The October Ordeal day 14: Slime City

October 14th: Slime City (1988)

Of all the low-budget trash horror flicks (and I’m talking low) of the 80s, the cheapo gore fests filmed in New York City seem to have the most life. When you watch a film shot in who-knows-where with a cast of eight and only two or three sets, it seems fake, the budget limitations obvious. Something about this same strategy works if the film is set in a big city however; it’s somehow believable that in a city so large and dense a gruesome scenario could play out behind closed doors without anybody noticing. We get that it’s a big city, so instead of wondering where everybody is, we are simply unsettled by the fact that a character in a place so packed could be so isolated. Yesterday I reviewed Frank Henenlotter’s Frankenhooker, a gory flick placed in NYC. His earlier picture Brain Damage benefits further from this quality. The director of Slime City, Greg Lamberson, is credited as first AD of Brain Damage, so these two films share more than just the same aesthetic, they share the same DNA.

Shameless sleaze-merchants Camp Video can actually count Slime City as one of their higher-budget releases, if you can believe that. Camp’s recent DVD releases (mostly of SOV obscurities) claim “The Awesome 80s are Back!” Well, back in the VHS days, their logo read “Your Ticket to the Future.” Whether Camp looks forward or backward depends on the market I guess. Whatever the case, Camp knew their target in ‘88: the box boasts “A horror film with guts!”

The guts in question belong to our man Alex (Robert C. Sabin, fresh off the no-budget I Was a Teenage Zombie), a starving artist who works at a video store (see also: Night Vision, Remote Control, Video Violence). Alex may be an underground painter, but he acts like a typical frat boy. This is the type of character you only find in horror and soft-core porn. Alex’s major dilemma in life is that his square girlfriend Nichole (Mary Huner) won’t have sex with him. T.J. Merrick plays his stock best friend Jerry, a creep who drools over Alex’s goth neighbor Lori (arbitrarily also played by Huner).

Alex has just moved into a new apartment, a decent room in a decaying building. Roman (Dennis Embry), an unhinged guy from the floor just below, initiates him into a black magick cult by feeding him green yogurt and putrid wine, which all the tenants consume. The confusing origin of the cult involves alchemy, suicide pacts, murder and reincarnation. Soon after, Alex becomes addicted to the slime, and unless he murders bums and prostitutes, his face will melt. Doesn’t make sense, but allows for some interesting sequences. Alex goes through the same sort of bodily ordeal seen in Henenlotter’s films, or Cronenberg’s, a clear influence on the entire gore crowd (there’s even a handful of obligatory bathroom mirror scenes). As Alex becomes more and more addicted to the slime and the subsequent killing, he feels alienated from his friends, even though he’s reluctant to commit fully to the cult living all around him.

In the final scene, it’s a face-off (can I say it? Literally) between Alex in full-on melt mode and Nichole, who causes all kinds of harm to Alex using various kitchen appliances. This effects-heavy scene is what has gained Slime City its minor notoriety. Yet, as with Henenlotter’s films, the gore here is not what interests me. This is a fun, trashy flick which confidently allows its aesthetics to be the substance. The riff-raff populating the film create an idealized NYC; this is a love letter to scum. The crumbling buildings, drug addicts and prostitutes here seem to represent an era that maybe shouldn’t have been idealized, but nevertheless was and is. In such a cinematic environment, a mobile brain escaping from a severed head seems slightly less weird.
Special attention must be paid to Slime City’s fantastic score. Robert Tomaro’s original songs sound like something from a Messthetics compilation, and remind me specifically of the L.A. synth-punk bands, especially Nervous Gender and the Screamers. Synth and piano dominate, but jagged edges of surf, dub, jazz and minimalism jut out as well. While New York’s rich underground history has been well-mined, the trash-synth soundtracks to many NY underground gore flicks have yet to be revisited.

The October Ordeal Day 13: Frankenhooker

October 13th: Frankenhooker (1990)



















Once in elementary school a kid told me that he and his cousin had cut up a Playboy magazine in order to construct the “perfect woman.” This seemed really strange to me at the time, as I imagined attractive parts actually looking rather nightmarish when combined. Well, perhaps Henenlotter once did the same thing; if he didn’t, he gets to do it here. Protagonist Jeffrey Franken (get it?) is a failed surgeon who works at a power plant in New Jersey. When his fiancée dies in a freak lawn-mower accident, he gets to construct a new and improved version of Elizabeth Shelley (get that one too?) from scratch, utilizing his unique skill-set. Since most of Liz (Patty Mullen) is chewed to bits, he has only her severed head to work with. Jeff’s problem (and—in his mind—an opportunity) is that he needs to find replacement parts somewhere.

One thing that’s always struck me about Henenlotter is that his films are extremely economical. Here, you know all you need to know before the title card, and the rest of Frankenhooker is open for gags, gore, and plenty of stray ideas. Henenlotter here seems concerned with the same themes present in Brain Damage and Basket Case, and elaborates these ideas further and with greater clarity. Also, the tone of this film is quite different. The laughs are more genuine here, as the bleak tone of Basket Case is completely absent. This is a wild and thrilling film, well-paced and bursting with gross-out humor. The budget is also considerably higher, thanks to the investment of producer James Glickenhaus, the director of Exterminator, who brought much of his regular crew along.

The point is clearly made here that while Jeff wants his girlfriend back, he also sees her accident as a perverse opportunity to construct his own super-model fantasy. Jeffrey is a flawed character, but Henenlotter still clearly wants us to like him in spite of this. As Dr. Franken, James Lorinz isn’t a great actor, but he’s well cast here. Henenlotter’s protagonists are never played by the most talented performers, he seems to cast for some schlubbish quality rather than chops, which is fine. It works. While Jeffrey is quite average in many ways, there’s a heightened strangeness about him that Lorinz conveys nicely. How many mild-mannered med-school drop-outs regularly drill holes in their cranium to stimulate creative thought? This trepidation motif is nicely carried over from Brain Damage.

Come to think of it, Henenlotter’s protagonists are all well-meaning but totally selfish obsessives, dedicated to one strange goal: Duane in Basket Case is wholly devoted to the well-being of his brother Bilal; Brian in Brain Damage needs the parasite Aylmer to get high. Jeffrey’s quest to bring Liz back from the dead is both pathetic and touching. In his single-mindedness he never pauses to question his true motives. In one hilarious scene Jeff asks Liz’s severed head: “Honey can’t you picture yourself in this body, kneeling on ma’s couch in the basement?”, while pointing to a centerfold model. His world-view, like much in Henenlotter’s world, is candidly low-rent.

Where does Jeff go to find the “spare parts” he needs? Across the bridge to NYC of course, Henenlotter’s home and creative inspiration. Jeffrey sets out to find a half dozen prostitutes, whom together have the different body parts he needs. Jeff is conflicted in that he isn’t a murderer, but his stubborn determination forces him to rationalize and justify any wrong-doing on his part as an unfortunate necessity. “I can’t feel guilty now. I just wanna make life” He tells himself. In order to feel that he is not responsible, Jeff sets up a scenario so that he himself does not have to perform the act himself, he merely has to create the ideal circumstances. He finds an ally in the bane of the film’s prostitutes: crack cocaine. Jeff synthesizes a “super-crack” which causes the smoker to explode into a heap of junk limbs. Carrying a bag full of eviscerated bodies to his trunk, he promises he’ll bring them all back once he’s got Liz among the living.

With the introduction of crack into the film, a clear line is traced from the anti-drug themes of Brain Damage. While Brain Damage feels a bit short-sighted and reactionary, Henenlotter adds layers of complexity to what it still essentially the same argument here. While in Brain Damage avoiding Aylmer’s addictive juice is simply an act of initial will power, here the message is matured. Henenlotter admits the solution to the problem of addiction is much bigger than “Just Say No.” Jeffrey even, in a moment of intentional ignorance, even recites the slogan. Jeffrey himself, however, is an addict: he’s addicted to his power drill. He also uses drugs to manipulate others, and is mirrored by the pimps who populate the film.

Once he has the raw material, Jeff assembles Elizabeth and sends her on a raised platform into a raging storm. In a technically impressive scene, bolts of lightning bring the patchwork Liz back into the living world. She looks quite monstrous of course, her skin a mosaic of different color tones and textures, stitched together with huge medical staples. He hair is also bright purple, somehow changed by the bolt. Patty Mullen as zombie-Liz is both attractive and repulsive, much like Elsa Lanchester as the original Bride of Frankenstein.

Unfortunately for Jeffrey, she’s not the Liz he once knew, as all the women he murdered to recreate her have lent her pieces of their psyches as well as their bodies. She becomes a kind of ur-prostitute, bent only on drugs and money. Her mad mission is parallel to Jeff’s, in fact. Her mantra: “Got any money?” All of her lines are actually cribbed dialog from earlier in the film. As there is an unusual amount of characterization for a genre film, its even possible to notice individual personalities bubbling to the surface. Re-animated Liz leaves Jeff baffled and heads for New York, her clunking Frankenstein pumps a nice touch. The following scenes are great: sleazy, neon and wonderfully time-stamped (the Batman logo is everywhere).

(spoilers in this section)

After Jeff finds Liz he re-zaps her and manages to momentarily bring back the woman he knows and loves. In the film’s smartest scene, she chides Jeff for his mad quest, and realizes that his selective reconstruction has afforded him certain chauvinistic luxuries, granted without her consent or approval. This moment is short-lived however, as what follows is not only the film’s climax but its goriest moment. Sadistic pimp “Zorro” has followed Jeffrey home, and has finally figured out what happened to his “employees.” Zorro (Joseph Gonzalez from Brain Damage), in a surprising moment, cuts Jeff’s head clean off. After this, Jeff’s storage tank flips over, and the reconfigured prostitutes from earlier in the film spill into frame. Don’t ask how, but the parts have assembled themselves into monstrosities Brian Yuzna may have taken note of. Here the effects come courtesy of Henenlotter collaborator Gabe Bartoloz. The flesh-beasts drag Zorro into the tank and close the lid, leaving the rest to the viewer’s imagination.

(major spoiler here)

In the film’s final moment (which is also the final gag), Liz reconstructs Jeff. But since his mystery serum is estrogen-based (did I forget to mention that?), she needs the leftover parts of women to bring him back to life. Jeff’s lesson is learned here via his castration; it’s a great gag, yes, but it also sums up the entire film in a really smart way. Jeffrey’s quest to create the perfect woman at the expense of all others is reversed; he himself must become that ideal woman. Roles here are also reversed. While I don’t think Henenlotter is that deep, this scene brings into question the validity of essentialist ideas about men and women, at least implicitly. So much of 80s horror is informed by Reagan’s mad rule. While Frankenhooker was filmed in ‘89, as Reagan had left office, he feels present here. While Henenlotter has intelligent things to say here about the failed war on drugs, his strongest move is to cut the predatory yuppie male’s dick off.

It’s clear from the relatively few films Henenlotter directed that he knows his craft. If things had gone a different route, he could have parlayed his low-budget, less-is-more visionary talents to mainstream success, like Raimi or Jackson. He stayed true to his roots instead, putting his time into Something Weird, unearthing lost cult films for DVD. While I find much of Something Weird to leave a sour taste, I admire his commitment. A look on IMDb reveals he’s completed work on a curious new picture, one co-written by shock-rapper R.A. the Rugged Man and featuring many underground-rap stalwarts. While I now find Vinnie Paz and Reef’s faux-underground gun rap unbearable, I would have been hyped up if this film came out five years ago, when I couldn’t get enough of underground “horror-core” hip-hop. We’ll see.

Slime City tomorrow! Black Roses soon!

The October Ordeal Day 12: Necropolis

October 12th: Necropolis (1986)

Cop out time-- this is an old review, reposted. There was simply too much going on today. Tomorrow I start the gross-out series with Frankenhooker!

This is a strange review. I don't write like this anyone.

I had very low expectations of Necropolis. James and I both wrongly assumed this was a post-apocalypse flick, seeing the case frequently at the North Adams library. A while back, Kevin checked it out, and I decided to throw it on. The cover features a burning NYC cityscape and offers an “action-packed zombie thriller.” Well, there are no zombies that I could see, and Necropolis is neither thrilling nor action-packed (that is to say, it’s neither a thriller nor an action film). It’s actually about a group of people united by and throughout time, who reincarnate repeatedly as a group dedicated to fighting the Satan-worshipping Eva, who’s now cruising around New York collecting minions and searching for a mystical ring and its bearer: priest Henry James (hmm…).

Eva is a cool character, a punky chick who’s like a trashier version of Anne Carlisle (writer and star of Liquid Sky). When I watched Necropolis initially, I was feeling kind of dragged down, and the film didn’t make me feel any better. Its low-budget junkiness and gross-out effects just added to my gloom. Well, I got a chance to watch the film again when Andy gave me a copy for my birthday (this review has mentioned nearly every writer for SD—it’s not that we live in some kind of cult-film commune or anything, its just that we share a kind of collective trash-culture consciousness, and often synchronously pick things up). After a second viewing, I can honestly say I really like Necropolis.

The beginning is really hyped-up and fun, as we meet our principles in a previous incarnation, and Eva does a satanic strip-tease in front of a giant pentagram. Fast forward to the present (the mid eighties): Eva is now reincarnated as a no-nonsense punk rocker, who cruises around the city on a motorcycle, while ultra catchy synth tunes blast in the background. Circumstances lead Father James, a London ex-pat named Dawn, and her Italian stereotype detective boyfriend together as they unravel the mystery, and go up against the satanic powers of Eva and her ghouls.

There’s a lot of random weirdness in this film: in one scene the ghouls nurse ectoplasm from Eva’s breasts (which she has six of in some scenes), and a bed in an alleyway is played as Dawn’s apartment (it’s really obvious; I mean, the budget is obviously low, but the filmmakers couldn’t find a bedroom to shoot in?). One interesting thing about the film is that is positions both reincarnation and Christian theology as non-conflicting forces. Note: the VHS case for Necropolis has three large taglines distributed on the front and back: City of the Dead; Beneath Hell lies Necropolis; and one that makes me think the Misfits may have seen this flick: It’s the Ghouls Night Out!

The October Ordeal Day 11: Thirst

October 11th: Thirst (1979)

Rod Hardy’s Thirst, while shot in Australia, has a lot in common with English and Italian thrillers. Short on logic, the film communicates its style first and foremost: brooding, brutal, cold and claustrophobic. The pulp acting and lyrical dialog remind of Italy’s genre films; what’s substantial in most narrative films is merely ornamental here.

So I wasn’t alarmed when ten minutes into the film I had no fucking clue what was going on. Half the scenes in Thirst are revealed to be dream, hallucination, or drug trip. The diegesis of the film is splintered and notional; Thirst could be chopped up and rearranged in any way.

Thankfully, Thirst isn’t overloaded with characters, as films of this nature often are. Chantal Contouri is totally game as Elizabeth Bathory’s direct descendent Kate Davis. Shirley Cameron (credited as “Ms. Cameron”) plays an ice-queen cult-leader who’s definitely been reading Ayn Rand. David Hemmings, at the beginning of his fat-phase, is Cameron’s mad doctor Fraser. Henry Silva hangs out--as far as I can tell that's his only purpose here. Cameron and co. kidnap Davis and take her to their Jonestown-esque compound for conditioning (complete with machine gunning guards). Turns out she’s genetically predestined to love the taste of blood, which our villains claim is the source of ultimate power. This isn’t a vampire film, although the standard vamp imagery and symbolism are evoked with glee. The film is actually about a gang of neo-fascists systematizing the Big N’s “will to power.”

This isn’t my own observation, as the film’s characters take every opportunity to proclaim as much. Cameron gets the best lines (“[Drinking blood] is the ultimate aristocratic act.”), including a monologue theorizing the revulsion people feel when witness to violence is actually veiled attraction. Our natural state, she claims, is to crave power, here represented by sweet, sweet blood. The blood’s not for everyone though. The cultists keep stores of “Bloodcows,” on-hand. These willing young WASPS hang out by the pool all day, happy to donate the occasional pint. I guess all you need to attract a slave-class is a bitchin' pad. These dozy kids look like they wandered off the set of Logan’s Run.

Kate isn’t down with this scenario. So she’s drugged, and spends most of the film running through her own mind. Hemmings as Fraser dopes her with some mystery serum to induce “90-minute” composite memory hallucinations grown from favored past-events. Once this motif begins, it becomes impossible to tell dream and reality apart. Often scenes will telescope out via false awakenings until not even the script is sure which is which.

The film’s endless pile-ons do becomes tiresome eventually. As the conditioning sequence drummed on I began to suspect that the film’s running time was merely being padded out. That, or the producers wanted a reason, any reason, to place nudity in the film (via Kate’s occasional sex-dreams). Its an over-long excursion for such a short film (about 90 minutes, actually… Hmmm). The ending is just as confusing as everything else here, and whether Kate feeds or not is a mystery. The twist of all twists at the very end is less a denouement than simply another head-scratcher.

I must mention Bryan May’s excellent score. May is something of an unheralded genius. His versatile scores have enlivened many Australian films, including Mad Max and the films of Brian Trenchard-Smith. Here, May’s score morphs from Sci-Fi treble pulses to buzzing white-noise to Debussian string-swells. The key word is sustain. I dig the score so much I’m considering purchasing the OST album from Movie-Grooves.

Is this a great film? Not really. It is however, a solid genre entry. If you dig this sort of thing, go for it. You could do worse. If for no other reason, watch this to see Silva make a strong impression merely by standing in the background and smirking.

Tomorrow I begin one of two cycles. I’ve got some Gialli coming in the mail from Netflix. If the post is late I’ll start a gross-out circuit including Slime City, The Incredible Melting Man and Street Trash. I’ll be taking in some heavy audio-horror tomorrow, as I head to Hampshire College to catch Wolf Eyes. I’ve gone to see a lot of bands these past few months, but this is the most amped-up I’ve been for a show in ages.

The October Ordeal Day 10: Mutant

October 10th: Mutant (1984)

(Also known as Night Shadows.)

If there is one actor who’s truly captured the collective heart of Samurai Dreams, its Wings Hauser. The man is a maniac. The man is an uncontrollable force of nature. Wings doesn’t chew scenery, he eats it alive. Yet every now and then, Wings proves he can actually act. Check him out in Vice Squad, The Wind or Norman Mailer’s Tough Guys Don’t Dance. And while Mutant is no masterpiece, Wings reins in his Wagnerian instincts enough to turn in an atypical low-key performance.

Low key or not, however, Wings is incapable of playing an everyman. Here he plays a man who’s written as such, but his idiosyncrasies as an actor override the character. Wings plays Josh Cameron, a guy with a strange sense of humor who’s on a backwoods road trip with his younger brother Mike Cameron (no relation to the prankster who famously wore a Pepsi shirt to school on “Coke Day”). Lee Montgomery plays Mike as a whiny city-boy, who’s happy to spend time with his brother after a messy break-up, but doesn’t trust the small-town roads. And with good reason. No sooner than they pass into one particularly insular town, the two brothers are run off the road by a particularly ornery batch of rednecks. Their car busted, Mike and Josh are forced to venture into town. Finding a few friendly folks, Mike and Josh decide to stay the night at a local bed & breakfast. Josh’s ordeal begins in the morning, when he awakens to find Mike missing from his room.

Josh finds allies in the town doctor, Myra Tate (Jennifer Warren, turning in a competent performance), local teacher Holly Pierce (Jody Medford as Wings’ love interest), and the inimitable Bo Hopkins as the soused Sheriff Will Steward. These four characters seem to be the only sane component of Goodland, GA, and that’s not just because toxic waste is turning denizens into cannibals. The evil town is a convention as old as the horror genre itself, one that surely predates film itself. How many horror films feature a city-boy learning all about country folk the hard-way? Plenty.

Josh soon realizes that the mystery of Goodland is deeper than the location of his lost brother. It seems like everyone’s coming down with a strange “virus,” and this may have something to do with a sharp increase in zombie activity. About mid-way through, Mutant becomes a somewhat different film. The desolation of Goodland is almost tangible, as more and more people fall off the charts. The deserted-streets motif is really attractive to me. This spooky convention helped to shape the aesthetic of many films; the Phantasm sequels for instance.

Once our gang figures out what’s going on, it’s too late to do anything except hide. In the film’s best scene, Josh and Holly find Doc Tate’s OR trashed, blood everywhere. Finding the Doc’s tape recorder, Josh plays back her last autopsy report, which quickly turns into the soundtrack to her murder. As tinny screams play on the tape, hand-held camera violently scans the wreckage of the destroyed room, Josh and Holly standing motionless. The frenzy of the sequence is remarkable. As artful at this scene is, it’s immediately followed by a poorly-lit (although my worn Vestron vhs may be the culprit here) zombie chase. This is the film’s downfall: something rather good is followed by something rather bad (the bad often a genre convention poorly played). This discord is eased by Richard Band’s dynamic score. I like Band’s Full Moon work, but this is subtler—and ultimately better—work.

The final moments of the film are overwhelmingly desperate. Things really do seem hopeless. In one scene, Holly and Josh share a quiet moment while making Molotov cocktails in an abandoned grocery. Wings’ presence in this scene is undeniable, and he proves that subtly isn’t actually beyond his ability. Its too bad the character is given almost no substance (via a back-story, a rounded personality, etc).

Even though the ending seems hopeful (the chemical plant responsible for the virus is shut down), the momentary victory of Josh, Holly and the Sheriff is shattered by the downbeat voice-over which ends the film: the company responsible has already begun building new plants across the state (despite this late edition to the film, it doesn’t seem justified to call Mutant a political film; there’s no explicit environmentalist theme). While the radio announcer’s message is bleak, the relieved smiles of the three surviving characters may not point to irony or pessimism, but ultimately the virtue of hope, no matter how fleeting. I can’t say if this is the right interpretation, but this is certainly how Wings plays it.

The October Ordeal Day 9: 976-Evil

October 9th: 976-Evil (1989)

Robert Englund may have picked up a few ideas for his directorial debut watching Wes Craven work; 976-Evil is very much in the style of Craven's 80s output. Unfortunately, this film is quite unexceptional. Englund’s direction is competent, but the film itself is middle of the road: not great, not horrible, just very low-key and unambitious.

976-Evil is a tale of Satan-sponsored nerd-rage revenge (a premise also found in such middle-of-the-road pictures as Evilspeak and The Gate 2). The nerd here is repressed mama’s boy Hoax (that’s really his name), a straight-A student living in awe of his biker cousin Spike. Spike is the black sheep of the family, who’s mother has recently died. His aunt is Hoax’s Christian-Fundamentalist mother Lucy (Sandy Dennis), a cat-collecting fanatic who’s withholding Spike’s inheritance until he turns 18, essentially keeping him hostage.

Despite this unhealthy living situation, things are going alright, until Spike (Patrick O’Bryan) finds an ad for daily “Horrorscopes” in a porno mag. “Dial 666-976-EVIL” the ad says. Drunk enough to try it, Spike calls and inadvertently opens the gates to hell. A strange voice on the other end gives him situation-specific bad advice. With Spike, the advice is about misdemeanor-level. When Hoax (Stephen Geoffreys) decides to call, things get much more intense. In the film’s pivotal moment, Hoax follows Spike and his girlfriend Suzie (Lezlie Deane) to the movies on a date. Spike is derailed at the entrance by his loser pals, all gambling addicts running a high-stakes game in the projection booth (the set for these games is fantastic, with Black Flag and A Clockwork Orange posters everywhere). Hoax shows up to intercept a very pissed-off Suzie. Their first date at a pizza joint is going smoothly, until Suzie finds a pair of her panties in Hoax’s back pocket(!), and storms out. Hoax over-reacts a bit and hexes Suzie in a black-magic ritual involving a giant pentagram and a pizza plate full of poisonous spiders. From then on Hoax becomes an elf-faced demon with claws and a pitch-shifted voice, and its up to Spike to send him back to Satan, with the help of the school principal and a private investigator (J.J. Cohen and Maria Rubell as stock support).

976-Evil is stuck in neutral right until the end. It never takes off. The spark of life found in even Craven’s worst films is missing here. Englund clearly had a lot more to learn. That said, its competent; had the script and actors been upgraded, this could have been a good film. As it stands, 976-Evil is as average as it gets. There is a sequel, which I will try to seek out in the coming weeks.

The October Ordeal Day 8: Hobgoblins

October 8th: Hobgoblins (1988)














Robert Zajonc, along with Greg Markus, developed in the ‘70s a theory he called the Confluence Model (this idea is sometimes referred to as “youngest child syndrome”). The basic idea is that birth order has something to do with intelligence. During development, the first-born child has the advantage of an all-parent environment. Subsequent children must compete for attention, and also have their older (still developing) siblings for intellectual models. While a problematic theory, there is some evidence to suggest that, statistically, the younger the child, the lower the IQ. The baby of the family has the extra disadvantage of having no younger siblings to “teach,” and often tests lower than the next-youngest child considerably. With this theory in mind, consider the fact that Gremlins came first in 1984, then Ghoulies in ’85. Critters followed in 86, Munchies in ’87. A year later, our severely disadvantaged subject appeared, a film known as Hobgoblins.

I saw Hobgoblins on the shelf at Astro Video probably ten times before I decided to buy it. Eventually me and my dollar bill parted, and Hobgoblins became mine. The film sat on my shelf for months, until I decided, today, to watch the damn thing. I had a bad feeling when I noticed the twin logos on the back of the VHS box: Trans-World Entertainment and Goodtimes. TWE and Goodtimes are two of the worst video distributors ever, companies whom often released films in EP mode to save money. T-WE is a bit more obscure, but anyone who’s ever bought a DVD at the dollar store may recognize Goodtimes’ logo. I once bought a Goodtimes release of Fists of Fury that didn’t include the entire film, just the 45 minutes of it that would fit on the tape. Over at Critical Condition you can find write-ups on both of these fifth-tier VHS villains.

When I began the film, things didn’t seem so bad. Old man McCreedy (Jeffrey Culver) is training a new kid on the lot. McCreedy for thirty years has been the night-watchmen at an unused Hollywood lot. Phasing McCreedy out, the higher-ups are hiring young punks to take his place. McCreedy tells the kid, “don’t go in the vault.” Kid goes in the vault. We don’t see how or why, but the kid ends up torn to shreds. Cue music, cue credits. So far so good. I can get on board with something dumb and derivative, as long as it's fun. The fun in Hobgoblins is extremely fleeting however; it ends here.

Its time for a new recruit, and a dude named Kevin (Tom Bartlett) gets the gig. Kevin’s a bit smarter than the other guys, but he still can’t stay out of the vault. When a prowler breaks in, Kevin accidentally lets whatever’s in “the vault” out, and we see the Hobgoblins for the first time, but unfortunately not the last. This scene explains why it took a half hour for the little trolls to show up. We see three or four inanimate dolls sitting on a golf-cart, cruising around to zany synth music. The Hobgoblins aren’t puppets, they’re toys. They don’t move. Let’s just say there’s a lot of scenes where characters catch the goblins when a prop guy throws them from off-screen and hold on to them while pretending to fight them off.

McCreedy tells Kevin that the beasts are from outer space, and that they use psychic powers to lull their victims into trances via there own subconscious fantasies. OK. So Kevin is given a group of friends (roommates?) who all embody cliché 80s personas, so that they may be “cleverly” flipped by the Hobgoblins to show us who they really are. The prudish girl wants to strip in a punk club, the nice guy wants to prove himself, blah blah blah. These characters are unbearable. They all seem to hate each other as well. Including average Joe Kevin, this is truly an unlikable gang of losers. One of the gang, the macho Nick (Billy Frank), is an Army recruit, who carries grenades in his glove compartment. These scenes reminded me that the unhinged military gun-nut psychopath is actually a pretty common character in 80s comedies. I guess it takes a few years without a visible war to bring this stock character back into the culture.

This soulless film is one of the worst I’ve seen in a while. It manages to be simultaneously boring and infuriating. Hobgoblins is overlooked, and rightly so. I recall that Astro Video still has a few more copies. Don’t buy it, unless you plan to bury it ten feet into the ground. A quick look on IMDb reveals that director Rick Sloane has had a lucrative career in softcore porn, and has completed the filming of Hobgoblins 2. He also directed the Wings Hauser dud Mind, Body and Soul. Great. I can’t say any more about this film because, well, its giving he a headache.

Its tough being the youngest child.

The October Ordeal Day 7: Long Distance

October 7th: Long Distance (2005)

A visit to the local big-box video store will reveal that contemporary American direct-to-DVD horror films come in (mainly) two varieties: the vulgar Photoshop no-brainers like Frankenfish or Leprechaun in the Hood 2, and the stuff that, if it had featured a star, could have been in theaters. If Long Distance had nabbed Halle Berry or Angelina Jolie instead of Monica Keena, it could have bombed at the box office instead of Blockbuster. Most of these films are as bad as Frankenfish, but every now and then something really interesting slips through the cracks (see Friday’s film, Chasing Sleep, or Stuart Gordon’s King of the Ants). Unfortunately, Long Distance is not in this category.

Marcus Stern’s first film Long Distance is a film with a tiny budget. Excepting one short scene, the entire story takes place inside an apartment complex, really one apartment. There are about four developed characters, and less than a dozen altogether. Many of the actors are represented in voice only. A film with such restrictions is often classified de facto as an art film (evidenced by this film’s appearance on the Sundance network). Actually, Long Distance is a limp psychological thriller with aspirations to complexity greater than its ability to deliver.

Monica Keena isn’t a great actor, but she is very likable. In Freddy Vs. Jason, her performance is appropriately all-surface. Her big eyes and expressive face communicate very well in such a film. And she was quite charming on the small screen in Judd Apatow's Undeclared. Also, she can scream. Here, an actor capable of subtlety could have saved Long Distance from its script. Keena plays Nichole Freeman, a grad-student studying Psychology in Boston. She’s just broken up with her boyfriend, Chris, and calls her mother to talk about it. She makes a mistake and misdials, reaching a strange answering machine. A minute later, an unknown man with a creepy voice calls, asking “Why did you call me?” Turns out the guy is a serial killer calling himself Joe (as in “average Joe”), who’s just murdered the owner of the cell phone. Joe (Kevin Chapman) decides to call Nichole before every subsequent murder, leaving the phone on so that she can hear his victims screaming for help. Keena spends many of the film’s remaining scenes on the phone (she does have an expressive voice, fortunately).

When the cops find a corpse with a cell phone, they send Detective Frank Halsey (Ivan Martin) to Nichole’s apartment, to question her about the dead woman’s last outgoing call. From then on Frank remains in Nichole’s apartment, as a tech guy (Tim McIntire as Charlie) back at the station traces Joe’s calls (always too late, of course). The FBI sends over expert profiler Margaret Wright (Tamala Jones, pretending she’s in a CSI episode) to coach Nichole on how to keep Joe on the line long enough for Charlie to trace the call and dispatch the police in whatever town Joe is in. Throwing some pins in a map on the wall, Frank realizes that Joe is traveling in an arc across the country, Boston his next location.

A straight-forward conclusion would have been welcome. Instead, (a spoiler here) Long Distance ends with a lame twist, re-framing the entire film as a psychological fiction. While dream sequences throughout the film hint at this, and certain aspects of the script make sense as fantasy (the Hollywood romance that develops between Nichole and Frank), this final reveal is truly groan-worthy. When Joe shows up, things start to get weird, and we realize that Joe (spoiler) may not even be real at all.

Long Distance plays a slasher premise seriously. Fine. Yet, Long Distance could have been a more traditional slasher. The film would have been simpler, yes, but probably better. Every horror film doesn’t have to be as psychologically complex as Silence of the Lambs—especially if the screenwriters (here Shawn and Michael Rasmussen) aren’t up to task. There’s nothing wrong with a good twist; there is something wrong with an unearned one. The final scene in Long Distance is clumsy and confusing. Keena’s performance doesn't have the layers necessary to sell the revelation that she’s dreamt up an entire narrative to hide the fact that she’s (big-time spoiler) murdered her own boyfriend.

The filmmakers made a commitment to keep the film small in many ways. The cinematography is uniform, the sets are simple, the music is subtle. Had the script been reined in, Long Distance could have been a tight and satisfying thriller. The pacing in Long Distance isn’t slow, it's just that the events are mostly minor. Nothing about this film needed to be grand. An overlooked film such as Mimic 3 keeps the action indoors, and—I gotta say—Mimic 3 actually ain’t that bad. Its always frustrating when a film’s mistakes are this obvious.

The October Ordeal Day 6: Society

October 6th: Society (1989)

In Brian Yuzna's Society, the title refers to the same 80s cinema stereotype found in Less Than Zero or any Brat Pack movie, the idea that the impeccably mannered (and all-white) upper-classes who constitute an impenetrable over-culture may actually be hiding something rather ugly. The ugliness is made explicit in Society, a literal groteque of Lovecraftian proportions.

Yuzna, long-time producing partner of Stuart Gordon, moved to feature directing with Society, a film written by Rick Fry and Woody Keith (who worked with Yuzna again on Bride of Re-Animator in 1990). Yuzna has directed interesting films since, yet Society has a certain original quality he has yet to match. Besides Yuzna, the other creative force behind the film is prosthetics-wiz Screaming Mad George (Predator, Freeked, Big Trouble in Little China, and most Yuzna/Gordon films), whose distinctive effects are practically Society's raison d’etre.

Our protagonist, Billy Whitney (mugging Soap-actor Billy Warlock), is being groomed by his wealthy parents (Charles Lucia and Connie Danese as Jim and Nan Whitney) for entry into the Los Angeles elite. However, Billy—the Whitney’s adopted child—is too much a rebel to conform to their ideal. So, he’s become a mullet-headed football jock instead. I want to claim that They Live! kick-started the trend of positioning a jar-head as the renegade, the voice in the wilderness, the non-conformist. But this is an archetype that goes back to early Sci-Fi (Quatermass Xperiment), and even to John Wayne. The myth of the rugged individual is embedded in the romantic fiction of Capitalism, after all. Billy may not look like the Spader clones who out-class him, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t a jerk. His mullet and football jersey hardly signify “integrity.” He treats the class nerd cruelly. He strangles his girlfriend for lying to him. Think Kevin Dillon in Remote Control, or Charlie Sheen in The Wraith. By placing such an oaf in the rebel role, the film cheapens its central notion. By leaving out deep cultural assumptions in its surface-level condemnation of the rich, Society’s message may be that it’s only okay to break some of society’s rules.

Convenient for Society’s running time, however: Bill is so dumb it takes him the entire length of the film to figure out what’s really going on. His doughy pal Blanchard (Tim Bartell) disappears midway through the film, but not until he plays Billy a tape proving that his parents are involved in something quite strange, including incest (Bill’s WASPy sister Jenny the object of their lust), and—from the sound of the tape—bestiality (Blanchard conveniently happens to be a surveillance expert?). Billy plays the tape for his psychiatrist, only to find the tape has been mysteriously altered. It seems that nearly everyone in town is involved in this yuppie-conspiracy. Bill can’t trust his parents, he can’t trust his sister (Patrice Jennings as Jenny), his classmates, the police (who protect money—like in life), not even his therapist.

Society features a quite obvious message. There isn’t anything controversial about the conclusions the film comes to about class, exclusivity and conformity; in fact, these ideas are classic film tropes. But still, it works. There is something genuine about Society. Horror is a powerful vehicle for satire and social commentary, even when it comes to Yuzna’s somewhat inarticulate film. By the end of Society, it becomes clear that the elites in the film are a kind of symbiotic species, who party hard by melting into a single mass of hive-mind goo. This extended scene is like something out of a Burroughs orgy-scene: sex, gore, submission and assimilation are one and the same.

Even this gross mess is exclusive: a townsperson tells Billy: “You aren’t one of us… you have to be born this way.” Subtlety Society may lack, but it does have a kind of political integrity. There is even some suggestion that members of L.A.’s mutant "Society" are upgraded to Washington after their final initiation.

Society may be termed a smart-dumb movie. Dumb characters, dumb protagonist. Smart premise, smart tone (tongue-in-cheek but serious in the right places). Whatever doesn’t work is smoothed out with a gallon of liquid latex. The look of the film is adequate, and nostalgic for any direct-to-video aficionado. Gordon’s films look like this. Jim McBride’s later films look like this. Full Moon looks the same. New Horizon. So on and so forth. The lighting could be better. The photography and acting are workmanlike. Workmanlike is the operative term here. You won’t marvel at any of the visuals, but the look of the film is fine, and allows for the effects to make a strong impression. If nothing else, Society is entertaining the whole way through. In the genre of gross-out late twentieth-century horror, and in the arena of low-budget direct-to-video, Society may be something of a narrow-scope masterpiece.

The October Ordeal Day 5: Chasing Sleep

October 5th: Chasing Sleep (2000)

Recently a friend and I were talking about The Squid and the Whale, and I was saying how great I thought Jeff Daniels’ performance is. I also added that Daniels in person appears a total goof-ball, and nothing like the character he plays in TSatW. Hearing this, my friend said “If you like Jeff Daniels, then you should definitely try to see Chasing Sleep.” I was intrigued, so to the top of my Netflix queue it went.

I was surprised at the many surface similarities between both Chasing Sleep and The Squid and the Whale. While TSatW isn’t a thriller, and Chasing Sleep isn’t funny, there are many points of commonality: in both films Daniels plays a snob professor who sleeps with a student; he separates from a woman who is also a teacher (a college professor in TSatW, a high school teacher in Chasing Sleep); and in both films he despises the man his wife is involved with for being his athletic and outgoing opposite. I must say that while the similarities are many, the two films are quite different. And to Daniels’ credit, the two leads (Bernard Berkman in TSatW and Ed Saxon in Chasing Sleep) are two different people. Daniels plays both as unique characters with unique problems, despite the fact that the characters are similar and that their problems also are similar. It would have been easy for Daniels to play both characters the same way, but he manages to find the nuance in each. Hollywood’s master character actors (sorry Denzel) often settle into specific ready-made grooves, playing the same characters over and over again; its an immense credit to Daniels that he plays two very close characters as separate individuals. Both may be self-righteous slobs who teach English at the college level and suffer marital problems, but they’re different self-righteous slobs.

First time director Michael Walker’s Chasing Sleep begins with a classic noir motif, and moves into some unexpected places from there. Ed Saxon wakes up one morning and his wife is not by his side. He calls in to work and begins to investigate. He calls his wife’s work, he calls her friends, and—when things seems seriously strange—eventually the police. To compound his problems, Saxon suffers from severe insomnia. Time falls out of sync, expanding and contracting wildly. For example: the police call to say they’re coming to the house, Saxon hangs up, the doorbell rings a moment later. The film is full of disorienting moments of lost time. And while the film is short on flashbacks, and the narrative moves in a relatively straight-forward direction, its quite obvious that time is seriously out of joint. Day and night constantly fold in on each other, as if some sinister force is at work, manipulating either Saxon’s mind or reality itself. Except for when the door opens, it is impossible to know if it is day or night. The sickly indoor lighting (noir doesn’t always equal dark) creates a kind of shades-drawn in-between state. In many ways Chasing Sleep refuses to differentiate. For example, Daniels plays every emotional response as if subdued by a dose of sleeping pills, pills which Saxon is indeed taking (a motif throughout the film). The tension of the character is played entirely below the surface; Saxon only half understands what’s going on, but its clear there are things he simply refuses to comprehend.

Daniels’ performance alone would make Chasing Sleep a fine film, but the script, set design and subtle touches make this a compact and powerful neo-noir. I mention the set design; this is of supreme importance, as Ed Saxon doesn’t leave his home for the length of the film. Saxon’s wife is missing, and he dares not leave, his phone and front door his only means of contact. The few auxiliary characters who flit in and out of the film serve only as human MacGuffins, who exist in the film only to move the plot forward. And—spoilers, watch out!—by the film’s conclusion there is some doubt as to the very reality of these characters. Several tired police officers appear and disappear, dropping pills and cryptic remarks that only increase Saxon’s paranoia. An adoring student (Sadie, played by Emily Bergl) brings Saxon soup and then propositions sex; Gym teacher George (Julian McMahon), the man his wife is sleeping with, punches Saxon in the face. All of these characters exist on the periphery, acting as triggers and nothing more.

The film’s true secrets are not held by the supporting cast, but by the house where Saxon lives. While all the action takes place in a few rooms, Chasing Sleep never feels like theatre. The attention to detail is uniquely filmic: the camera examines every inch of dirt, grime and decay, paying particular attention to the water damage found in the bathroom. Saxon will be left to his own devices for minutes as the film’s focus shifts to the crumbing details of the old house. This is the kind of decay an old house miraculously attains when no one lives there. The score is more like sound design than traditional soundtrack: drones and high-pitched frequencies, resembling the ambient sounds of the night and the electronic hum home-owners only notice in the dead of night.

While an unsettling psychological examination throughout, Chasing Sleep only becomes qualified horror in the last act, when the house’s (and Saxon’s) secrets are revealed. One particular scene is so disturbing and visually disarming that it frames the rest of the film in a new and unexpected manner. Questions are answered, but instead of satisfaction, the feeling is resignation. The anti-climactic resolution answers many questions, but leaves the audience cold. The largest question, “Is this all real?” is never answered; interpretation is up to the viewer; a certain indifference is present in this ultimately pessimistic film.

Chasing Sleep is already an obscurity. Much like The Minus Man, this is a film of quiet and arresting power, one which requires patience but rewards it, and warrants repeat viewings to fully appreciate its many angles. Doing more with less has always been a hallmark of noir; the emotionally restrained yet psychologically complex nature of Chasing Sleep places it among the greats of the genre.

The October Ordeal Day 4: The First Power

October 4th: The First Power (1990)

The First Power is a film which stands in the shadow of the great 80s and early 90s occult thrillers: Jacob’s Ladder, From Beyond, Prince of Darkness, Candyman, Angel Heart and The Serpent and the Rainbow. While this statement may be derisive by definition, I don’t mean to say that there is never a possibility that a film like The First Power can be good; in fact, the existence of Samurai Dreams is in part predicated upon the premise that it can. While countless “me too” rip-offs crowd around superior films, this does not mean that there will not be superior “B” category films like The First Power.

I’ve actually had my eye out for this film for a while. About a year ago, I saw it for sale at a local video store for three bucks. I got something else instead, and decided to come back for it later. However, the next time I made a visit to the video store in question, it had closed its doors for good (an all-too common occurrence these days). So when I saw it for sale at Astro Video a few months ago, I was happy to throw it in my stack and take it home.

Lou Diamond Phillips plays Logan, a tough cop chasing a vicious satanic serial killer named Patrick Channing (Jeff Kober) with the help of Tess Seaton (Tracy Griffith), a psychic. Tracy has “the second power,” while Channing has the third: possession. While Tess is a reliable police informant, Logan does not come to trust her abilities fully until Channing continues killing after his execution and Logan starts seeing some pretty weird things of his own. Also around to help out is Sister Marguerite (Elizabeth Arlen), a nun who knows quite a bit about Satan and the three heavenly powers (as she holds a cross she says to Logan: “the only person in history to have all three powers,” and then pulls half the cross away, revealing a blade). The first power we can assume is held by Logan, but the film is somewhat ambiguous about this.

Lou Diamond Phillips is not a good actor in the traditional sense. That is to say, his range is very limited; Phillips can not adapt to any character. He can however play one character very well. So, like Keanu or Furlong, he can be cast well. And Phillips is more than adequate here, pulling off angry, confused, cynical and impulsive. The acting in The First Power is uniformly workmanlike. The gray and black indoor and outdoor sets are well decorated, and communicate well the kind of seedy urban (in this case L.A.) environment where occult power could conceivably manifest itself (see also: Candyman and Larry Cohen’s Q: The Winged Serpent). The First Power does a lot of things right—albeit while working within a tested framework—and ends up being wholly entertaining.

The most disappointing thing about The First Power is its conclusion. So often a genre film will unnecessarily end with an ambiguous “Gotcha!” moment, which subverts audience expectation, but for no real reason. As vague as what exactly “the first power” is in the film (and who has it) the ending is even more confusing. A simple and concise conclusion would have been appreciated. But this criticism aside, I very much enjoyed The First Power.

(This review originally appeared in Samurai Dreams issue #4. Its been a busy day so I had to cop out. I haven't posted this review here, so I think I can get away with it. Luckily I don't have many such reviews on reserve, so I'll need to be more diligent in the coming weeks)

The October Ordeal Day 3: The Shrieking

October 3: The Shrieking (1973)

Prism's VHS release of this obscure Leo Garen exploitation pic is titled "The Shrieking"; the original title is Hex. "Hex" actually makes sense, as plenty of people in this film get hexed. I don't recall any shrieking. A confusing title isn't the only dishonest part of Prism's box art; The Shrieking isn't really even a horror movie. Can't blame 'em; this is a confusing film. IMDb says: "A group of friends who were World War I flyers ride their motorcycles across America in search of what they believe their generation lost during the war." I've seen the film, and this is news to me. Apparently, The Shrieking never saw a theatrical release. Strange, as Hex would have been a perfectly adequate drive-in flick.

The bike gang (referred to as "The Company") doesn't ride motorcycles across America, they ride them to Nebraska, and stay there. The Company finds its way to the home of Oriole (Tina Herazo) and Acacia (Hilarie Thompson), two half-Indian (no tribe is given) sisters living alone on their small ranch. An uneasy arrangement is made, yet Oriole's hospitality soon wears thin as inter-personal complications arise. Any further plot synopsis would only lead to a headache on my part, so this premise will have to do.

The film isn't about narrative. Mood is the important thing. The film has that particular dustiness of drive-in classics like Deadly Harvest and Vanishing Point. The archetypal setting could be the creepiest episode of Little House never seen; it isn't set in any immediately recognizable time period. This could be the 20s, it could be the 50s--only the bikes kept me from placing The Shrieking in the Hollywood Old West. The specific time period doesn't matter. The idyllic prairie-town only signifies an already mysterious past. The quiet pastoral languor of The Shrieking at times feels even more tranquilized than Idaho Transfer or Picnic at Hanging Rock. This isn't a bad thing: while there's a lot wrong with this picture, the image itself is confident.

The characters themselves are stock. Oriole and Acacia are opposites: Oriole the strong, dark, handsome older sister; Acacia the blonde innocent. The gang has all the typicals: Keith Carradine plays Whizzer, the idealistic young kid; Gary Busey is Giblets the unhinged madman, Scott Glenn the stoic leader Jimbang; Robert Walker plays Chupo as a Jodorowskian mute wild-card with a big beard. The histories of these two sets are left to the imagination. Most of the company are running from something, or someone, but details are absent. All we really know about Acacia and Oriole is that their "Injun pa" taught 'em how to smoke marijuana and talk to bees before he died. The dialog between these characters is painful, the yokel phrasing laughable ("Shush up!", "Makes no never-mind"); but the non-verbal interplay amongst the group is often interesting.

No character is identified as protagonist, and none as antagonist. In one scene everyone's smoking prairie-weed and playing Jew's harp, in the next Giblets is trying to rape Acacia in the front yard. The Shrieking is full of abrupt shifts in tone, usually signified by Charles Bernstein's strange electroacoustic score. The role of any character can change from scene to scene. Whether a point is being made about the nature of human interaction and game-playing I cannot say. It's just as likely alliances and loyalties shift merely to push the film to its inevitable bloody conclusion. Ultimately it doesn't matter, as the film seems to posit that fate has brought these characters to a specific point in time from which there is no easy escape.

The uneven rhythm of the film becomes uncomfortable. Long periods of cinema-hypnosis are punctuated by moments of grotesque cruelty and acid-trip surreality. Oriole as a character grows more malovolent as the film winds, performing strange rituals: she sews a lock of biker-chick China's (Doria Cook) hair into a toad's mouth, and walks around in a cow's skull like a compelled witch. Her black-magick outbursts occur whenever the pace of the film slows to a stand-still. One thing I love about drive-in movies is how strange they can often be; in an earlier review I mentioned the bizarre images in the slasher Final Terror being especially memorable.

Somehow out of all this two romances develop. Whizzer and Oriole pair off in an antagonistic, almost-violent subset, and Acacia finds her familiar in the company's runt Golly, a flax-haired kid so passive he's almost ethereal. These four actors seem the most competent but also the most mystified: they play every hokey line ("What the jim-jam are you doin?") straight, as if in a trance. The acting in The Shrieking can't be called great, but it is appropriate.

Ultimately, The Shrieking offers no explanations. Moments in the last reel point to clumsy political commentary (the company ride "Indian" bikes, after all), but the stronger point here may be an implicit assumption about the malleability of human psychology in certain situations, or in certain archetypal positions. The final scene is the most bewildering of all, and I can't find the words to assess it. Like many of the films that find a home at Dreamscape, this is a bewildering and perhaps even off-putting film. Its strangeness, however, is the glue holding it together. Like the otherworldly aura of a dream, The Shrieking is often mundane, but the mysterious collection of these mundane moments grants surprising and unqualified occult dimensions.