the locale switches abruptly to Mike’s home, as his scientist father and mother return from some sort of awards banquet. In another heavily sexualized scene, Mike’s mother (Tina Grenville) is seen hanging out in a see-through nighty while his father (David Weatherley) scoffs at a television interview with his partner Howell, who raves “We are the generation of the end!” while detailing his theories about immortality. What follows then is a very uncomfortable sex scene, similarly lit by pallid yellow light (note that it’s light, and not lens gels, which goes farther to create the film’s diseased verisimilitude than stylistic gel shading could).<br /><br />Just when it seems the film has abandoned Michael, he appears in the bushes outside his folks’ house with dead eyes and a shot-gun. Piling on more scenes of voyeurism, compounded by explicit Freudian theory, Michael pauses to observe his nude mother, before—in what can be read as Oedipal rage—blowing his parents away with Howell’s shot gun, held at crotch level. His father he even blasts below the waist. The grimiest part of this coitus-interuptus is the way the camera seems to sympathize with Michael, lingering outside the house with him and presenting him as a bystander, an innocent pawn, although certain choices he makes seem representative of psychological impulses rather than efficient drone tactics. The shot-gun blasts are presented in agonizing slo-mo, with extended blood-spray and time-stretched screaming.<br /><br />Amidst more smash-cuts, Michael is taken to an abusive mental ward by Howell, where he is kept in a padded cell lit with blue lamps. The color palette in <em>Death Warmed Up</em> seems at odds with the typical cinematic color wheel, because colors usually associated with warm and positive emotion—yellow, blue—are used to indicate sickness, decay and abuse. I can’t imagine this was an intentional bit of unsettling bait-and-switch, but such counter-intuitiveness works nonetheless. After Mike’s institutional abuse is adequately represented, unassuming text awkwardly explains that “…on an isolated island Doctor Archer Howell is now operating on human patients a trans-cranial application. His first patient was Mr. Tex Monro.” (Whom is played by the great Bruno Lawrence from <em>The Quiet Earth</em> and <em>Jack Be Nimble</em>). As awkward as this bit of exposition is, it’s welcome, because despite the prior detailed synopsis of <em>only the first ten minutes of the film</em> found here, exactly what’s happening can only be realized upon multiple viewings. So much is unstated; characters names aren’t necessarily provided; relationships are unclear; motivations are mysterious. Questions which viewers would naturally ask are never answered. Everything that has just happened could provide the complete narrative for an entirely different film, but here it is squashed down to preamble.<br /><br />“<em>NOW</em>”, appears on the screen (more 1980’s pop-art advertising-type design, with the same sharp lettering, jagged marks and bright colors from the opening credits), and it’s seven years later, and Michael is traveling to “an isolated island” (coastal Australia) to confront Howell. Yet, for some unknown reason, he’s brought his girlfriend Sandy and two of his dopy friends along. There is of course no great reason to bring pals along on a quest for vengeance; this is simply the transparent and non-diagetic supplying of murder victims.<br /><br />Michael’s quest for revenge/closure could begin on the island, but instead we meet Mike & Co. on a ferry en route to the island. While the film’s prologue moves at break-neck pace, the rest is disproportionately slow, meandering and frustrating. Unimportant scenes drag and drag, while significant plot points come and go with neither care nor attention. There is no reason to include a ferry-ride to the island if not to introduce and set up characters. However, Mike’s pals are so thinly characterized that the opportunity is wasted. Most of the characters in the film are at least shown on camera in this sequence, as it seems the ferry is sailing into the remainder of the film, rather than to an actual island, because all the henchmen and human guinea pigs Mike will confront later are also on the boat. A severely fucked up and decomposing Bruno Lawrence in sequestered in captain’s quarters, while Howell’s lap dogs Jannings and Spider wait in a black van watching Michael’s friends Jeannie and Lucas having sex; “I love the smell of blonde pussy in the morning”, one quips.<br /><br />These are the patients who’ve undergone Howell’s immortality treatments. The greasy, strung-out lowlifes Howell is experimenting on look like they walked off the set of a post-apocalypse film. Lawrence’s Tex is a creepy hunchbacked retard who’s practically rotting. Presumably Michael underwent a similar treatment, which somehow failed to have the same effect on him. Before the close of the sequence, Tex sprays some neon vomit on the deck and Lucas (William Upjohn) starts a fight with Spider after pissing on his van. Spider is the movie’s most interesting character, really, played with sadistic relish by David Letch (“Ratbag” in <em>Nate & Hayes</em>).<br /><br />Over the course of this scene (which feels like prologue number two) Michael is revealed to be a rather unlikable character, a hick with a faux-punk attitude. This seems a strange choice, as Michael is a sympathetic character from the start, and, in such an unambitious revenge film, it seems in the film’s best interest to position Mike as a justified protagonist, not a reject from the <em>Future Kill</em> fraternity.<br /><br />What’s interesting about <em>Death Warmed Up</em> has to do with how the fractured narrative allows for interesting mistakes and flaws. For example, instead of building up to the final confrontation between Howell and Michael, Michael sees Howell walking across the street the moment he arrives on the island. Instead of getting to work at collecting information and planning some sort of attack, Mike takes his friends to the beach or to explore some weird tunnel. The film takes unnecessary diversions into embarrassing comedy, including a truly offensive scene were a white guy plays an obnoxious Indian convenience store clerk.<br /><br />And while we spend a lot of time with Mike’s pals, we know nothing about them. Lucas is an annoying jock, Jeannie his horny leopard-print wearing girlfriend. Mike’s girlfriend Sandy is largely underdeveloped, although some tics and idiosyncrasies serve to flesh out her character somewhat. In the beach scene, Mike’s ass and boner (!?) are center-frame, as he struts around in his underwear. When he is dressed, he’s wearing a Roy Lichtenstein-esque print shirt and cut-offs, complimenting the film’s specific design scheme. While there’s a lot of slack creatively here, at least the costume department and title company seem to be in sync. All the fashions here are fetishistic, from the tight pants and muscle tees to the post-apocalyptic leather to the revealing nurses’ outfits Howell’s supermodel-assistants wear.<br /><br />The tunnel-exploration scene at least moves the film forward, as the crew are ambushed by Spider and his pal, who chase the kids on motorbikes. As they ride they pass through orange, red, yellow and blue lights. By this point, any interpretation of color-specific thematic resonance breaks down. In a rapid-fire succession of events reminiscent of the opening scenes, Spider’s partner is killed and Jeannie is nearly killed. What exactly is wrong with her isn’t clear, aside from perhaps a vague head injury. Sandy flips, and demands that Mike take her to the psychiatric hospital, and gets so heated that she strangles Michael while yelling at him. Of course, asking the same people who are responsible for one’s injury for help is ridiculous, but, the narrative needs to get the kids to get to the hospital somehow. Of course, this could have been solved by simply giving Mike a plan in the script, instead of sending him off to the beach without any sort of concrete plan.<br /><br />As Michael and his friends make their way to the hospital, all hell is breaking lose, as Spider—heartbroken—has decided to free all of Howell’s patients, essentially turning the film into a zombie flick. This scene features a Doctor yelling, “We got an outbreak of psychos!” which is particularly offensive. The zombies mob the island, while Mike and the rest finally arrive at the hospital. In a succession of clunky set-piece action scenes, most everybody dies, including Jeannie. In a satisfying moment, Spider kills Lucas. The subtext here is that Michael is directly responsible, as he’s risked his friends’ lives, and doesn’t seem to feel any guilt or even make the connection.<br /><br />If it seems like I’ve barely mentioned Dr. Howell, this is because he’s barely a presence in the film. His motivations are broad and clichéd. His part is mysterious. In fact, he’s only really on screen at the beginning and end of the film, serving only to motivate changes in Michael’s personality and priorities. Their confrontation is a role reversal from the early shower scene, and is just as intimate. Howell again wields a phallic weapon under sickly yellow lighting, only this time Michael does the penetration, thrusting a scalpel into Howell’s body as he says “trust me”, mocking Howell earlier line. While this should be the film’s denouement, it seems merely to be another inconsequential moment in a fractured narrative full of confusingly isolated moments.<br /><br />The real climax comes while Sandy and Mike attempt to flee the island (Spider and hundreds of zombies presumably nearby). They come upon some debris in the road, and are unable to pass. Sandy sobs “Why!?!?” while banging Michael’s head violently while they sit in the defeated getaway-car. Her impulsive violent outbursts are bizarre, but at least serve as some kind of characterization. “It’s over,” he says, then “It hasn’t even begun.”, as if the film is actually the prelude to an epic zombie apocalypse.<br /><br />(Major spoiler here).<br /><br />After this, this histrionic and weird film wraps up with a histrionic and weird ending. Michael walks stiffly to the side of the road—recalling his zombified movements from the film’s opening—and is killed by falling power lines. This seems to suggest that Mike is paying for his earlier sins, and that he accepts this, as something about the action of the power lines seems supernaturally predetermined. That said, this is a film which stubbornly resists psychoanalysis. Attempts to pin ideas onto certain moments seem futile.<br /><br />After Michael dies, Sandy clutches his lifeless body and wails in agony, which is a suitably depressing end for a rather misanthropic film. After the end credits (in the same style of the opening, set to a minimal Eno-esque score), there is one final tag, Spider’s catch-phrase “I’ll get you all!” which seems directed at the audience. This is actually a nice touch, in keeping with this film’s strongest attribute: its assured, cutting edge style, which seems more in line with European art-house cinema, which actually became a hallmark of NZ genre cinema. There isn’t much in Blyth’s resume to indicate this, however. In fact, I don’t know much about Blyth, as his filmography is obscure. Apparently he was fired off the set of <em>House III</em> and directed a childrens film called <em>Grampire</em>. Aside from Bruno Lawrence’s extended cameo, there’s not much here to attract the average genre fan. And while <em>Death Warmed Up</em> is a minor cult film, it hasn’t achieved nearly the notoriety it demands; it would be interesting to see some sort of special edition DVD release.<br /><br />What’s most unique about <em>Death Warmed Up</em> is how its flaws actually work in its favor. Instead of being a typical slasher film, it is instead a dense and curious mess of a movie which demands repeat viewings. The counter-intuitive workings of the film ask questions that are hard to answer. Why does the film focus its attention of the trivial yet gloss over important events, creating a confusing and elliptical narrative. Why the elevation of typically uninteresting minutia and irrelevant characters driving, waiting and hanging around, while presumable more interesting plot developments take place elsewhere. The film is seriously flawed, yes—these interesting elements never gel as a cohesive whole—but it’s strangeness and ineptitude seem almost experimental in light of the deliberate, assured stylistic choices made. This internal juxtaposition works to cook up a film which has many problems, yet still stands as an intriguing and dreamlike cinematic mutation.</div>Gregory Josephhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10028442903379055090noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19713453.post-83891572990842477532009-06-16T13:02:00.006-04:002009-06-16T15:16:49.256-04:00Shaun Luu Horror Fest 2009Last weekend most of the Samurai Dreams writers and I drove to Syracuse, NY for the fifth annual <a href="http://www.myspace.com/shaunluuhorrorfest">Shaun Luu Horror Fest</a>. Held as a fund-raiser in memory of Syracuse-based hardcore singer and horror-nut Luu (who died of brain cancer), the fest is a two day marathon of genre flicks and hardcore music. We were there for the films only, eight 35mm prints* shown in a row at the <a href="http://www.palacetheatresyracuse.com/">Palace Theatre</a>. While they showed some pretty strong stuff this year, none of it can compare to what they've shown in the past. Can you imagine the 2008 fest, which featured <em>Salo</em>, <em>Holy Mountain</em>, <em>Re-Animator</em> and <em>Cannibal Holocaust</em>!? Insane!<br /><br />Never in my life have I sat through so many movies in a row. While it was a great experience, by the end I was tired and my eyes were totally wrecked. Check the lineup: <em>Ghostbusters 2</em>, <em>Monster Squad</em>, <em>Black Devil Doll</em>, <em>City of the Living Dead</em>, <em>Deep Red</em>, <em>Cannibal Ferox</em>, <em>The Warriors</em> and <em>The Thing</em>! I thought I'd post a play-by-play of the marathon.<br /><br /><em>Ghostbusters 2</em>. I hadn't seen this in probably ten years, so it was interesting to revisit it on the big screen. This was the "family friendly" portion of the fest, and <em>GB2</em> began at about 1pm after some introductions from fest organizers. As much fun as I had, my enjoyment was blunted slightly by my anticipation for seeing <em>Monster Squad</em>. Not surprisingly, this was probably the best-looking print of the night aside from Grindhouse Releasing's restored print of <em>Cannibal Ferox</em>.<br /><br /><em>Monster Squad</em>. Yes! This was the flick I was looking forward most to seeing on the big screen. I would have loved to have seen this one as a kid, so this was major wish fulfillment. I noticed so much I hadn't before (the complete matte painting of the town seen from Sean's roof at the beginning, the <em>Being</em> poster in the clubhouse, etc). And the print was in great shape too, which I wasn't expecting.<br /><br />After <em>Monster Squad</em> there was a two hour break, and we went to a cool vegan restaurant in the area. Drinking a bottle of Kombucha boosted my stamina levels.<br /><br /><em>Black Devil Doll</em>. The only contemporary film of the fest, this is the debut feature from <a href="http://www.rottencotton.com/">Rotton Cotton</a>'s Jon Lewis. Billed as a cross between <em>Child's Play</em> and <em>Dolemite</em>, the titular villain is an executed black serial killer reincarnated in the body of a wooden ventriloquist dummy. He spends the rest of the film killing women and raping their corpses, shitting on people and quoting <em>Chapelle's Show</em>. As tasteless and offensive as this low budget flick tries to be, it's more dull than anything, and I actually dozed off at one point. While I admire Lewis for making this small movie and promoting the hell out of it--and for releasing those awesome VHS-company logo shirts at RC--this really just isn't my kind of thing.<br /><br /><em>City of the Living Dead</em>. The second in Fulci's trilogy of zombie films, I was really excited to see this one for the first time. A rare uncut print with dutch subtitles was used, and it took me about fifteen minutes to stop instinctively looking at them, even though the dialog was spoken in english. Of all the films, this felt the most unique to me, because when do you get a chance to see something like this in the theatre? The maggot-shower scene was particularly gross on such a huge screen. By this point the theatre was pretty packed, and I really felt that the audience was in synch. A totally respectful and enthusiastic crowd.<br /><br /><em>Deep Red</em>. While it was still great to see, this was probably the most damaged and faded print of the night. But man, it ruled to hear that music at such volume. I think I may have dozed off for a few minutes here and there, but by the end I had caught my second wind.<br /><br /><em>The Warriors</em>. Since I saw a midnight showing of this at the Hadley Cinemark last year I was thinking of taking a walk or something during this, but the audience's hype level was infectious, and I had to stay. Each gang introduction drew applause, and I was grinning through the whole thing. Really keyed into the homoerotic subtext of the film, amazed I never really noticed it before. Before the film began, the main organizer of the event (whose name escapes me) warned that Paramount was so worried about the condition of the one print they could find that they sent it over for free with warnings of extreme damage. Who knows why, because the print was absolutely beautiful, and one of the best of the night. Weird.<br /><br /><em>Cannibal Ferox</em>. Of all the films, this was the only one I was kind of afraid to watch. While I've seen <em>Cannibal Holocaust</em>, <em>Emmanuelle and the Last Cannibals</em>, <em>Mountain of the Cannibal God</em> and <em>Porno Holocaust</em>, the jungle adventure genre of Italian sleaze usually makes me queasy, especially the nasty animal-slaughter bits. And in <em>Ferox</em>, the scenes of animal torture and slaughter are relentless. Apart from this unfortunate business, Lenzi's film is equal parts camp and sleaze, and even at its bleakest there's humor and disarming weirdless to laugh nervously at for most of the film. The humor slowly drains out of the film however, and the last third is relentlessly dismal and depressing. And that ending! While I can't condone the animal bits, this film, like <em>Cannibal Holocaust</em>, is at least loaded with social commentary as well as gore and exploitation (which makes it kind of hard to deal with critically, as it makes itself impossible to dismiss, as much as one might like to do so). The audience groaned and squirmed practically in unison at every turn, and while this is an unpleasant film, viewing it with a huge audience on a large screen was a singular experience.<br /><br /><em>The Thing</em>. It was about 2:30 am by this point, and I had to keep moving around the theatre just to stay awake. Only the most hardcore of film freaks were still in attendance by this point, and I saw more than a few people totally cached out and napping. While I wasn't at my sharpest, and I had to take my glasses off to soothe my eyes, it still ruled to see one of my all time favorite films up there. Tried to pay really close attention to where all the characters were at all times, and noticed that MacCready's shack is still standing at the end. Awesome.<br /><br />Fun to notice: Mary Ellen Trainor in both <em>Ghostbusters 2</em> and <em>Monster Squad</em> and Thomas Waites in <em>Warriors</em> and <em>The Thing</em>. Also, James and I got pretty excited when we realized that the protagonist in <em>Cannibal Ferox</em> is played by Lorraine De Selle, the warden from <em>Women's Prison Massacre</em>.<br /><br />The End!<br /><br /><br />*Aside from <em>Black Devil Doll</em>, which must have been a DVD.Gregory Josephhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10028442903379055090noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19713453.post-57240764389376561822009-05-07T14:48:00.019-04:002009-07-22T14:54:04.435-04:00Women's Prison Massacre (1983)<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgyPA12rvDlj8QNm_NbKe8QdBtduPLd8zdWYwuBvntRrHAWk5cuSVu1TJe3ipLy8P9sZzIfH4NSxcp25AksFvWfwMnOYzG8R8Y0Ca-zKjye_Nyelsfokw3ud9JFPPzXbucawaC/s1600-h/womens_prison_massacre.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 253px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5333180039646051122" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgyPA12rvDlj8QNm_NbKe8QdBtduPLd8zdWYwuBvntRrHAWk5cuSVu1TJe3ipLy8P9sZzIfH4NSxcp25AksFvWfwMnOYzG8R8Y0Ca-zKjye_Nyelsfokw3ud9JFPPzXbucawaC/s400/womens_prison_massacre.jpg" /></a>While Bruno Mattei's <em>Women’s Prison Massacre</em> (<em>Emanuelle Fuga Dall'Inferno</em>, literally <em>Emanuelle Escapes from Hell</em> in Italian) is technically a Black Emanuelle film (Gemser actually stars as the character Emanuelle, and not just in re-dubbed and re-titled international cuts), it’s pointedly different than the original Black Emanuelle films made infamous by Joe D’amato. Despite directing films like <em>Porno Holocaust</em> and the fake Caligula sequels, Mattei’s films are much tamer than D’Amato’s (but, really, that isn’t saying much). While Emanuelle is still a head-strong, free-spirited reporter here, her character is quite different than the Emanuelle found in D’Amato’s classic exploitation films.<br /><div><br /><div align="justify">In films like <em>Emanuelle in America</em> and <em>Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals</em>, Gemser plays the photo-journalist Emanuelle as a carefree, precocious nymphomaniac, following illicit thrills around the globe. So, it’s strange to find her locked in a prison here, robbed of D’Amato’s defining cosmopolitan characteristic. Consensus being that Gemser can’t act, one would assume that her performance here would lack the nuanced performance potentially afforded by this alteration. Granted, Gemser is wooden, but that may have more to do with her icy, impassable beauty, a disposition that can occasionally convey only aloof boredom. However, Gemser’s performance here is actually quite good, and certainly among the best of her career (the Russian Roulette scene is particular evidence of this).<br /><br />The film begins with a perplexing bit of performance art that barely serves as exposition and fails to set the proper tone of the film. Emanuelle and two compatriots are seen on a make-shift prison stage, slathered in harlequin face-paint and flatly presenting a three-hander monologue, the type of “I’m a whore/ I’m a woman” pseudo-feminist hot-air found in many exploitation scripts. Workman Italian stalwarts Claudio Fragasso (notorious director of the D'Amato-produced <em>Troll 2</em>, which Gemser had a hand in) and Olivier Lefait (first A.D. to Mattei on <em>Rats: Night of Terror</em> and writer of the lesser <em>Violence in a Women’s Prison</em>, which this film is a sort-of sequel to) really outdid themselves with this bizarre trio of monologues.<br /></div><br /><div align="justify"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 350px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 240px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5333158438322670914" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOb31ZlplXtABiy3yj7tXOiii0RFIq5Q6BVjfkAc7r6es0e6UBwYvbTx1mnEotkwuBerp6VLOrZzrOtjUBbmV92IQpXzvDcqPeddcULp1KxhmVZxBpo8_I2S20uU5TC35f5fBs/s320/gemser1.jpg" /> While at odds tonally, this strange and off-putting opening scene in <em>Women’s Prison Massacre</em> seems added as some sort of notification (or warning) to the audience that this is not a typical women-in-prison film. In fact, nods in the film to genre convention (lesbianism, rape, riot, escape) feel compulsory and tangential; in the average by-the-books WiP picture, these moments would be highlighted and heavily presented, as the execution of lurid subject matter is the raison d’etre of most exploitation genre films. Chalk it up to characterization perhaps, but it’s rather unsuccessful in that regard. The inmates find this bit of theatre so offensive they begin to riot and throw fruit (where the hell did they get it?), at the urging of Emanuelle’s rival Albina (Ursula Flores, for some reason playing a different character than she played in <em>ViaWP</em>).<br /><br />While Emanuelle is at the film’s core, <em>Women’s Prison Massacre</em> is in many ways an ensemble piece. Albina and at least two other inmates are adequately developed. And midway through the film, a half dozen new characters are introduced in an inspired run of scenes. The prison’s warden (Carlo De Mejo as Harrison) is for some reason tasked with housing a gang of vicious male killers in an unused portion of the prison (as to why they would be brought to a women’s prison is a question you’re going to have to ask the gods of exploitation cinema). Italian character actor Gabrielle Tinti provides the film’s best performance as the gleefully sadistic Crazy Boy Henderson (He and Gemser would reunite the following year in D’Amato’s post-apocalyptic sleeper <em>Endgame</em>).<br /><br />With the introduction of these characters, the film nearly shifts into Poliziesco thriller territory, as the gang manages to take control of a police van en-route to the prison, enlisting police-impersonating thugs as blockade and taking the warden captive. The crew hole up in the prison, locking the inmates and guards away as they negotiate with the cops gathering outside the compound (including the corrupt D.A. who put Emanuelle in prison). These action scenes are incredibly visceral and lively, and perfectly complimented by Luigi Ceccarelli’s Simonetti-esque score. This is a welcome twist on the formula and a fully functional and successful genre-mash-up.<br /><br />While up to this point the violence in the film is of a prisoner-catfight type nature (aside from a blackly-comic scene where Emanuelle takes a brutal baton-hit to the face from <em>Cannibal Ferox</em>'s Lorraine De Selle), the sadistic nature of Crazy Boy’s gang pushes the film into new mean-spirited directions. While directors like Sergio Martino and D’Amato craft films with a pervasive tone of sleaze, Mattei’s <em>WPM</em> contains only isolated moments of shocking violence and sexual depravity, which makes these scenes more powerful than they would be alongside the non-stop cavalcade of shock formula of the D’Amato Black Emanuelle films or Martino‘s cannibal pictures. While Crazy Boy taking a mouthful of gore is a high-note, the film’s most gruesome scene has to be the sequence where a broken and abused prisoner fatally wounds a thug by inserting a razor blade into her vagina and seducing him (luckily this isn‘t a D‘Amato film, as Gianetto De Rossi would have actually figured out some way to film the appendage/razor contact).</div><br /><div align="justify"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 180px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5333177259869202914" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiLe6zxz0UrYlobH1FqXqNW1YlDwU1cBiD49Bx3aYQ4lRuaJvr_htpQpq5s1JwR9IoNAklfmrccO6yjUp_yzATiW9CPhb7y5hHVnZccfql63QznTtHXzuCJj_TURUcmWBafaaL/s320/womens3.jpg" />Despite a predictable climax, Emanuelle’s fate at the end of the film is somewhat ambiguous. Presumably this device is a bit of insurance, material to fuel the start of more Emanuelle WiP films. However unless I’m mistaken, this and <em>ViaWP</em> are the only such major pictures. While the triumphant tone of the film’s dénouement is depleted by this bit of business, this film is still jam-packed and engaging, and certainly a high-point for both the women-in-prison genre and the sub-genre of Black Emanuelle films starring Laura Gemser. Recommended.</div></div>Gregory Josephhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10028442903379055090noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19713453.post-30417174388892575612008-12-31T20:00:00.004-05:002008-12-31T20:35:01.439-05:00Year End of Films in Life 2008Every film I saw in theatres in 2008:<br /><br /><em>Aliens vs. Predator Requiem</em><br /><br />Some friends wanted to see this. Worse than I could ever imagine.<br /><br /><em>Black Orpheus</em><br /><br />One of my favorite films. A nice print at Amherst Cinema.<br /><br /><em>Hellboy II the Golden Army</em><br /><br />Better than the first. I liked this in an uncomplicated way. <em>Liked</em>.<br /><br /><em>Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull</em><br /><br />Oppressive CGI, lame-brained story peppered with 2012/Mayan fad hokum, phoned-in performances, over the top yet boring action scenes. No thanks.<br /><br /><em>Forgetting Sarah Marshall</em>/ <em>Pineapple Express</em><br /><br />Fine and funny comedies both!<br /><br /><em>Iron Man</em>/ <em>The Incredible Hulk</em><br /><br />I didn't care for either of these. There's a lot I'd like to say about this new era of Marvel Universe films, so I'll save it.<br /><br /><em>Zabriskie Point</em><br /><br />Amherst Cinema again. Terrible acting, inane dialog, a pointless, unearned finale. Yet somehow it's still a great film.<br /><br /><em>The Dark Knight</em><br /><br />Fantastic. Deserves the extreme hype. Mainstream to the core, yet somehow still truly dismal, nihilistic and ambiguous. A nice deconstruction of something like <em>Iron Man</em>, I think.<br /><br /><em>The Punisher</em><br /><br />My buddy and I saw this opening day in an empty theater. I actually enjoyed this, it's stupid, bizarre, nasty and offensive in the finest 80s exploitation tradition. A kind of update of something like <em>The Exterminator</em>. A review should follow the DVD release.<br /><br /><em>The Happening</em><br /><br />I absolutely loved this film, it's probably my pick for film of the year. I may be the only person who totally liked this movie. Me and Ebert. It's everything a mainstream film isn't supposed to be: weird, idiosyncratic, hermetic, unapologetically hammy, political, singular, perplexingly cast. If you watch the bonus footage on the DVD, it becomes apparent that Shyamalan did exactly what he wanted to do, and he's seen acting strange and purposefully unnerving his actors, conciously creating an otherwordly vibe on set. Reading reviews of this film after I saw it, I was shocked at how closely they all resembled each other. The same narrative is trotted out: Shyamalan makes three good movies and two bad ones, this time it's three strikes you're out with his third unsuccessful film. I liked <em>The Village</em> and <em>Lady in the Water</em> quite a bit. It's fine if the majority of critics disliked this film, but does everyone have to hit it from the same angle?<br /><br />DVD times: <em>Diary of the Dead, Christmas on Mars, Sukiyaki Western Django, Cloverfield, Doomsday, Tropic Thunder, X-Files: I Want to Believe, King of Kong.</em><br /><br />I spent most of 2008 watching older films, but I would have liked to have seen the following, overlong list of films: <em>The Wrestler, Man on Wire, Wall-E, Speed Racer, Funny Games, Drillbit Taylor, Burn after Reading, Synecdoche NY, Transsiberian, Gammorrah, Red Cliff, Rachel Getting Married, Wendy & Lucy, 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days, Paranoid Park, Tell No One, Eden Lake, The Orphanage, Hunger, Taxi to the Dark Side, Nothing like the Holidays, The Strangers, Slumdog Millionaire, Milk.</em>Gregory Josephhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10028442903379055090noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19713453.post-27208883010927677592008-12-20T14:52:00.003-05:002008-12-20T15:04:05.751-05:00Pleasant and EnjoyableBack in the day I used to write short, nearly pointless reviews for films on IMDb... The Rankin-Bass <em>Hobbit</em>, <em>Mafia vs. Ninja</em>, <em>The Brain that Wouldn't Die</em>... some of the cult films I was digging in high school. I should delete them really. Today I was checking out my neglected IMDb profile when I noticed that I had posted a review which I have no recollection of writing. Strange, because it was posted about a year ago, so Samurai Dreams was in full effect, so it makes little sense I would write a review that wouldn't make it's way to this blog or the pages of SD. It's a little longer than a capsule, but provides little substantive information about the film, <em>Crimezone</em>. The film couldn't have been fresh in my mind, because I think the last time I watched <em>Crimezone</em> was as a junior in college, several years ago. The "my friend fell asleep watching this" part is mysterious as well, and must have been college-era. The jazzy style and complete lack of punctuation, capitalization and proper sentence structure by the end might point to inebriation, but I recall consistant clean-living from that period. <br /><br />Did I let somebody write a review on my account? I think I would remember that. Most likely I did write it, and possibly after a few beers... strange all the same.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094918/usercomments-4">Check it out.</a>Gregory Josephhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10028442903379055090noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19713453.post-80249365754042454432008-12-11T22:24:00.001-05:002008-12-11T22:26:27.447-05:00Skatebraoding<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghartJZnWdYwL7-bR5cN-yPK2aZ24zK0oXpOsk7qjE97JgZGwA_9XfJJfZ9dGhoc6mmf-RgnJEtro_6xAS7vPP3m6T1yktycJ_BtfAXkV6cP8mDYMA2cymIcPOisDLy2M6R8zL/s1600-h/Clipboard02.bmp"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 241px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghartJZnWdYwL7-bR5cN-yPK2aZ24zK0oXpOsk7qjE97JgZGwA_9XfJJfZ9dGhoc6mmf-RgnJEtro_6xAS7vPP3m6T1yktycJ_BtfAXkV6cP8mDYMA2cymIcPOisDLy2M6R8zL/s320/Clipboard02.bmp" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5278739535377654018" /></a>Gregory Josephhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10028442903379055090noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19713453.post-27905397782133092002008-10-31T20:27:00.003-04:002009-02-12T21:19:37.032-05:00The October Ordeal II 04: The Monster Club (1980)Roy Ward Baker’s <em>The Monster Club</em> is a typical anthology horror film, unique only for its retro style. While the film horror genre had gotten quite nasty by 1980, <em>The Monster Club</em> reminds of Vincent Price and Boris Karloff in its style, tone and attention. In fact, its wrap-around interstitial segments and source (a single author, here a more contemporary figure than Poe or Hawthorne), are taken directly from older, classical fright films. Production house Amicus had produced several such anthology films, of which this is the last.<br /><br />Price, in fact, is present here in the role as host, as Count Eramus, an ancient vampire and member of “The Monster Club”, a clandestine joint where monsters can hang out and catch some tunes (the film is based on this “monster underground” concept). The tales he tells are based on the work of R. Chetwynd-Hayes, acclaimed British writer. Confusingly, Chetwynd-Hayes is present in the film as a character, played by John Carradine. Chetwynd-Hayes meets—I presume—a character of his own creation in Eramus, who introduces himself by biting Chetwynd-Hayes on the neck. Not enough to turn or kill him, of course, just enough for a taste (“You’re my favorite author” Eramus says, and “It was the finest blood I have ever tasted”). Eramus brings Chetwynd-Hayes to a Halloween party at the club, with promise of inspiring tales. This is strange, as he’ll be telling Chetwynd-Hayes his own stories.<br /><br />The scenes in the club are light and humorous, and each features a full musical performance. The music is a mix of new-wave and Thin Lizzy-style pub-rock, featuring such bands as Night, The Viewers, the Expressos and a reunited Pretty Things (one of the greatest psychedelic bands ever, here shilling a bland reggae-influenced style). In fact, music is practically oppressive in this film, present throughout. When a band isn’t performing in the interstitial bits, a UB40 song is playing. During the segments, the music of a single composer is featured, including John Williams in the first.<br /><br />Each segment is in some way based on a hierarchy of creatures which Eramus outlines early in the film. For example: if a werewolf mates with a ghoul, it produces a “were-ghoul”. This idea may have seemed clever in the script, but is confusing on-screen, despite the handy chart Price keeps pointing at. The subject of the first story is a “Shadmock”, creatures which look like gaunt humans and have the ability to melt people with a deafening whistle (this odd concept is typical of the film). The well-off Shadmock we meet here is looking for love, which he finds with his house-keeper, who is working for a con-man, who plans to rob his mansion. Inevitably, he catches her in the act, and shows the audience what happens when he whistles. This segment is competent if a little dull, and ultimately the least successful of the three.<br /><br />In the second section, Eramus and Chetwynd-Hayes turn to hear a man on stage tell a humorous story from his youth, in what is the most overtly comic of the three tales. The boy in the film is the son of a human woman (the gorgeous and talented Britt Ekland) and a vampire, “Count Manfred”. His family has moved from Transylvania to England, but have been followed by vamp-hunter Pickering, played by Donald Pleasance, who approaches the boy as a priest and delivers the creepiest line in the film: “I’m not a stranger, I’m a clergyman! Would you like a caramel?” Pleasance and his cronies follow the boy back to his house, in an attempt to assassinate the Count, with the stakes they carry (“Beware men who carry violin cases,” Manfred tells the young Viscount). The music in this section is fantastic, traditional Transylvanian folk music performed by John Georgiadis. This is the most likable segment in the film, and the type of story that really fits the format. Pleasance is great here, high-energy and committed to the story’s inherent camp.<br /><br />Between this and the final tale is the film’s most awkward moment. A rock band called Night performs while a woman strips down to her (animated!) skeleton. “Magnificent!” and “Beautiful bones!” are a few of Eramus’ remarks. This scene feels inappropriate, as the film feels decidedly PG otherwise. This moment is more in keeping with dismal grime-fests like <em>Night Train to Terror</em>, another horror anthology (which also features a gimmicky premise—God and Satan telling tales on a moving train—and live musical performances). The tone otherwise is carefree and sentimental, almost melancholic in its nostalgia (palpable but vague). The animated skeletal frame reveals the budget for these wrap-arounds, and feels more movie-of-the-week than feature film in its tackiness. This criticism aside, the dark turn of this act sets the mood for the final third of this film, its heaviest and scariest.<br /><br />In this tale (told partly in illustrations by John Bolton, the still-active British comic artist), a horror director is out scouting locations when he finds himself marooned in an anachronistic village of ghouls, who want to eat him. With help from Luna, a hilariously naïve “Humghoul” (“They not go in there, fall down if go in there!”), he manages to escape, (spoiler) only to be picked up by police and driven right back to the village square. The police are escorting the mysterious “Elders” to the town for—what? Some kind of inspection maybe. This is the creepiest, most depressing moment in what is otherwise an light-hearted, inoffensive horror film. This segment also features fine music, by electronic composer Alan Hawkshaw.<br /><br />After this story is over, the film fits in one final set-piece joke as its conclusion. Eramus officially inducts Chetwynd-Hayes into the club, reasoning that humans have committed more atrocities than any monster. It’s hard to see any political dimension to this, as the film is—for the most part—very silly and slight, without significant depth (I haven’t read any of the source stories, so I can’t comment on their richness). This is simply the final tag in a series of goofy moments, cheesy jokes and “Gotcha!” gags. Price is the perfect presider, as he’s in enthusiastic ham mode throughout. While I enjoy Price in anything, ultimately I prefer his toned-down, less-theatrical performances in such films as <em>Last Man on Earth</em> and <em>The Conqueror Worm</em>.<br /><br />After Eramus’ induction ceremony, he and Chetwynd-Hayes throw up their hands and head to the ballroom floor to dance (with fat women!) as the Pretty Things (whom the audience has been waiting for) play the film’s theme, “Welcome to the Monster Club” over the credits. While this film’s length is typical of the anthology, it could have been tidier, especially in the wraparound segments. While the three stories are pretty clearly defined and ordered-by-tone (melancholic, humorous, frightening), they are all equally as successful. Which an audience member prefers will ultimately reflect personal taste. That said, its doubtful any one person will entirely enjoy the entire film. Well, the good with the bad, I suppose. As horror anthologies go, <em>The Monster Club</em> isn’t essential by any means, but it is still entertaining as an unpretentious (and un-ambitious) entry in the form.Gregory Josephhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10028442903379055090noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19713453.post-66976604551287398152008-10-21T19:09:00.010-04:002009-02-12T21:18:24.812-05:00The October Ordeal II 03: Virgin Witch (1972)<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEUm4EkSYdVMFupCjXHfckAb5EssMBQT4hQoovb24XXqIxezDU3i5pOAOnXuEHrKhwksSxy1gA6Bq8o22bYd0e71c5PnAZBtz4ygzOxfeTFU8FA9od7c7h2R2uXknN9Uryj0-d/s1600-h/virgin_witch_poster_012.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5259760699618901010" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEUm4EkSYdVMFupCjXHfckAb5EssMBQT4hQoovb24XXqIxezDU3i5pOAOnXuEHrKhwksSxy1gA6Bq8o22bYd0e71c5PnAZBtz4ygzOxfeTFU8FA9od7c7h2R2uXknN9Uryj0-d/s400/virgin_witch_poster_012.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><div><div><div>(Spoilers throughout)<br /><br />Although <em>Virgin Witch</em> (also known as “Lesbian Twins”, which I’m sure sells more DVDs) came at the height of the European horror-sleaze boom, in many ways it’s an isolated and singular film. Partly this is because of narrative—which I’ll get to later—but moreso because it seems to lack specific time and place. It feels like an Italian film, but it’s British. It’s director, Ray Austin, has otherwise worked only for television. It’s writer, Beryl Vertue, is an accomplished producer, but has only this one writing credit on her resume. It promises a swinging mod-London setting, but takes place mostly inside a single house. It looks on the surface like exploitation—which it is—but offers little in the way of eroticism, really. For these reasons, <em>Virgin Witch</em> is rather obscure, and while it isn’t essential, its still an above average and unique genre entry.<br /><br /><em>Virgin Witch</em> starts off with out-of-focus stills of nude torsos, a montage of nudity to come, with the actors’ names pasted on, much like the opening of an average porno. Then—suddenly—creepy psych rock blasts and a woman is seen being burned alive, screaming, with no explanation. All of this happens in about two minutes, leading an informed genre fan to expect a brain-melt along the lines of <em>Black Candles</em> or any Jess Franco picture. Well, forget this strange opening, because it will never be explained or revisited. The eternal question when viewing Giallo is this: is it better to exhaust oneself attempting to keep the narrative strands in order, or is it appropriate to just give in to sound and image, and hope that by the end something makes sense? I was prepared to ask myself this same question, until I realized that <em>Virgin Witch</em> isn’t a Gialli slasher, it’s a British vampire film. Aside from this first section, <em>Virgin Witch</em> makes sense, and can easily be followed, processed and understood.<br /><br />After the surreal first minutes, <em>Virgin Witch</em> begins in earnest, with its central characters, Christina and Betty, played by Ann and Vicki Michelle—who are twin sisters, although I didn’t pick that up until researching the film, as they are by no means identical, and never explicitly referred to as sisters in the film. Outgoing Christina and demure Betty have escaped their boring country lives to slum it in London, and they’re living with the middle-aged Johnny (Keith Buckley), a stylish guy who is really just that; it’s a mystery what he does for a living (he exists because later on the film will need a third party to intervene later). This in-media-res opening finds Christina looking for modeling work and finding it with the icy Sybil Waite (Patricia Haines), a character defined solely by the fact that she’s a businesswoman and a lesbian, usually shorthand for villain in a film like this (hold that thought). Christina is willing to go nude and Sybil needs a model on short notice, so she instantly gets the job, and is immediately on her way to an ornate mansion in the countryside, with Betty along for the ride as her chaperone.<br /><br />This all happens in the first ten minutes or so. By the time Betty and Christina make it to the secluded mystery house, most characters are established, a mystery is developing, and all gears are in motion. <em>Virgin Witch</em> wastes no time establishing itself, making for a breezy and digestible narrative, a feature rare for the genre.<br /><br />There are two major characters left to introduce, both waiting at the foreboding manor. The owner of the house—and prime-mover of action—effete charmer Gerald Amberly (Neil Hallett), and horny photographer Peter (James Chase), who seems as in-over-his-head as Christina and Betty are about to be. These two are introduced first as voyeurs, preying on the two women in that way; while Peter is an innocuous character, Gerald will soon be preying on Betty and Christina in a more real and serious way. Peter’s voyeurism is work, and more for the benefit of the audience, as his camera’s lens records Christina in progressive states of undress. Gerald is more sinister, as he watches Betty in the tub through a Norman Bates hole in the wall.<br /><br />While Christina poses outside, Betty explores the interior of the mansion, coming upon an altar in a sub-basement room lined with red curtains, decorated with demonic masks, daggers and other magickal ephemera. When she’s confronted by Gerald, she’s shocked to learn that Gerald and Sybil are open about their esoteric practices, and are happy to reveal to the women that they are the two pillars of a witch’s coven. Gerald brings Christina down to see the room, and is pleased to discover that she’s into it, and wants to join the circle. In fact, this is what the coven needs exactly, a virgin to simultaneously complete a complex ritual and to join as an initiate. According to Gerald, the group practices white magick only (as opposed to the black magick of most films, I presume).<br /><br />Lest the audience forget, there’s a guy named Johnny in this film, which Virgin Witch points out mid-way through with a London call-back. Johnny is hanging out with a cool Jazz singer chick in a swank club, where news somehow reaches him of Betty and Christina’s predicament. Since he has Sybil’s business card (for some reason or other), he rushes off to the mansion to see what’s up. This scene is an unnecessary one, just a bit of exposition that could have been handled with a phone call, but it’s a nice diversion which really adds a bit of levity to the film, right before one of it’s most intense moments, the first ritual, which is like a watered down version of <em>Behind the Green Door</em>.<br /><br />During the night-time initiation, a group of new characters gather with Gerald and Sybil around Christina, the ritual’s focus. Some robed minions strip Christina, Sybil rubs oil on her nude torso, and Gerald drops robe and deflowers Christina to jazzy psych-rock akin to Angus MacLise’s score for <em>Invasion at Thunderbolt Pagoda</em>. She wakes up the next morning in bed with Sybil, who apparently demanded Christina sleep with her as well as Gerald. During this scene, which occurs two-thirds of the way in, one wonders where the horror was. Sure, the focus is on typical horror material, but the film isn’t scary, and doesn’t create any sort of foreboding atmosphere. More accurately, <em>Virgin Witch</em> would be called a drama about magicians and models, if not for some strange supernatural elements introduced in the final reel. Up ‘til this point, <em>Virgin Witch</em> is an atypical genre film, a laid-back, unhurried unspooling of events over a long weekend.<br /><br />The supernatural element I’m referring to is Christina’s burgeoning—and unwarranted—telekinetic abilities, which develop seemingly only out of her desire to force Sybil from the coven and take her place in the circle. This is a strange development, as its abrupt and severe tone betrays the preceding tone of the film. Complaints aside, I did enjoy this final section on its own, Christina drunk with dark power, nastily betraying both Betty (by passive-aggressively forcing her into the second part of the ritual against her will) and Johnny (by applying newfound mind control techniques to bring him into the ritual as well), and by psychically assaulting Sybil, forcing her out of the circle, and (spoiler!) later killing her, turning their white magick coven into a black magick group in a single night.<br /><br />This final ritual (and the climax of the film) is more intense than the first. Christina rubs oil on Betty’s breasts (fulfilling the explicit promise of the film’s alternate title, and the implicit promise of lesbianism any film of this kind seems to offer by default), and Johnny has sex with her, entering the ceremony in a black robe and Onibaba mask. This scene is the creepiest and most uncomfortable in the film. The music in this scene is even wilder than before, a mix of Comus and Jade warrior, wailing away while a full-blown orgy takes place, bringing in all the characters of the film, including Peter. (Major spoiler for rest of paragraph) Mid-coitus, Johnny snaps out of it, but instead of fleeing with Betty, he moves her to a more private spot, and continues to deflower her! I suppose because they’ve moved outside the circle they’ve decided to have sex on their own terms, simultaneously ruining the ritual. Meanwhile, Christina kills Sybil by stabbing the dirt, somehow.<br /><br />This is a strange and confusing ending, its signification obscure. At the same time, it’s satisfying, because it’s a pitch-black, weird, atypical, dark and desperate off-type ending, and totally morally ambiguous, ending the film without clear heroes and villains. There may not be any major thematic point delivered; this is simply how this story ends. As to what happens next is anyone’s guess. The one reason this ending is offensive is because it betrays the earlier good-natured tone of the film; if the entire film were as strange as its conclusion, it wouldn’t be impacting, it would just be a bummer, as nasty as the grimiest English and Italian horror (<em>Evil Eye</em>, <em>House with Laughing Windows</em>, <em>Girly</em>, et al).<br /><br />While I’m not going to seriously suggest that a film I’ve already compared to mainstream porn is feminist in nature, this is one possible long-shot interpretation: to Gerald and Sybil, Christina and Betty are another set of pretty-girl acquisitions, necessary for their power rituals and important only in that way. The women have subverted their positions in both the film and the genre to steal back control of their own destinies. By upsetting the balance of power in the coven, Christina has asserted herself in a surprising and unique way, even if her strategic tools are sex, subjugation, manipulation and murder. Keep in mind a woman wrote the screenplay, so its not surprising that power would be wrestled back by Christina at the end, who as a character also satisfies the sexist demands of the genre for the majority of the picture.<br /><br />Despite major problems, <em>Virgin Witch</em> is unique enough to warrant attention. It’s a well paced and easy to watch film, without major breaks and confusing jump cuts, usually inherent to the genre. The actors in the film are uniformly good. The music is fantastic. The photography and idiosyncratic and atmospheric, without being as cavalier and bold as in other similar films of the era. This may even make it appropriate for non-genre fans, as it fails to make mistakes many similar pictures <em>do</em>. <em>For</em> genre fans, <em>Virgin Witch</em> may be somewhat disappointing, as its not as weird, profane, perverse and pornographic as <em>Vampyros Lesbos</em>, for example. It’s also British, which has a lot to do with why its markedly different from the Giallo films it nevertheless takes inspiration from. In translation, the genre has both lost and gained in <em>Virgin Witch</em>, an obscure entry, but nevertheless an interesting film.</div></div></div></div>Gregory Josephhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10028442903379055090noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19713453.post-61140124327125697172008-10-19T17:42:00.009-04:002009-02-12T21:17:08.927-05:00The October Ordeal II 02: Cutting Class (1989)<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxVynbhmIFfOcjtyku_IIBEhVA6z5yj-4XO-5l24W5hnsDcxOWcLV-0mlWXhoAXuFYJjcg4_HAV_woW9iC0pvzoiMxV_yDjvJi-QL0hgHFB0vgL4VLsYr4ZlVSfC2v1Cz_W5GI/s1600-h/2051161189_4a86091411.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5259320920263513762" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 237px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 407px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" height="397" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxVynbhmIFfOcjtyku_IIBEhVA6z5yj-4XO-5l24W5hnsDcxOWcLV-0mlWXhoAXuFYJjcg4_HAV_woW9iC0pvzoiMxV_yDjvJi-QL0hgHFB0vgL4VLsYr4ZlVSfC2v1Cz_W5GI/s320/2051161189_4a86091411.jpg" width="235" border="0" /></a>(Spoilers throughout)<br /><br /><div></div><div>The low-budget psycho-killer whodunit <em>Cutting Class</em> can be considered part of the final wave of non-franchise 80s teen slashers. While the proceeding decade would produce films riffing on the genre and deconstructing it, <em>Cutting Class</em> settles comfortably into the parameters of the form. While its plot and narrative arc are rote, there are many bizarre—and unfortunate—idiosyncratic moments which make <em>Cutting Class</em> interesting—if not enjoyable.<br /><br />First time director Rospo Pallenberg (writer of <em>Exorcist II</em>, and the John Boorman films <em>Excalibur</em> and The Emerald <em>Forest</em>) helms an ensemble cast of high-school students and faculty: Brian Woods (Donovan Leitch, Jr.), Paula Carson (Jill Shoelen of <em>Popcorn</em>, <em>Chiller</em> and <em>The Stepfather</em>) and Dwight Ingalls (Brad Pitt!) on one side, with veteran character actors in the “adult” roles, including Martin Mull as Paula’s father, and Roddy McDowall as the lecherous school Principal. Once the murders start, <em>Cutting Class</em> goes out of its way to provide about a dozen possible suspects, including several clear Red Herring throwaway false-leads.<br /><br />Basketball hero Dwight, his girlfriend Paula, and their old friend Brian are simultaneously suspects and potential victims throughout. Brian seems the too-obvious choice, as he’s recently been released from a psychiatric hospital for causing his abusive father’s death. He’s erratic, secretive and dresses all in black. In most films, he would be the secret hero, noble yet misunderstood. (Spoiler!) Not here, as Woods is in fact the killer. <em>Cutting Class</em> did have me guessing throughout, but not in the kind of way where, through deduction, the mystery could be solved—it could have been anyone, really. For example, we discover that Dwight taught Brian how to cut brake lines, which is the method he used to do in his dad, and that Paula has feelings for Brian, and that her father acted as a lawyer during Brian’s trial. I never believed for a second that the pervy Principal, the creepy night janitor (quote: “I am the custodian of your fucking destiny!”) or the tough gym teacher were serious contenders. By making the young “psycho” the villain, <em>Cutting Class</em> merely becomes yet another film in the horror genre perpetuating negative stereotypes about those suffering from mental health conditions or those who have spent time in psychiatric facilities. Great.<br /><br /><em>Cutting Class</em> is best remembered for featuring a “young” (26) Pitt. It isn’t difficult, however, to forget about the media superstar Brad Pitt of today when viewing this film, as he isn’t given any more screen time or space than Leitch or Shoelen. In fact, there isn’t a thing remarkable about Pitt’s performance as the homophobic, racist, slick and arrogant Dwight. Dwight is relentlessly hard on Brian, his former friend. He tells Brian he went to the hospital with “a broken mind”—as in, not a leg. In one brazenly offensive scene—played for laughs—he convinces an entire classroom full of kids to fake electrocution, mocking Brian by reminding him of the electro-shock therapy he was subjected to. Pitt’s performance is broad: he plays Dwight the jock as dopy, jiving and erratic, in what is surely an attempt to cast Dwight as a reasonable suspect, but which instead comes off as uneven and bizarre.<br /><br />Shoelen’s Paula is a jumbled and confused character. On the surface she’s a squeaky-clean good-girl cheerleader and straight-A student (who’s actually withholding sex from Dwight until he brings his grades up). Yet, at the same time, she is made the object of lust for nearly every male character in the film (yes, including her father). The advances of these men and boys are obvious and sneering, yet she seems completely oblivious, which ultimately amounts to subconscious compliance here. Never have I seen the classic media “whore/virgin” binary contained so completely in a single character. This point is really the film’s most blatant and baffling stumbling block, which demands further attention here.<br /><br />The universe of <em>Cutting Class</em> is an exploitative, mean-spirited and libidinous place, with Paula at its center. In the first scene of the film, Paula goes outside to talk to Mull in her underwear, while he loads up his truck for a hunting expedition (this “city boy goes to the country” thread runs throughout as comic relief). She seems always in the act of presenting herself as a sex object, as if the film acts as a medium connecting her directly with the wishes of masturbating 14-year old viewers. Later on, she fingers a photo of her and her father, and then makes out with Dwight—who’s wearing her dad’s suit—on her parents’ bed. Sheesh!<br /><br />While Roddy McDowall is a welcome presence in a sea of bland performances (he’s clearly having fun playing a sleazy authority figure), his Mr. Dante is a truly despicable character (who is of course comic relief). He drinks booze in his office in one scene, and makes Paula bend down in front of him, exposing her panties, and suggests she try on her new cheerleading outfit right there in his office. Inexplicably, later in the film Dante is seen hanging out in the theatre, trying on ladies’ clothing and make-up. Even worse than Dante is Paula’s art teacher, who presents a scantily-clad Paula as a figure model for his students to sketch. This seems not only creepy and inappropriate, but nearly illegal as well. Dwight says to the teacher “You like <em>boys</em> don’t you?” to which the teacher sneers “<em>No</em>!” while eyeing Paula to prove it. Is the audience really supposed to think Paula is such a naïf? Or is she into it? She’s a chaste character in the script, but as directed, she becomes merely an object, as framed by the film’s unapologetic male gaze. The teacher is later placed in a giant kiln by Brian and killed.<br /><br />During each of these scenes, Brian is in the background somewhere, out of sight, spying. Whether he’s “protector” or killer, this is still serious, obsessive voyeurism, which I guess is supposed to be romantic. Dwight usually isn’t far off either. Is this a typical day at school for these kids? While totally different in tone, the presentation of these characters reminds of contemporary Troma, in that not a single principle is likable. And while Shoelen is an interesting actor (with a unique gravelly off-type voice), Pitt and Leitch are dull and thin in their performances. A bit more intensity from Leitch would have helped, and a lot less of what Pitt clearly thought was intensity.<br /><br />When <em>Cutting Class</em> finally gets around to its conclusion, it is without much satisfaction. In some ways the film never really gets started, as it never achieves any sort of appropriate tension or dramatic rhythm. Dwight and Paula are final boy and final girl, and the two manage to kill Brian in a shop-class brawl, where Brian and Dwight fight each other with various power-tools. For most of the battle, Paula merely screams. When it looks like Dwight is going to lose, she distracts Brian by taking her shirt of. She then hits him in the head with a hammer and yells “I’m sick of people playing with my emotions!” This is almost the single clear statement in the film, only if framed in the context of her position here as both a character and an actor. Whatever is gained with this declaration is promptly lost in the next scene (a final “Gotcha!” where Dwight and Paula nearly crash Dwight’s Jeep, of which Brian sabotaged earlier), when Paula tells Dwight and her father “I likes Brian… so much for feminine intuition!” Mull answers a few questions for the audience (still leaving a few plot holes), and ends the film with both a titular line and a final tag” “You kids aren’t <em>cutting class</em> are you?” Freeze-frame, and we’re done.<br /><br />Scores of slashers work similar plots into fine films that work on any number of levels. <em>Cutting Class</em> however opts to highlight the negative and essentialist assumptions which are often implicit in the form. That said, the film could have used itself as a commentary, a kind of genre expose, or at least as a template for black humor and transgression. Instead, it merely wallows joylessly in it’s own grime, content. Most slashers have an established set of leads, but <em>Cutting Class</em> goes out of its way to present the worst aspects of these stereotypes, simultaneously congratulating its jock-hero asshole boyfriend and objectifying its naïve teenage girlfriend—for laughs. <em>Cutting Class</em> is a historical and genre curiosity; it is recommended only in this way.</div>Gregory Josephhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10028442903379055090noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19713453.post-22520460083618117062008-10-01T23:04:00.004-04:002009-02-12T21:29:00.950-05:00The October Ordeal II 01: Dead Heat (1988)<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://img145.imageshack.us/img145/7951/hg7oh.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: pointer; HEIGHT: 451px" alt="" src="http://img145.imageshack.us/img145/7951/hg7oh.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />(Thanks to <a href="http://blog.analogmedium.com/">Analog Medium</a> for some of these images)<br /><br />With the right four leads, zombie comedy <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Dead Heat</span> could have been a minor cult-classic. Unfortunately, we have Treat Williams and Joe Piscopo as Roger Mortis (get it?) and Doug Bigelow, and Lindsay Frost and Clare Kirkconnell and plot-moving ingénues Randi James and Rebecca Smythers. That said, <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Dead Heat</span> is still a fun, harmless B-pic that manages to successfully exist in several genres: Buddy-Comedy, Cop Actioner, Science Fiction and gross-out Zombie horror.<br /><br />While writer Terry Black has a slim resume, director Mark Goldblatt has an interesting oeuvre. He’s edited many Arnold movies, from <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Terminator</span> and <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">T2</span> to <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Commando</span> and <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">True Lies</span>. He edited <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Get Crazy</span>, <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Predator 2</span>, <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">The Howling</span> and tons more. <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Dead Heat</span> was his first foray into directing, which he followed with the Dolph Lundgren <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Punisher</span> the following year. Also, Goldblatt is credited as First A.D. to Paul Verhoeven on <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Robocop</span> (also he edited <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Starship Troopers, Showgirls</span> and <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Hollow Man</span>).<br /><br />And, <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Robocop</span> clearly had an influence on this film. <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Dead Heat</span> opens with an aerial skyscraper tour of L.A. against a Pouledouris-biting main title theme. The similarities continue as we join a crime already in progress: two masked hoods robbing a yuppie Jewelry store. The cops soon arrive to complete the triad, and a spectacular display of indiscriminate gunfire seems to kill everyone except the thieves, who nevertheless take plenty of bullets, baffling the cops (PCP? They wonder). The way civilians and cops alike go down reminds of the ruthless and misanthropic action cinema of the time.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://analogmedium.com/blog/2007/06/deadheat2.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; WIDTH: 398px; CURSOR: pointer; HEIGHT: 213px" alt="" src="http://analogmedium.com/blog/2007/06/deadheat2.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />The comparisons to <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Robocop</span> end here, with the entrance of Piscopo and Treat as Doug and Roger, two rogue cops on “double probation,” who cruise around listening to generic new wave tunes in a drop-top. Piscopo plays himself, mugging, wearing muscle-tees and telling offensive, unfunny jokes. Treat’s character, “Roger Mortis”, is his foil, a dry, deadpan stoic. Treat Williams is a B-string lame leading-man of the Matt McCoy or Parker Stevenson variety, here doing a straight man’s version of an off-beat cop. This casting (a boring actor as a low-key guy) actually makes you want more of Piscopo, which I never thought would be possible.<br /><br />The two hear about the stand-off on the Police radio, which gets Piscopo so hyped-up he squeezes his hot dog really hard, causing the ketchup to obscenely bust up out of the bun. This seems to really shock them both. They jam on over to the scene, finally disposing of the long-lived criminals with a grenade and a speeding car, which really steams the chief! But the force has bigger things to worry about, because the coroner’s office immediately recognizes the bodies as recent arrivals... as in dead guys who walked away.<br /><br />While the shifty Dr. McNabb (Darren McGavin) is uncooperative, Roger and Doug turn to his assistant—and their friend—Rebecca Smythers, played by Clare Kirkconnell, who has the right look and attitude, but not the chops. Her and Treat together are really a snooze-fest. She discovers that an experimental drug called “Sulfathyasol” is pumping through their un-dead veins, which can be traced back to the monolithic “Dante Pharmaceuticals”. While Becky stays at the morgue to perform a second autopsy on the thugs, Roger and Doug head over to Dante Pharm to check it out.<br /><br />There they meet PR head Randi James, who gives them the standard tour. Of the four principles, Lindsay Frost is the best actor, well-cast and game for the part (she’s been in loads of TV shows, including <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Lost</span>). Doug sneaks off to break into the super-secret wing of the facility, and is immediately assaulted by a many-faced mutant biker. My Netflix DVD started to skip at this point, so I lost a few minutes of the battle. While this is going on, Roger finds himself locked in a decompression chamber, where he suffocates and dies. Doug joins up with Randi (who claims ignorance), and they promptly rig up the re-animation machine and bring Roger back to life, with little deliberation aside from Piscopo trying to emote and saying “But what about the <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">soul</span>?”<br />The two cops visit Becky, who diagnoses Roger as a walking corpse, with less than a day to live. He’s determined to use his remaining hours to bring down Dante, so Doug and zombie-Roger rush off while Randi continues doing whatever it is that she is doing. They stop off at Randi’s, and find two hilarious zombies straight out of Miami Vice, who they kill with a harpoon and an electrified hot tub.<br /><br />Randi seems to recall something about a sketchy Chinese butcher Dante Pharm makes mysterious deliveries to, so the three zip over to his deli to check it out. They find Professor Toru Tanaka chopping up a chicken! This is the best scene in the film, as Doug and Roger have to fight not only Tanaka but also a roomful of reanimated deli-meat, including a giant headless cow, which Doug dispenses with a meat hook. The pre-CG special effects here are impressive, as are the prosthetics and make-up FX throughout the film. They miss out on the butcher, “Thule” (Keye Luke), who’s escaped back to Dante.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://analogmedium.com/blog/2007/06/deadheat4.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; WIDTH: 435px; CURSOR: pointer; HEIGHT: 244px" alt="" src="http://analogmedium.com/blog/2007/06/deadheat4.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />After a short stop at the library (to give Treat a chance to freak out and flail through an existential crisis), they split up to follow different leads. Roger and Randi travel to Randi’s adoptive father’s crypt (Dante Pharmaceuticals honcho Arthur P. Loudermilk, played by Vincent Price!), where they discover some useful cryptogram on a lampshade. When they get back to Randi’s, they find Doug upside-down in a fish tank dead! From here they race over to Dante for the big conclusion, as all parties converge. Loudermilk isn’t dead after-all, as we see him trying to convince a crew of oldies to invest in his regeneration tech. A nearly decomposed Roger comes in with a machine gun, and has a hilarious fight with a zombie where they shoot each other about a thousand times. Also, most of the old people go down as Thule indiscriminately shoots up the room. A brain-dead Zombie-Piscopo comes at Roger, but he snaps him out of it by quoting homophobic jokes the two had cracked earlier in the film. I’m not lying. (Spoilers coming’) They then swiftly take out McNab and Loudermilk and blow up the lab. The two walk off to the cheesy credit song, flipping <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Casablanca</span>: “This could be the end of a beautiful friendship.”<br /><br /><span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Dead Heat</span> is completely dumb, and derivative, but it’s still fun, and has fantastic special effects. While it’s a far cry from its source material, <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Dead Heat</span> is loosely based on <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">DOA</span>, which it references twice, with the character of Bigelow and also with a scene playing on a television in Randi’s apartment. <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Dead Heat</span> is also clearly inspired by <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">An American Werewolf in London</span>, which inspired a whole micro-genre of transforming-buddy or family member horror comedies in the 80s and 90s: <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Teen Wolf, She's Back, My Mom’s a Werewolf, My Boyfriend’s Back</span>, <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Idle Hands</span>, et al.<br /><br />The Anchor Bay DVD I watched is loaded with extras, including twenty minutes of deleted scenes (including a lost Dick Miller cameo), promos, the script, and a commentary with Black, Goldblatt and the producers, where Black reveals that a sequel was commissioned but never filmed, which he wrote the script for (makes sense—Loudermilk’s body is never seen and Becky hints that she’s found a way to slow or reverse the decomposition process). Too bad, as the fully zombied-up duo could have been more fun leads than they are here—neither particularly shines, unfortunately. If Michael Nouri and Wings Hauser played Mortis and Bigelow, this film would have been much improved. Nevertheless, I present here a well-paced, fun, lively, gory little flick with great special effects to kick off The October Ordeal ’08.Gregory Josephhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10028442903379055090noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19713453.post-74697572443034397612008-05-25T22:15:00.001-04:002008-08-16T23:44:15.523-04:00Samurai Dreams 5 SNEAK PEEK #5Sorry, there is no "Samurai Dreams 5 SNEAK PEEK #5".<br /><br />All my reviews were posted here first.Gregory Josephhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10028442903379055090noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19713453.post-14957014807100764462008-05-23T00:42:00.001-04:002008-08-16T23:44:49.181-04:00Samurai Dreams 5 SNEAK PEEK #4<span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Human Highway</span> (1982) Reviewed by Andy<br /><br />Hopper only plays a small role in this one but I thought I’d mention it anyway since the movie itself is so weird and unknown. It was directed by Neil Young and Dean Stockwell, and Neil Young actually plays one of the main characters: a doofy looking gas pump operator at a roadside diner. The diner is located in the middle of nowhere (the Arizona desert maybe?) and the look and feel of it (as well as the movie as a whole) resembles something out of Pee Wee’s Playhouse. Hopper gets very little airtime but he plays a psychotic cook (surprise surprise!) named Crackers.<br /><br />For Neil Young and Devo fans this movie is a must-see. Yep, Devo—along with their annoyingly cute pal Buji Boy—take up a big chunk of this amusing mess by playing an irradiated disposal team at a nuclear power plant. A few songs are sung and towards the end there’s a completely random scene where Neil Young passes out and hallucinates himself and Devo doing an extended 10 minute long jam of “My my hey hey”. What the…?!! I know it sounds too good (or bad) to be true but I’m not lying. It’s also true that it will take at least a few days to get Devo’s cover of “It takes a worried man” out of your head after watching this.Gregory Josephhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10028442903379055090noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19713453.post-47022661600463060642008-05-19T00:53:00.004-04:002008-08-16T23:45:20.088-04:00Samurai Dreams 5 SNEAK PEEK #3<span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Spasms</span> (1983) Reviewed by Kevin<br /><br />I had a good feeling about this one—the cover had a ‘classy slasher’ vibe to it and Peter Fonda’s in it. So how bad could it be? Bad. The plot had something to do with a giant poisonous snake that is transporter to the U.S. for some reason and gets loose, I think. For some reason, one guy can see what the snake sees, but he doesn’t really do much with the ability besides bug-out his eyes and sweat. Everyone hangs out and acts boring and the snake eats people and that’s the movie.<br /><br />Nearly all of the snake’s scenes are shot from the first person, presumably so the filmmakers wouldn’t wear out the effect of a 35 dollar rubber puppet that can’t do anything but open its mouth. It’s strange, but the effect where the snake’s victims swell up after they are bitten is pretty cool. Just goes to show that even in a piece of garbage like this, someone was doing good work. Oh, one more thing there wasn’t one spasm in this whole movie, let alone multiple spasms. What gives? *Gregory Josephhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10028442903379055090noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19713453.post-3112196514335738952008-05-13T00:32:00.004-04:002008-08-16T23:46:55.610-04:00Samurai Dreams 5 SNEAK PEEK #2<span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Full Eclipse</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold;font-size:10;color:black;" ><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span><span style="font-size:100%;">(1993) Reviewed by James<br /><br /></span></span></span><span style="font-size:10;color:black;"><span style="font-size:100%;">From Anthony Hickox, the director of the <i>Waxwork</i> movies, comes this hard-hitting werewolf cop HBO original movie starring Mario Van Peebles and the obnoxious Bruce Payne. Van Peebles plays your typical movie cop: he's tough as nails, takes unnecessary risks, hates authority, talks about "the job" a lot, has a rocky marriage, and feels really guilty when he gets his partner almost killed. <?xml:namespace prefix = o /><o:p></o:p></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size:10;color:black;"><o:p><br /><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></o:p><span style="font-size:100%;">But then the movie’s formula starts to change when his dying partner gets injected with werewolf blood, and is instantly healed. He starts hopping around and is impossible to kill, and the movie's best scene is with him chasing a car full of thugs while jumping crazily over cars and driving a guy’s motorcycle straight into a wall! But he doesn't like being a werewolf cop, so he shoots himself in the face with a silver bullet. Our man Mario then gets invited to Bruce Payne's police officer therapy group, which is actually a squad of vigilante werewolf cops! <o:p></o:p></span></span></span><span style="font-size:10;color:black;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span><br /></o:p>Most of the werewolf cops don’t get any character development at all, except for Patsy Kensit, who is the required babe who gets to sex up Mario. The worst part is definitely Bruce Payne, who is a really shitty actor. His idea of acting cool is talking really dumb alliteration, having really long, flowing locks, and strutting around like a retarded robot learning to be human. The action sequences are fun and well put together, but the make-up blows. Bruce Payne is the real werewolf, while the others are just hooked on a derivative of his blood that acts like a drug. When they show their werewolf powers, its just goofy claw hands and fang faces, while Payne turns into a lame poofy werebear at the end. *1/2</span><o:p></o:p></span>Gregory Josephhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10028442903379055090noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19713453.post-52569212923681121572008-05-09T00:15:00.007-04:002008-08-29T23:24:03.558-04:00Samurai Dreams 5 SNEAK PEEK #1<span style="font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;">In the </span>coming days I'll try to post a review from each contributor. Here's one from Max.<br /><br /><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Chameleon Street (1989) Reviewed by Max</span><br /><br />If you know who Wendell B. Harris is, I salute you. According to IMDB, he’s only been in three films, the last being <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Road Trip</span>. He wrote, directed and stars in <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Chameleon Street</span>, one of the best true independent films I’ve ever seen. Harris plays William Douglas Street, a young black man growing up in the Midwest. He works for his father’s locksmith business, freezing his ass off in a van and listening to the Sex Pistols on a walkman. For a man with larger than average brains and smaller than average means, he knows there’s gotta be an angle of economic escape. Being a drug pusher is attractive, but ultimately unprofitable, so he attempts to blackmail a Cubs player. Unfortunately his partners in crime published the blackmail letter in the local paper and signed it William D. Street.<br /><br />With a sudden rush of media attention, he tries to play his way into writing articles for Time magazine (really, he just wants to meet female celebrities). When he’s found out, he impersonates a graduate of Harvard Medical School and becomes a staff surgeon at a local hospital (he gets by on a handy medical manual which he hides in his briefcase—he even performs a hysterectomy!). Of course the consequences of duping a hospital and performing amateur medicine catch up to him with a simple background check, and he’s sent to prison, from which he escapes<br /><br />All through his “careers” Street gets the same message from his wife every morning: “Make some money.” The financial and emotional burden of having to support yourself is real, and so there’s more than a little bit of sympathy for this con man’s foibles. He is of course a selfish cad who always assumes he’s smarter and more important than those around him (he’s right about 75% of the time). Street’s got a pretty good sense of humor, though, and great taste (or maybe it’s all just from Harris, because I can’t find one solid indicator of the reality of Mr. Street’s existence—which could be meant as a joke on the audience, but nonetheless would add another layer of meaning to the narrative).<br /><br />Favorite moment—I dunno, it’s a toss up between the weird murder dance around a little girl’s tea set and the super-duper fashionable French/Renaissance costume ball. ****Gregory Josephhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10028442903379055090noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19713453.post-88332775602293262282007-10-31T23:12:00.001-04:002008-08-19T00:04:52.404-04:00The October Ordeal Day 31: Halloween IIIOctober 31<sup>st</sup>: <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Halloween III</span> (1982)<?xml:namespace prefix = o /><o:p><br /><br /></o:p>One of the reasons I’ve always loved <i>Halloween III</i> is because it’s so damn <i>weird</i>. Some of its strangeness comes from observation (how strange it is to see kids running around in gross masks once a year), but most of it is inspired. This is a kitchen sink film and then some: a doctor investigating a vast conspiracy, robot henchmen, witchcraft… <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 /><st1:place>Stonehenge</st1:place>? Some aspects of <i>Halloween III </i>simply make no logical sense at all. Writer and director Tommy Lee Wallace made one of horror cinema's true historical curiosities, and decorated it extensively with carved pumpkins. <i>Halloween III </i>is a favorite of mine, and I’ve chosen it as the cap to The October Ordeal.<o:p></o:p><o:p><br /><br /></o:p>While <i>Halloween III </i>is generally well-remembered by genre fans now, it failed to excite at the box office. John Carpenter intended to kick-start a yearly series of diverse films under the “Halloween” banner. Unfortunately, fans simply didn’t want a Halloween without Michael Myers. Pity, as this film has more life than the sequels that followed it. The back of the original VHS release spends half the synopsis on the back cover explaining that Michael Myers in not in fact in <i>Halloween III</i>. <i><span style="FONT-STYLE: italic"><span style="FONT-STYLE: italic"><span style="FONT-STYLE: italic"></span></span></span>Halloween IV </i>is even apologetically sub-titled “The Return of Michael Myers.” It's hard to imagine what all the fuss was about. While this film is a self-contained story outside the Michael Myers continuity, it contains enough fun references and in-jokes to at least place it in the same universe.<o:p><br /><br /></o:p>There are of course differences. John Carpenter’s music—for instance—is considerably more upbeat, at times approaching disco. Many aspects of this film feel strangely familiar yet also displaced. At times it feels like an odd riff on the horror genre altogether. Truth be told, <i>Halloween III </i>is more of a Sci-Fi mystery than a fright film. While it may not be a typically "scary" horror film, <i>Halloween III </i>finds its inspiration in the American holiday itself, way more so than the first two films. While the first <i>Halloween </i>makes great use of the season, its concern is not the particulars of Halloween itself. Not only are the aesthetics of the holiday amplified here, but the ancient origins of Halloween as well, specifically its roots in pagan Samhain and Hallowe’en.<o:p><br /><br /></o:p>Tom Atkins is right at home as an alcoholic absentee dad cracking an occult conspiracy. I have no idea why he’s playing a doctor (Dr. Dan Challis); he plays it the same way he’d play a cop or detective. He's casually drawn into the pulp plot when a dying man in his ward exclaims “They’re going to kill us all” while clutching a pumpkin. Challis then sets out to find the killer, perhaps out of boredom. Dan O’ Herlihy is characteristically professional as the witch CEO of Silver Shamrock, a mask-making corporation based in sleepy <st1:place><st1:city>Santa Mira</st1:city>, <st1:state>CA</st1:state></st1:place> (the location of the original <i>Invasion of the Body Snatchers</i>). Kids nationwide can’t seem to get enough of Silver Shamrock’s colorful masks, despite the fact they come in only about three varieties.<o:p><br /><br /></o:p>Silver Shamrock’s masks, unfortunately, are deadly. Each mask contains a coin chipped off of Stonehenge (?) which, when triggered, will lazer a kid’s face off and release bugs and snakes from the skull (??). Staging it as a media event, at <st1:time hour="21" minute="0">nine PM</st1:time> on Halloween, Silver Shamrock plans to broadcast the image of a blinking Jack O’ Lantern to trigger the deadly masks (???). Conal Cochran (O’ Herlihy) plans to use the event as a way to punish ignorant kids. As a pagan wizard, Cochran is disgusted by Trick or Treats; he still sees Samhain as a time to honor the dead and confront mortality. Out of desire to “Control [the] environment” and appease an angry universe, Cochran has planned this mass sacrifice via TV and Toys, turning Halloween’s commerciality against itself. Television itself features in the film; a set is on anywhere Challis goes. <i>Halloween III </i>actually manages to exploits Halloween clichés in an interesting way, more so than <i>Halloween</i>. John Carpenter’s original film may be the masterpiece, but <i>Halloween III </i>is truer to its namesake.<o:p></o:p><o:p><br /><br /></o:p>Instead of the other <i>Halloween </i>films, the obvious reference point is Larry Cohen. There’s a playfulness here that reminds of <i>The Stuff </i>and <i>Q</i>. From the noncommittal Hitchcockisms to the hard-boiled characters and action, there’s a lot in common between Wallace and Cohen, throwing all ingredients into a blender so unapologetically being the most striking similarity.<o:p><br /><br /></o:p><i>Halloween III </i>features a great (and reflexive) ending, ambiguous in one sense yet also definitive. Far too many horror franchise endings seem only to facilitate the next sequel. While it may be a good distance from the first film in quality, I argue that this is the second best film in the series, perhaps because it's the most unorthodox entry. The October Ordeal has been an ordeal, and this is the best film I could have chosen to end it with. <i>Halloween III </i>rocks, and belongs on the Halloween-party marathon list of any rowdy crew of drunken pagans.<o:p></o:p>Gregory Josephhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10028442903379055090noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19713453.post-83786452290153618142007-10-31T00:43:00.003-04:002009-04-16T14:25:13.479-04:00The October Ordeal Day 30: DeathdreamOctober 30<sup>th</sup>: <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Deathdream</span> (1974)<?xml:namespace prefix = o /><o:p><br /><br /></o:p>(While <i>Deathdream </i>is an evocative title, Bob Clark’s chosen title, <i>Dead of Night</i> actually makes more sense. However, since Blue Underground has released the film as <i>Deathdream</i>, this is how it shall be referred to here.)<o:p><br /><br /></o:p><i>Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things </i>is a generally well-remembered cult film I rather dislike. I find Bob Clark and Alan Ormsby’s script arch and theatrical. Rather that criticize Clark and Ormsby’s earlier film I can instead confidently say it’s a film that I just don’t get. The Clark-directed <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Deathdream</span> on the other hand, is not at all the mannered and decidedly-hammy horror-comedy <i>CSPWDT </i>is. While a few moments of witty banter remind of Ormsby’s comic impulse, this is a sober and straight-faced affair.<o:p><br /><br />In a set-up which recalls <em>Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge</em>, soldier Andy Brooks (Richard Backus) is killed in battle in Vietnam. With this knowledge, the audience follows Andy on his journey home, looking very much alive. As to how Andy made it to North America is a mystery; we meet him hitchhiking. Andy’s folks are quite shocked to see their son, whom they believed to be dead. When Andy shows up in the middle of the night, the entire family wakes to greet him: father Charlie (veteran actor John Marley), mother Christine (Lynn Carlin), and sister Cathy (Alan’s then-wife Anya Ormsby). When Charlie exclaims “We thought you were dead” Andy coldly responds “I was.” Thinking this a joke, the family laughs nervously. Respecting Andy’s wishes, the family keeps his return a secret, and accommodates his every wish. As happy as they are to see him, they soon realize he isn’t the same old Andy; he’s <em>changed</em>.<br /><br />Considering horror’s broad scope, the family melodrama is a relatively unexplored avenue. It’s practically novel to find a horror film in which a family is given full attention (or at least a horror film in which the family is not comprised of cannibals). While <em>Deathdream</em> is a film with various attentions, the potential for fracture in any family’s stability is a strong theme. Charlie finds out early on that Andy killed the truck driver who drove him home, yet can’t bring himself to notify the police. Charlie, an alcoholic, is accused by Christine of being a bullying, inattentive father. While there is little evidence of this, there may be a reason that Charlie turns against Andy while his wife is still in denial about Andy’s crime. For an unknown reason, Andy needs living blood to survive. Besides this, he seems completely emotionless, aside from a black sense of humor and a sick feeling of pity for those around him. In one disturbing scene, Andy strangles the family dog Butchy to death in front of neighborhood kids. From here mother and father become divided not only because of Andy, but against each other as well. While her character is never fully developed, sister Cathy seems to be the only character with any sense, the family member most unaffected by sham reasoning and willful ignorance. After Andy kills several more family acquaintances, Christine still stands by his side, even though Andy cares nothing for her.<br /><br />The acting is uniformly great here. Both Marley and Carlin are Oscar-nominated actors, and all the supporting roles are great. Even Alan Ormsby and Bob Clark appear as extended cast, and both do a fine job. Backus isn’t asked to do much, but he does it well. Originally a theater actor, it seems Backus has spent the last 30 years acting in soap operas and soft-core porn. I’m quite surprised his career went in this direction, as he is a commanding lead presence.<br /><br />In a final sequence potent with dread, Cathy tries to normalize Andy by bringing him on a double date with her boyfriend Bob (Michael Mazes) and Andy’s ex-girlfriend Joanne (Jane Daly). A disastrous trip to the drive-in seems to surpass even the final act in Bogdanovich’s Targets. Andy by this point seems to be decomposing, and fresh blood will no longer sustain him. Tom Savini worked make-up for the first time on <em>Deathdream</em>, and while the gore effects are minimal, they are convincing. Savini would later claim that he identified with the film, as he himself had been in Vietnam as a photographer.<br /><br />Setting a scene at a blacked drive-in is in keeping with the dark, moody composition found throughout. “Dead of night” refers not only to a specific moment (Andy’s return), but the emotional and existential tone of the film as well. This is a dark film compositionally because it’s a dark film thematically. Bob Clark kept things dark in <em>Black Christmas</em>, but allowed strategic lighting as well; <em>Deathdream</em> is a film where Andy spends most of his time literally sitting in a darkened room. Also fully dark is Carl Zittrer’s fantastic score. The musique-concrete Zittrer would perfect on <em>Black Christmas</em> he tests here: layered voice, dense clouds of reverb, treated piano. In fact, Zittrer remained the go-to guy for both Ormsby and Clark on many of their later films.</o:p><br /><o:p><br />While <em>Deathdream</em> may be dark, its darkness doesn’t come from a strong ontological position, it comes from an era-specific political ideology. The anti-war message of the film is unstated but read loud-and-clear. While it stands as a competent thriller, <em>Deathdream</em> is really an examination of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Andy sits alone, hides behind an affected macho mask, keeps his family and friends at a safe distance, and often acts recklessly and violently. As it was in ‘72 (the year <em>Deathdream</em> was filmed), it is in '08. By taking a non-partisan stance on a measurable consequence, Ormsby effectively presents the breakdown of one family unit, via the destruction of one man’s soul, as a real consequence of war. With his sure hand, Clark masterfully gives style to Ormsby’s substance. A genre masterpiece.</o:p>Gregory Josephhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10028442903379055090noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19713453.post-7730179743892722472007-10-29T23:18:00.001-04:002008-08-18T23:59:20.366-04:00The October Ordeal Day 29: SkinnerOctober 29<sup>th</sup>: <i>Skinner</i> (1995)<br /><br />In one of his few starring roles, Ted Raimi plays the eponymous Dennis Skinner, the mild-mannered serial killer. We join a cross-country spree in process as Skinner boards at the home of Geoff (David Warshofsky) and Kerry Tate (<?xml:namespace prefix = st1 /><st1:place><st1:placename>Ricky</st1:placename> <st1:placename>Lake</st1:placename></st1:place>). Viewers may note the plot of<span style="FONT-STYLE: italic"><span style="FONT-STYLE: italic"> </span>Skinner</span> is similar to that of contemporary sleeper <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">The Minus Man</span>. Geoff is a trucker constantly on the road, so Kerry is happy to have the company. Though they needed the money, Kerry’s real motivation for posting the room ad is to find companionship. Callous Geoff dislikes Skinner, but isn’t around often enough to really care. Skinner recognizes Kerry’s loneliness, and exploits it as part of a cruel game. While Skinner only uses Kerry to amuse himself, at night he stalks the streets with his duffel bag full of “tools,” scouting unsuspecting prostitutes. To pay the rent Skinner takes a job as janitor at a nearby factory.<?xml:namespace prefix = o /><o:p><br /><br /></o:p>Ted Raimi is perfectly cast. Skinner himself is nearly a cipher, his personality largely unknown. What we <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">do know</span> about his past is vague at best; he drifts comfortably, his crimes unnoticed because of not only his preferred targets but also his unassuming demeanor. His politeness and quirky sense are humor are totally affected however, a strategic act. Whoever the “real” Dennis Skinner is, the audience never knows. Following Skinner is Traci Lords as Heidi, a prostitute who survived Skinner’s blade. Heidi’s skin is disfigured, horribly scarred, and she hides half her face behind a blonde wig. Lords’ performance is typically bad here, her vocal and physical handicaps poorly played; she can’t even limp convincingly. Heidi stays in a rundown hotel near the Tate home, spied on by creep hotel owner Eddie (Richard Schiff, an actor this film is lucky to have in a supporting role).<o:p><br /><br /></o:p>The camera, music and pacing of <i>Skinner </i>remind of <i>Cemetery Man</i>, and like that film, <i>Skinner </i>revels in moments of awkwardness. The dialog in <i>Skinner </i>has an eerie, subtle layer of echo. The score--by third-wave industrial band Contagion--is dated but nevertheless effective. Stylistically this film is better than it ought to be, considering that besides <em>Skinner, </em>director Ivan Nagy has only directed soft-core porn and bad television. <i>Skinner </i>almost looks like a Skinemax movie sometimes, except that there’s no sex, only bad vibes. Considering the script (by Paul Hart-Wilden), it’s ironic that Ivan Nagy dated Heidi Fleiss, and was suspected of being a former pimp himself. Wow!<o:p><br /><br /></o:p>The awkwardness of <i>Skinner </i>comes mainly from its characters and their interactions. This has something to do with the three principle performers. <st1:place>Lake</st1:place>, Raimi and Lords were perhaps chosen for that very reason. Its strange to see three character actors known for supporting roles play leads. Scenes concerning Skinner and Kerry Tate’s relationship are especially unsettling. Its hard to believe that Kerry is in danger around Skinner, as Raimi is so convincingly harmless. Of course, she <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">is</span> in danger. Skinner eventually seduces Kerry, and plans her murder as a sort of step-up from his usual prey.<br /><br />Most of the violence here is elliptical, or at least happens off-screen. Skinner will lead a woman into an alley, a quick flash of violence will be seen, and then Skinner will emerge from the alley alone. While the torture and violence is left to the viewer’s imagination, <i>Skinner </i>contains much gore, courtesy of KNB EFX Group. In one disturbing sequence, Skinner is harassed by his coworkers at the factory. An ex-boxer named Earl (Dewayne Williams) slams Skinner against a locker, calling him a “loon.” In the next scene we see Skinner exiting the building at night, wearing Earl’s skin. Skinner begins to mock Earl, punching the air and repeating his catch-phrase: “I could’a’ knocked Tyson out!”<br /><br />(Spoilers here)<br /><br />The factory is host to the film’s final sequence, the showdown between Heidi and Skinner. Geoff leads Heidi to the factory, where Skinner is holding Kerry hostage. Ineffectual because of her bum leg, Heidi is overpowered by Skinner. Hearing the commotion, an ancient night-watchman (Time Winters) feebly fires his gun in dumb desperation, fatally wounding Heidi and nearly hitting Kerry. He only manages to shoot Skinner in the leg. In the film’s final, frightening moment, Skinner—his arm around the dying Heidi—chuckles, “They love people like me.” He may be referring to the media, to his unsuspecting victims, or just to people in general. The construct he hides behind enables his brutal lifestyle; Skinner is conscious of this, and seems to find it hilarious. While this would have been a fine ending, <i>Skinner </i>perplexes with its final line (this is becoming an October Ordeal trend): “Doesn’t it just make you wanna scream, doesn’t it make you wanna rip a good one out!?” With this, Heidi screams her last scream and <em>Skinner </em>fades to credits.Gregory Josephhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10028442903379055090noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19713453.post-36429176471630125022007-10-28T20:21:00.002-04:002009-04-16T14:15:13.919-04:00The October Ordeal Day 28: The CarpenterThe Carpenter (1987)<br /><br />While the Republic Pictures box art suggests an entry in the <em>Slumber Party Massacre</em> series, <em>The Carpenter</em> is of a unique knit. Owing nothing to slash cinema or Cronenberg (Canada’s genre overlord in the 80s), this film brings to mind the slow menace of <em>Skinner</em> or <em>Parents</em>. Shot in Montreal, The Carpenter features Lynn Adams as Alice Jarett, Pierre Lenior as her unfaithful husband Martin, and Wings Hauser as “The Carpenter.”<br /><br /><em>The Carpenter</em> begins with a slow-motion shot of a board running through a table-saw, releasing torrents of suspended-in-air sawdust particles. In fact, the entire film seems to run in slo-mo; this is a slow, slow film. After the titles we meet Alice, introduced in the first of many silent montages: first Alice is seen doing simple household chores, then lying around depressed, and finally leaned over a bed, cutting up her husband’s suits. Nearly every cut in the film is a dissolve or a fade. Combined with frequent disorienting montage, <em>The Carpenter</em> creates a kind of narcotic, out-of-time diegesis.<br /><br />These three tasks outline Alice: she stays at home while her professor husband works days and has an affair with a female student; she is severely depressed and suffering from other mental-health conditions; she despises Martin, and desires to in some way hurt him. After this there is yet another montage, of Alice being treated in a psychiatric hospital, the consequence of destroying Martin’s suits. Here she is plagued with psychotic visions and night terrors, imagining her doctor a cruel sadist. While Martin is a rather unlikable character, he isn’t a villain. Martin is presented as simply a flawed person. Since he does still in some ways care for his wife, he’s decided to move to an old country home, and hires a crew to renovate the aging farmhouse.<br /><br />While Martin is at work, Alice is harassed by the laborers, who are all misogynist creeps. Late one night (Martin out with his student), Alice hears someone working in the basement. Roused from sleep, she finds a mysterious man working alone. Wings and Adams have a good chemistry throughout, which is as it should be; the film wouldn’t work if their relationship wasn’t believable. To escape the menacing workers during the day, Alice finds work at a paint-store near the estate. This plan doesn’t work however, as the men begin to show up at Alice’s home at night, with her husband still away. Wings begins gruesomely killing the imposing workers, beginning with one who tries to rape Alice. The question at the center of the film becomes is he real, or is he simply a figment of Alice’s imagination? Or (long shot), is The Carpenter some sort of externalized thought-Golem, a guardian spirit?<br /><br />Barring some clichéd final reveal, the audience assumes The Carpenter is real in some capacity, as the crew’s diplomatic yet ineffectual foreman Farnsworth (Bob Pot) begins to notice that not only is his crew disappearing, but that someone is indeed working through the night. Yet there is still something unreal about The Carpenter’s presence. Alice usually encounters him after waking, so these scenes potentially could be a sort of subjective dream-like interpretation. When Wings casually saws off the rapist’s arms without breaking a sweat, it seems reality has become quite unstable.<br /><br /><em>The Carpenter</em> is an intelligent film, yet it presents a contrived plot with clichéd characters, especially the mulleted workers. Their one-dimensional personalities may be a fantasy of Alice’s as well, or at least a subjective view, as I have suggested. If The Carpenter is not a fantasy, he at least plays to Alice’s desires. This appealing vagueness is reined in as a lecture from Martin is used as a device to spell out the film’s themes. This is a film trope of course, and the horror genre is rife with examples. Martin lectures on the archetype of Paul Bunyan, describing also The Carpenter, a man whose qualities embody everything Martin is not: strong, honest, attentive, loyal, protective. When we learn Alice has gone off her medication, this scenario seems even more plausible. <em>The Carpenter</em> could have done without this obvious piece of convenient explanation.<br /><br />While the film raises many questions about its narrative, the answers are not always forthcoming. Most are only inferred. Also it must be said that for a thriller, <em>The Carpenter</em> has almost no tension (by design). There are no scares, and each kill is methodical and measured, and an inevitability seen from a mile away. In <em>The Carpenter</em>, events simply play out. Somehow the murders become mundane. This is strange considering The Carpenter’s weapons: power sander, nail gun, power saw, stapler, battery drill. If there’s one guy who can pull off nonchalantly slaying someone with a power-tool, its Wings.<br /><br />When a police cruiser pulls up to The Jarett home, we assume the Sheriff is investigating the disappearances. However, the creep sheriff has only appeared to give Alice (and the audience) a bit of crucial information: it seems a murderous carpenter named Ed once lived in the house, until he was put to death. Now there is a third possibility: Wings is Ed the ghost. The Sheriff’s arch over-acting is so out of place that his reality is suspect as well.<br /><br />In turn, Martin discovers a shocking bit of information himself: his student-plaything is pregnant. This sets off a chain of events which will lead to the film’s denouement; a series of events, in which the events are primarily murders. Around this point in the film Ed the ghost’s motives become as suspect as Martin’s: Alice wakes from a dream (?) in which Ed, in a white suit, unzips his fly and says (with a hideous grin) “There’s always this” to the sound of a power-saw.<br /><br />This saw, like most of the film’s foley track, is practically inaudible. The sound mix is so low that most of the film is totally silent. The visual integrity of the film is of the same muted tone: specific lighting gives <em>The Carpenter</em> an oil-pastel look, everything has a dull golden glow. Natural light is often used as well, and nearly every surface is white. The slowly panning camera seems stuck in a glacial drift. Complimenting this hazy look is the aforementioned use of dissolves and fades. Although most of the film is empty of music, the score is rather ambient, as low in the mix as the dialog or foley track.<br /><br />I won’t discuss the film’s conclusion here, but I will say it is somewhat unsatisfying. It is a pronounced, conclusive end, but rather hard to swallow. Yet another promising genre film stumbles at the goal. Despite the wonky ending, <em>The Carpenter</em> is nevertheless a subtly compelling and intelligent psychological study disguised as a thriller.Gregory Josephhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10028442903379055090noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19713453.post-26271060538163394792007-10-27T17:07:00.001-04:002008-12-13T07:51:37.249-05:00The October Ordeal Day 27: Warlock MoonOctober 27th: <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Warlock Moon</span> (1975)<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidP8qADCp-8yQhJq35wqFguWdwn_pcoqffUKCTWdtdhOQXkiCJ0766mU7gjmKorDYryRSvtEA38twelLpv3wk9COHKQnm2FthHycqcdZyTEJvndy2HxCO72iS92dzfUG0mPnwr/s1600-h/t48383xqfup.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5126133922071839314" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; WIDTH: 163px; CURSOR: pointer; HEIGHT: 227px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidP8qADCp-8yQhJq35wqFguWdwn_pcoqffUKCTWdtdhOQXkiCJ0766mU7gjmKorDYryRSvtEA38twelLpv3wk9COHKQnm2FthHycqcdZyTEJvndy2HxCO72iS92dzfUG0mPnwr/s320/t48383xqfup.jpg" border="0" /></a>The first shot in <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Warlock Moon </span>looks like the coverage to a scene that belongs in the final reel of some <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">other</span> horror film. A young woman walks around a creepy old house with a candle, looking for her boyfriend. Suddenly, a man with an axe appears, and the title card comes up. The nameless, identity-less "First Girl" is a slasher staple, but not enough is done to indicate that this is what's going on until the end of this sequence.<br /><br />Our real heroine is Jenny (played by future TV star Laurie Walters), a college student with the world's worst fashion sense (absurd red bell-bottoms, floral ponchos). Her new friend John (Joe Spano, one of the ugliest leading men ever) convinces her to leave her studies for a late-afternoon drive into the country. After the two get lost, they come upon what looks like an abandoned old spa, and decide to check it out. Of course, the spa is not abandoned, and a crew of <em>Texas Chainsaw</em>-lite Satan worshipping cannibals live there, with a creepy old crone of a matriarch as their leader (Edna MacAfee as Agnes Abercrombi). This initial visit goes on far too long. Most scenes in <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Warlock Moon </span>last too long, in fact. There are too few set-pieces, and what the filmmakers had to work with, they overworked.<br /><br />It becomes obvious that John is in fact a member of Mama Abercrombi's clan. The bringing-in of an outsider is of course a classic horror trope, from <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Horror Hotel</span> to <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Wicker Man</span> (both Christopher Lee films, come to think of it). The luring here takes up the entire arc of the film. This is a slow paced film; an hour of build up in an hour and twenty minute film is far too much.<br /><br />The film's real saving grace is its quite interesting finish. In a sequence I haven't seen, the end credits run over the film as its still cooking. In fact, the climax comes after the credits have scrolled, and for several more minutes the film runs past this traditional end cap. If only the rest of the film was so daring. Very slight, <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Warlock Moon</span>, but still watchable. In a genre of low, <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">low</span> lows, sometimes "just average" will make for a pleasurable viewing. <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Warlock Moon </span>actually went into production before <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Texas Chainsaw Massacre</span>, but the plots are quite similar. Yet, there's a good reason that <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Chainsaw </span>is still talked about, and this film is all but forgotten. Joe Bob Briggs and Media Blasters haven't forgotten however, and the recent DVD re-release is a nicely packaged and presented product, with some interesting bonus materials. Completists only.Gregory Josephhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10028442903379055090noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19713453.post-23656504087234253252007-10-27T00:03:00.001-04:002008-08-18T23:28:43.201-04:00The October Ordeal Day 26: Terror in the AislesOctober 26<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">th</span></span>: <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Terror in the Aisles</span> (1984)<br /><br />Andrew J. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Kuehn's</span></span> <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Terror in the Aisles </span>is a collection of clips from (mostly) horror movies. While this has becomes a sort of cottage industry now (Something Weird Samplers; Synapse's excellent <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">42<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">nd</span></span> Street Forever</span> series) with the advent of DVD, there were plenty of themed trailer collections in the days of VHS as well. Often, these tapes are simply commercials for a distribution company's back catalog. <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Terror in the Aisles</span> is neither a nostalgic gimmick nor a marketing strategy, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Kuehn</span></span> seems to really love film. The objective here isn't to sell you on lesser-known fright films, its to remind you why the ones you already know about are still relevant. This is the intent anyway. The films on display are the bright lights of the genre: <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">The Thing,</span> <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Carrie</span>, <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Scanners</span>, <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Jaws</span>, <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">An American Werewolf in London</span>, <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Exorcist</span>, and <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Chainsaw Massacre</span>.<br /><br />Oh yeah, and <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Halloween</span>. Lots and lots of clips from <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Halloween</span>. This may have something to do with one of the hosts of the anthology: <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">Loomis</span></span> himself. Donald <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">Pleasence</span></span> hosts <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Terror in the Aisles </span>along with Nancy Allen as his counterpoint. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">Pleasence</span></span>, basically playing <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">Loomis</span></span>, roams a dark theater, where a room full of actors respond to unseen images on the big screen. Allen appears mostly in voice only, but occasionally the roaming camera will find her in one of the rows. Despite <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">Pleasence's</span></span> typical theatrics, Allen's calm, controlled demeanor is the real commanding presence in the film. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">Pleasence</span></span> is grim, cryptic, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">teacherly</span></span>; Allen is more inviting, inclusive in her earnestness (she's clearly having a blast). The typical <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">Pleasence</span></span> line goes something like: "There's something delicious about fear," or: "Perhaps we invent artificial horrors to help us cope with the <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">real ones</span>." Not limited to these wrap-around scenes, Allen and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">Pleasence</span></span> are heard throughout, often speaking over clips.<br /><br />The clips are divided into thematic clusters. One for Hitchcock features archival interviews with Hitch, and is the only section to feature a filmmaker speaking on his or her work. One section weighs the merits of suspense building over sudden shocks (<span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Alien</span> is used, as well as <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Jaws</span>). A bizarre section on villains introduces clips from films which aren't in the horror genre (<span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Nighthawks</span>?), including clips from <em>Vice Squad</em> featuring Wings <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">Hauser</span></span>. At this point Nancy Allen takes over to host the bulk of the final segments.<br /><br />Allen introduces a segment on women in horror with "And, unfortunately, in these movies, the victim is almost always... a woman.", and later adds "We are all born... totally vulnerable... slowly but surely, we learn to be afraid. We're taught the difference between right and wrong... and yet we're only human." This is in sharp contrast to <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">Pleasence's</span></span> constant talk of "evil" and "the Devil". I can't say whether <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16">Kuehn intended for their to be a difference in viewpoint, but it sure seems that way. Kuehn</span></span> introduced the segment this way in order to examine closely the genre, to criticise it if necessary. Alas, the message only seems to be that this is unfortunate for the female characters themselves, which is obvious. Allen: "What the one thing these films have in common? People in trouble! [extreme playfulness here] And what gets people in trouble? Sex!" This is a totally irrelevant and tasteless section serving only to get some tits into the film, including revealing shots of Allen herself in <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Dressed to Kill</span>. Yet, Allen also recites, with a sincere critical tone, "In terror films, sex rarely ends in pleasure; it ends in violence." If <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17">Kuehn</span></span> meant only to point to abusers on screen, Allen seems to question certain <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_18">filmmaker's</span></span> motives via the power of her delivery.<br /><br />A short section on science fiction is also included. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_18"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_19">Pleasence</span></span>: "Malevolent life forms from other planets may jeopardize our position as <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">supreme beings </span>on this planet." Clips from the <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Body Snatchers </span>remake are then shown. At the end <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_19"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_20">Pleasence</span></span> comes back to talk about horror's evolution from the Famous Monsters to slashers, and a truly awful song, "They're not very nice," by Larry Weiss, plays over some recap clips. After this, an unhinged <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_20"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_21">Pleasence</span></span> sits in the vacated theater: "It's only a movie... it's only a movie... but sooner or later, you must leave the theater and go home, perhaps alone!" This is all great fun. The interstitial bits are actually the best part of the film. Light on insightful commentary, it's a bit of a bore to sit through too-long scenes from movies best viewed as a whole, even if they are occasionally edited together in interesting ways (example: dialog from <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Rosemary's Baby</span> and <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">The Omen</span> spliced: "God help me!" "God is dead!"). If someone makes a comp clip of just these theater scenes, <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_21">definitely</span> watch it. In the meantime, just watch the films themselves.<br /><br />(This is kind of a cop-out review. Gimme a break I was busy today.)Gregory Josephhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10028442903379055090noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19713453.post-30698272195474295742007-10-25T22:49:00.001-04:002008-08-18T23:19:58.767-04:00The October Ordeal Day 25: GhostwatchOctober 25<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">th</span>: <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Ghostwatch</span> </span>(1992)<br /><br />(Whole review is a big spoiler)<br /><br />In 1992, Leslie Manning put together a live BBC expose concerning the paranormal. The special aired Halloween night, with English personality Michael Parkinson as host. While supplemental interviews with skeptics and believers alike are included, the special focused mainly on one particularly haunted house: the home of Pamela Early and her two daughters Suzanne and Kim. A camera crew had agreed to spend the entire night in the Early homestead, to see if a malevolent poltergeist young Kim has named "Pipes" will show his presence. In studio with Parkinson was paranormal investigator Dr. Lin <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Pascoe</span>, and--via satellite feed--skeptic Alan <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Demescu</span>. Operators stood by to answer phone calls from viewers. As the special progressed, it became apparent that something was indeed haunting the Early home, and was somehow affecting not only the studio crew but also viewers. A caller with some shocking information about the house set events in motion which cut through the stuffy BBC presentation to create uncontrollable chaos. By the end, it seemed all involved were in extreme psychic danger, and "Pipes" seemed an irrefutable reality. The rub: none of it was real. Besides the known television personalities, the characters in the film are played by actors.<br /><br />I had the benefit of starting this film believing it was in fact a documentary; while I figured out it was a hoax less than fifteen minutes in, I can imagine many viewing the film wouldn't catch on, especially children. Indeed, <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">Ghostwatch</span> </span>supposedly makes the British Medical Journal as the first television show to have caused Post-Traumatic Stress in young viewers. If you read the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">IMDb</span> message boards, it becomes obvious that this film had a <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">major</span> impact in the UK when it first aired, and that many believed it the entire way through. Parkinson and the other British reporters in <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">Ghostwatch</span> </span>are all household names in the UK, which lent the film a special believability.<br /><br />The opening scene in the film is a bit of archival footage from the Early girls' bedroom. This sequence is the film's most frightening. For several minutes the audience is forced to scan a pitch-black room, which remains distressingly still, until eventually the girls begin to scream, as the room shakes its contents until a lamp crashes to the ground. At this point I began to suspect I was being had. Watching the shape of the film solidify, this fact becomes rather obvious. The editing is too tight to be live, and some of the actors give it away, especially mother Early. All of the newscasters, however, are fully believable. After all, these are professional fakers. Also by the end, subtle musical cues are audible. The filmmakers perhaps thought viewers would be too terrified to notice.<br /><br />Pipes, while never the subject of a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">filmic</span> reveal, is hidden throughout, flattened in dark crevices of the frame. Many viewers have attempted to make lists of his many appearances. Pipes is even supposedly standing in the crowd of rubberneckers gathered outside the Early home. I must admit, I didn't see him once, and I was looking too. I'll <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">definitely</span> be revisiting the picture with this in mind.<br /><br />While the reality of the film might have been better handled (style would need to be sacrificed), this is still incredibly bold, riveting television. A DVD is available from <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9" style="FONT-STYLE: italic">bfi</span><span style="FONT-STYLE: italic"> </span>which contains an informative commentary track. <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">Ghostwatch</span></span>, after all, is more than TV, its a historical event. While on this side of the ocean it may not be as effective, and time is not on its side, this is still a tight, brave, and yes, scary film.Gregory Josephhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10028442903379055090noreply@blogger.com0