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Yeah, I’m surprised October’s over too…32 horror films in the month is my final count – a 33% drop from last year’s total. I blame Toronto After Dark for keeping me busy…

The last four for the month:

The Shiver Of The Vampires (1971 – Jean Rollin)
It’s quite surprising that it’s taken me so long to get around to seeing one of Jean Rollin’s art-horror films – you’d think this stuff would’ve been right up my alley. And indeed, it most certainly is. For whatever reason, I just never thought to dive into his output until one of his titles pretty much randomly came up in my lengthy list of items to investigate. In this case, the horror derives almost strictly from images – not sound, not story, not character and not slow builds of tension. It’s all about the visuals. The bright colours mixed with neutral tones, the bits of bright blood red dotting the frame, the creepy statues and artifacts littering the castle, the faces of the undead vampires and the surprising places they can be found. The camera plays its own part occasionally as when it spins around inside a circle of all the characters or becomes the POV of the doomed central character. The nominal story has a newlywed couple visiting the bride’s favorite cousins in their castle. Unbeknownst to her, these vampire hunters became the hunted and now must put up with eternity. The main female vampire (who converted the cousins) slowly pulls the bride over to “her side” as the hapless husband can do nothing. Throw in a large portion of nudity, gothic outfits and a psychy soundtrack (a slightly twangy low rent version of Goblin – the great band who did the soundtrack to “Suspiria”, “Deep Red” and other Argento films) and you’ve got yourself a memorable picture.

Two Thousand Maniacs (1964 – Herchell Gordon Lewis)
As a director, Lewis wasn’t exactly known for his specific style, storytelling ability or his way with actors. I think even he would say that he wasn’t so much a filmmaker as he was a businessman. By pretty much any account, “Two Thousand Maniacs” is a terrible, terrible movie – the acting is atrocious, useless dialogue scenes go on and on and the whole thing looks completely drab. Except for the blood (primarily what Lewis is known for via both this film and “Blood Feast”) which was bright and vivid. The idea was to shock with scenes of dismemberments and other such gore-filled activities and in this movie’s case, they certainly had a structure that leant itself to such requirements. One hundred years after an entire Southern town has been wiped out by the North during the Civil War, it suddenly reappears and their “centennial” celebration is focused on finding some sacrificial Northerners to kill at their festival. It’s a different spin on Brigadoon and as an idea certainly isn’t the worst one for a gorefest. The odd thing is that it isn’t filled with as much chopped up flesh as you would expect (of course, in 1964 it was rather infamous for a few scenes of severed limbs). It’s not that I necessarily wanted or needed to see more gushing blood, but when that’s all your movie has going for it, that’s all you can hope for.

DoctorX (1932 – Michael Curtiz)
After seeing this two-strip technicolour film, I can’t help but wish that someone would revive this old technology and make some new films with it. The green and yellow colour palette in this case worked tremendously well for the tale of a group of scientists who are under suspicion for a recent string of murders. Specifically, any scene in one of the wonderful laboratory sets – rife with flashing lights, liquids flowing in tubes and bizarre electrical contraptions – looked fantastic with that mix of two tones and all the shadows they could find. Doctor X is the head of the school where the scientists do their research and he convinces the police to let him conduct his own investigation with his own experiments to clear his fellow professors’ names. The mystery is well handled, there are several good scenes that build up suspense and it’s overall quite fun, but sadly it’s marred by the comic relief of the newspaper reporter. Every line and every word has to be said with smarm or as a “zinger”. It completely takes the steam out of anything built up previously. Overall it’s good – averaging between fantastic and annoying.

The Return (2006 – Asif Kapadia)
I don’t remember much about the response to the Sarah Michelle Gellar vehicle “The Return” from 5 years ago, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t overly positive. That’s a bit of a shame since this was a pretty effective supernatural thriller. Oh sure, the story doesn’t really go anywhere overly different than any other “why am I having these visions of someone else’s past?” movie, but it does it with (for the most part) striking visuals and a very patient approach. There are several long moments of silence and a mostly tempered soundtrack that helps keep you concerned for Gellar’s character as she feels a strong pull to return to her native Texas. There’s a car crash in her past, but she is also increasingly disturbed by images intruding on her reality from a place she’s never been. It falls into a few of the standard traps, but resists going for too many easy scares by relying on the audience’s empathy with the central character. One major issue with the film, though, is its use of the sudden zoom effect – you know the one where for no reason at all the camera seems to lurch forward like there’s some auto-correcting zoom feature? It’s used enough in the film to be extremely distracting and somewhat infuriating. It makes sense (to a certain extent) when being used in faux-documentaries to ape a cameraman trying to figure out the right shot and framing for something happening in front of them, but it’s completely nonsensical to use in a film like this. Sometimes a single bad choice like that can ruin an entire experience, but fortunately there’s enough in the rest of this film that allows me to overlook that glaring misstep.

The Cat and the Canary

It figures that my favorite new-to-me film of the month would turn out to be a silent. I think I’m made backwards or something. Heh. Anyway, this “old dark house” film was namechecked at the screening of The Bat I went to earlier this month (capsule review), and even though I liked The Bat well enough, THIS is the film it largely wanted to be. I saw “largely” because this film is not a crime film in the same way, and those crime elements are solid in The Bat. The Cat and the Canary focuses on a last testament left by a crotchety old man twenty years ago – he stipulated waiting twenty years after his death to read it, and this is the time, with all his relatives gathered like vultures in his spooky old house to find out who will get his fortune. His instructions are complicated, involving a second inheritor if the main one proves to be insane, which leads to much suspicion all around. Add in a potential escaped lunatic running around through hidden passageways in the house and a mystery involving the family diamonds, plus some well-done comedy around the disparate group of people, not to mention the quite excellent Expressionist-style cinematography and really innovative animated titles, and this is a super-fun time. Is it scary? Well, maybe not, but there are some moments of genuine suspense and tension, and a few of the visuals are extremely creepy. I wrote a bit more about it here, along with more screencaps.
1927 USA. Director: Paul Leni. Starring: Laura La Plante, Creighton Hale, Forrest Shanley, Tully Marshall, Gertrude Astor, Flora Finch, Arthur Edmund Carew, Martha Mattox.

The Fog

This was a nearly random pick off Netflix Instant (not totally random, because I have been meaning to watch more John Carpenter films), and I knew almost nothing about it. I haven’t seen the remake or anything. I ended up really enjoying it – Carpenter has a talent for the kind of creepy scares that I love. Not quite jump scares, but where something just appears (with no cut or music to make it a jump) or you become aware of the bad guy’s presence and it sends chills down your spine. I love that, and there are several scenes in here that did that for me. The story is based on a ghost story (told wonderfully by John Houseman to a bunch of kids in the first scene) about a group of people killed 100 years earlier when their ship wrecked in a massive fog. Legend has it that when the fog returns, so will they, and this apparently is the year for it. Fog is creepy anyway, hiding things until they’re right upon you and tending toward exactly the kind of reveals I just mentioned. And there’s more to the story, as the priest in the town uncovers, that means these ghosts are not just unsettled due to their violent deaths, but actually seeking revenge. Not all of this plot works out totally, and the end is fairly nonsense-making, but on a scene-by-scene basis, I loved this. I actually liked it a little bit more than Halloween, which I’m sure I’ll get eviscerated for, but it’s because I like the ghost back story more (despite the nonsense-making). Halloween is the tighter, better movie, but The Fog appealed to my sensibilities more.
1980 USA. Director: John Carpenter. Starring: Adrienne Barbeau, Jamie Lee Curtis, Tom Atkins, Janet Leigh, John Houseman.

Halloween

Yes, I had never seen this before, though it’s been on my list for a few years. Really, I don’t have much interest in slasher films, but I felt like I needed to see the first entry in each of the major franchises just to be able to say I had and have some level of competence as a film buff. I expected Halloween to be one of the best of those initial films, and it pretty much is. The film establishes Michael Myers with a creepy first-person opening, then immediately jumps ahead to him escaping from the mental institution where he’s been ever since – enough back story to set him up as a character, but not enough to risk falling into the psychoanalysis explanations that too many remakes fall into. But we’re also introduced to Jamie Lee Curtis’s character along with her less-well-grounded friends, giving us a connection to her that a lot of later slasher films eschew (to their detriment). And then the film does those creepy reveals and disappearances that I like so much, even if Carpenter here tends to announce them with obvious music cues. I like his score for the film, so I didn’t mind too much, but some of them I think would’ve been more effective if Michael had just appeared with no score backup. The moment in the screencap above is the best. Anyway, by the time the killing actually gets going, the atmosphere is sufficiently built and it steamrolls to the end nicely. Still, like I mentioned above under The Fog, a psycho killing teenagers is not really that interesting to me as a basic plotline. It’s handled here better than most movies I’ve seen, but it doesn’t really grab me beyond the level of craft.
1978 USA. Director: John Carpenter. Starring: Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Pleasance, Tony Moran, Nancy Kyes, P.J. Soles, Charles Ciphers.

Candyman

I hadn’t even heard of this film before my boyfriend started telling me about it – he likes the Chicago ghetto location and the way the ending plays out, which of course he wouldn’t tell me about until after I’d watched it. I was apprehensive, and it was definitely more on the jump scare creepy side than I usually like, but it did have elements that I appreciated. For one, like he said, the location in the Chicago projects is quite interesting, and the way Virginia Madsen’s character (very white, very middle-class) gets drawn in there through her academic research into urban legends works pretty well – it creates a double element of danger because, really, she probably shouldn’t be there at all, mythical killer or no mythical killer. Then the way the plot turns as she starts seeing Candyman and somehow winding up at crime scenes in incriminating circumstances gave it a thriller angle that I didn’t expect (I even wondered for a while if there was a non-supernatural explanation for everything). Some of the imagery (like the paintings in Candyman’s lair) was nice and creepy, too. It goes on a bit too long at times, and even though I liked the ending on a visceral level, it doesn’t quite make sense to me, but that seems to be happening with a bunch of these horror films. Ah, well.
1992 USA. Director: Bernard Rose. Starring: Virginia Madsen, Xander Berkeley, Tony Todd, Kasi Lemmons, Vanessa Williams.

Friday the 13th

And with this one, my quest to see all the firsts of the slasher franchises is complete, I think. I’m told I still need to watch Black Christmas, but that isn’t a franchise, so I’m counting it separately. This is the one I was looking forward to the least, and it is pretty darn stupid. But it has a good bit of campy fun to it, too. Clearly influenced by Halloween right down to the first-person opening kill and the twenty-year jump in time, this one doesn’t bother very much to create any empathy between us the teenage summer camp counselors being killed one by one. The fun in the film is all in seeing exactly how each one is going to be offed, with Kevin Bacon’s post-coital knife-through-the-throat a high point. We never see the killer until the very end, though a lot of the time we’re in the killer’s perspective, which adds to our distance from the victims. In this way, Friday the 13th is perhaps the clearest antecedent to the legions of slasher films to follow, which tend to lose human connection in favor of the most outrageous kills – a trend I don’t particularly like, even though it’s done with freshness and naivete here. The music is quite effective, evoking some combination of Psycho and Jaws with screeching violins and see-saw melodies, but again, none of the character depth or quality scripting that made those films so lasting.
1980 USA. Director: Sean S. Cunningham. Starring: Betsy Palmer, Adrienne King, Jeannine Taylor, Robbi Morgan, Kevin Bacon, Harry Crosby, Laurie Bertram, Mark Nelson, Peter Brouwer.

A Tale of Two Sisters (rewatch)

I first watched this in October 2009, and it was my favorite film that month. I simply had to revisit it and share it with my boyfriend this year, and it did not disappoint on rewatch. I’m notoriously bad at remembering endings, so even though I remembered part of the twist, I’d forgotten the other part so slowly remembering it as the movie went on was quite enjoyable. I love that the film works equally well as a tragic drama as it does as a creeptastic horror film – the very end is absolutely heartbreaking as well as chilling. It takes its time a bit more toward the ending than I’d like, threatening to delve into “too many endings” territory, but as I said, the final sequence makes it all totally worth it. And as I watch more horror films and nail down the approaches I like and don’t like and what scares me and doesn’t, this film is an excellent example of what actually scares me. The sequence where Soo-mi sees a dark figure at the foot of her bed that’s hunched over awkwardly and moves closer until it rushes above her…that whole part. Scares the crap out of me. It’s some combination of sound design, plain weirdness (the unnatural positioning of the figure) and the editing shifting from slow to incredibly fast without warning. So yeah. If you want to scare me, do stuff like that. Jump scares and gore don’t do it.
2005 South Korea. Director: Kim Jee-woon. Starring: Lim Su-jeong, Moon Geun-Young, Yum Jung-ah, Kim Kap-su.

Dario Argento’s Suspiria is justly celebrated for its bright, bloody set-pieces and flamboyant use of color, but it’s hard to imagine the movie being nearly as assaultive without the nearly omnipresent overwhelming score from the progressive band Goblin, who also provided the score for several of Argento’s other films. They recorded the music first, then Argento layered it into the film, a technique which works perfectly in this case, blending music into sound design to create sensory overload that matches, and sometimes even surpasses, Argento’s in-your-face visuals.

This is the opening of the film, through the first set-piece, and you can already tell how important the music is going to be, from the initially delicate but creepy as hell main theme up to the frenzy of the horrific first kill. My favorite part of the movie, though, is actually the visually-subdued scene with the blind man and his dog walking into the square – a scene which is terrifying almost solely through the score and sound design. Suspiria beats you senseless with its stylistics (in the best way possible), and the Goblin score is a huge part of that.

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Here’s a sneak peek at the most recent batch of horror films from my month long bender (which will fall far short of last year’s number due to Toronto After Dark switching back to October):

The Deaths Of Ian Stone (2007 – Dario Piana)
Though I haven’t seen many of the “8 Films To Die For” series (otherwise known as the “After Dark Horrorfest” which shows its independent films over an eight day span in nationwide theatres), I haven’t heard a whole lot of positive response to any of the films even though last year’s fest was the fifth one. However, the concept for The Deaths Of Ian Stone sounded too good to pass up: the titular character dies every night only to wake up in a completely different life. Promising stuff that could go one of any number of directions. Unfortunately it chose one that abandons its premise early on for life sucking ghostly monsters that can take human form. Worse than that though, its main character is just simply unlikeable. Even worse, he’s just boring. As is the set of CGI-heavy effects of people turning into these black death spirit thingies. When he suddenly wakes up in a new life, Ian Stone has no recollection of his previous one so it just changes the situations within which this bland unsympathetic character exists. How exciting is that? Whatever rules the story had are shuffled to the side and it becomes generic in its rush to redeem Stone. If this is representative of the “8 Films to Die For” series, I can see why I haven’t seen overwhelming response to it (though you’ll see shortly, it isn’t completely representative).

The Mask Of Fu Manchu (1932 – Charles Brabin)
Now here’s an interesting artifact of the early 30s…Filled with great set design, interesting shot selections and a whole lot more torture than you might expect, the film also engages in some of the worst casual racism that side of Breakfast At Tiffany’s. It’s not just the indiscriminate references to “the yellow man” (after all, Fu Manchu throws it right back at them with his hopes to eradicate “the white man”), but the thought that Asians think of nothing else but to rule the world. While the British wish only to find Genghis Khan’s old artifacts to preserve them in a museum (even though they break into his old chambers with nary a thought to its preservation), Fu Manchu and his “hordes” want them so that they can convince the rest of Asia to follow them into world domination. When the Brits discover that this is the plan, they double their efforts to get there first. They do, but Fu Manchu has several devious plans up his sleeve to get them back. Possibly the worst moment of all was the patronizing comment from the wealthy English archaeologist to a Chinese waiter congratulating him for not aspiring to anything more than what he was and avoiding the fields of medicine, science and exploration. Perhaps I was reading the film wrong, but aside from some of the great visuals the story didn’t have much else to hold it together, so I had to focus on something…

Private Parts (1972 – Paul Bartel)
This randomly selected title was quite the fine little surprise. Directed by Bartel (probably best known for Eating Raoul), it focuses on horrors of a more psychological nature – specifically those that arise from one’s sexual urges. Young Cheryl is a runaway and ends up at her Aunt Martha’s hotel looking to bum room and board for as long as she can. Her combination of naivete and curiosity about using her sex appeal is a concern to Martha (played by the great Lucille Benson – look her up, you’ll know her) who will not stand for any of those “painted women” in her hotel. She also likes to frequent funerals in order to see the spirits of the dead rising heavenward. As much as Cheryl tells Martha not to worry, she can’t help flirting with handymen until her attention focuses on George the photographer. He’s a rather strange bird who has his own ideas about sex (confused as they may be) and one hell of an interesting photo studio. Cheryl works herself into rather dangerous predicaments while Martha attempts to keep her building pure. Battle lines become drawn and the final confrontation gets set. Like many of the horror films from the 70s, though, the curve balls are always ready to be thrown. Not just at the end either – you never quite know where things are headed at any point in the story. Bartel does a great job of pacing things out and keeping you always a bit off centre. If the acting is slightly dodgy at times, it’s never overly distracting and doesn’t take away from one of the more interesting horrors of the early 70s.

The Abandoned (2006 – Nacho Cerda)
While at the Toronto After Dark festival this year, the title of this film came up a couple of times – mostly due to the fact that one of its writers (Karim Hussain) was quite involved in the anthology The Theatre Bizarre that played the fest. By sheer coincidence (or was it…), I happened to stumble across the DVD of it at a charity sale in our office building a few days after hearing about its underrated status. So I snagged it for a couple of bucks and tossed it in the player. It was only then that I discovered that it was another of the “8 Films To Die For” series (though from a different year than the aforementioned The Deaths Of Ian Stone). The disillusionment set in, but I decided to press forward. Fortunately, it didn’t take long to assuage my nervousness. First, it’s a gorgeous looking film whose predominant greens and blues still cover a broad spectrum. Secondly, it is creepy as all get out. It centres around Marie – a 40-ish successful business woman who has returned to Russia to learn more of her roots after being abandoned by her parents as a baby. She travels to the old house of her parents and finds that not only can she not leave, but that her twin brother has also come to the same spot. As they encounter ghostly presences of themselves and piece together what happened years ago, they wonder if they have been summoned back in order to be finished off in the manner they should have been years ago. Even though there are few characters here, it is highly effective in pulling you deeper into Marie’s predicament and dreading each new entry into a darkly lit place with a flashlight. After remembering that the “8 Films To Die For” also ran Reincarnation (the terrific film by Ju-On: The Grudge director Takashi Shimizu) and discovering that The Broken (a rather spiffy little thriller by Sean Ellis) was also part of it, I may just be turned around on the idea. But then I think of The Deaths Of Ian Stone and I reconsider all over again…

What better way to celebrate Halloween weekend than with a little classic Chuck Jones animation? This is one of my absolutely favorite Bugs Bunny cartoons, with some of Jones’ best fourth-wall-breaking gags. Plus a Peter Lorre caricature, a robot paramour, a creepy Expressionist castle, and Gossamer’s best appearance. You don’t get better than that. The cartoon is really well-known, but it’s always worth watching again.

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I‘ve had my eye on Toronto After Dark the last few days (and the next few as well), so the output has been a bit slower. Some good solid movies in this batch though…

Pin (1988 – Sandor Stern)
Pin is not your ordinary doll/horror movie. Partially because “he” is a medical mannequin (used as a teaching device) instead of a child’s toy, but also because the film relies much more heavily on the psychological horror aspects of a young boy’s development into an adult than any Chucky style attack. As young kids, Leon and his little sister Ursula are transfixed by Pin when their father uses it as a ventriloquist’s dummy and teaches them certain lessons. Ursula realizes Pin is only a dummy at a young age, but Leon continues to think that Pin is an actual living being and part of their family. As he matures and can’t count on his parent’s support or help in typical growing up matters, he goes to Pin without his father being present (disobeying a strict order) and communicates with him. His father (another dose of Terry O’Quinn – that’s two for the month!) decides to remove Pin from the house, but after a car accident leaves Leon and Ursula as orphaned teens, Pin becomes more and more of an influence to Leon’s life. It’s not filled with jump scares nor will it make you shiver in your seat, but it’s something that aims at the horror of a broken individual. It’s hampered occasionally by some inadequate acting in several roles (though David Hewlett as the older Leon is quite good), but it worked far better than I expected it would.

Amer (2009 – Helene Cattet, Bruno Forzani)
Gobs of style. Style piled on style over style – with style on the side. Cattet and Forzani’s tribute to the cinematography and atmosphere of Italian giallos mostly dispenses with dialogue and even, to a certain extent story. It’s premise focuses mainly on the sexual awakening of the same woman in three different stages – confusion (child), curiosity (teenager) & desire (adult) – with witches, murder and a variety of other real and surreal occurrences thrown in for good measure. It’s quick cutting, very arty and may drive some people for the Tylenol (or the remote), but I loved it. It creates very specific moods for each of the three stages and though there appears to be very little resolution in what occurs, the trip through it all kept me completely engaged because of the tension of truly not knowing where any of the stories were going and how they would present the next images. The colour (particularly in the opening section) is glorious and pretty much every shot is unconventional. Certainly self-conscious, but still quite the beautiful thing to see – in particular if you like rampant usage of close-ups of people’s eyes. Unnerving at times and a wonderful example of someone who wants to play and experiment in a given style.

Burnt Offerings (1976 – Dan Curtis)
In between making his two made-for-TV horror anthologies (“Trilogy Of Terror” and the recently viewed “Dead Of Night”) director Dan Curtis snuck in this tidy slow-burn feature about a family that moves into an old mansion as caretakers for the summer. Oliver Reed and Karen Black play the parents and neither bring a whole lot of subtlety to their roles – which is perfect for a film like this. The owners of the house ask only that the couple leave a tray of food once a day for their elderly mother who lives in the room upstairs. “The house takes care of itself” they say and this becomes apparent as it slowly seems to rejuvenate as the family slowly falls apart. The father is haunted by memories of his own father’s funeral (and a really creepy hearse driver) while Mom becomes strangely devoted to the unseen old lady upstairs as well as her daily house cleaning tasks. Their aunt (played by Bette Davis) is also with them and as her health starts to fail, she drives a further wedge between the couple. Her health woes certainly can’t be due to malnutrition, though, since the sicker she gets, the more Davis chews the scenery. Again though, it’s essentially in service to the film and its possessed house – the longer they stay, the more of themselves they give away. It doesn’t all work, but it provides a perfect resolution and ends up being quite satisfying. And Karen Black always kinda creeps me out in these roles – you just never know how her characters are going to react.

The Ruins (2008 – Carter Smith)
There were moments early on during “The Ruins” where I thought I had made a tragic error – I had heard this was one of the better recent Hollywood horrors, but during the character introductions I felt that I had seen these beautiful young people a hundred times before and therefore thought I knew exactly what I was about to see. Fortunately, I was quite wrong in my cynical assumptions. Instead of simply getting lost inside a set of old ruins while each dull character gets killed off by old supernatural ghosts, the story sets up a more horrific natural threat – the vines that grow on and surround the off the map pyramid-like structure the characters have come to visit after their week of partying in Mexico. It sounds a bit silly (and certainly is at times – particularly those flowers that mimic sounds), but along with the additional issue of being stranded on the ruins in the jungle surrounded by locals who won’t let them leave (in order not to allow the plant lifeform to spread elsewhere), it sets up a fine scenario that lets you play “what would I do?” while the characters work through their own options. One of the most terrifying aspects are those locals – not because of any of their specific actions, but it’s their inaction that is frightening. Instead of helping or even simply killing these trespassers, they have forced everyone who has come into contact with the plant to remain on the ruins knowing full well that the vines will take care of the problem for them. There’s some needless gore in a few sequences, but overall it mostly avoids the obvious and spins out an effective tale of terror.

Carrie

I’ve had Carrie on my horror to-watch list every October for about three years – in other words, as long as I’ve had a horror to-watch list. I finally got to it! And despite its reputation and that I knew the basic beats of the menstruation-bullying-to-prom-night-revenge plot, the film still had a lot of surprises for me, most of them good. First off, Carrie’s mom is CRAZY – it’s a little disheartening to find yet another crazy Christian immortalized on celluloid, but I think it’s pretty obvious that she is totally off the deep end, not only extremely strict on Carrie’s interactions with boys, but insistent that natural biological functions are markers of specific sexual sins and that Carrie’s telepathic ability is a sign of demon possession. Although, to be fair, the film doesn’t really explain where that comes from. Anyway, what makes the film strong and memorable is the focus on Carrie, whose transformation into queen of the prom is utterly beautiful and utterly heartbreaking because you know what’s in store for her – the lead-up, though, is so well-done (if a bit retroactively cliched) that you ache for her to have her perfect night. The denoument had me a little baffled, I will admit, though, and undermines Carrie’s deserved revenge; I’m still not sure what I make of it. Plus De Palma has a tendency to go for flashy shots when he doesn’t need them – the writing and acting here is strong enough that he could afford to save those flashy moments for really striking scenes, giving them greater impact. Still, I enjoyed the film very much, likely my favorite of the month so far.
1976 USA. Director: Brian De Palma. Starring: Sissy Spacek, William Katt, Piper Laurie, John Travolta.

The Descent

My interest in seeing this cave creature feature went up a lot after I quite enjoyed Neil Marshall’s Centurion, but the opportunity never presented itself until now. Six young women who have shared various outdoors adventures with each other meet up again to do a little spelunking a year after one member of the group lost her husband and daughter in a car accident. The trip is supposed to kind of bring the friends back together again after the trauma, but things, well, don’t go according the plan. Tensions rise when the trip planner reveals it’s an unexplored cave and that cave-in might just block the only entrance; even this part of the film is good, with some quite intense cave-in and climbing scenes. But they’re not alone in the cave, and the film continues to ramp up all the way to the end, balancing out and out action and thrills with quiet moments that are often just as nail-bitingly intense. The scares here are solid, and even though some are jump scares (which I don’t necessarily like), a lot of them are also the quieter “evil thing randomly in a shot” kind of scares that I LOVE. The effects are surprisingly good despite what I assume is a relatively low budget, and though it’s not hard to predict the order of deaths, there are still a lot of surprises in HOW they come. I apparently watched the director’s cut version, which has quite a different ending merely by having an extra couple of minutes of footage to the end of the theatrical cut – from what my boyfriend was telling me, I muchly prefer the darker DVD cut.
2005 UK. Director: Neil Marshall. Starring: Shauna Macdonald, Natalie Jackson Mendoza, Alex Reid, Saskia Mulder, MyAnna Buring, Nora-Jane Noone.

Eyes Without a Face

For once I made good on a promise to see a film soon after I made it, thanks to Ross and Bob talking it up recently. I won’t say I loved it immediately, but I can definitely see the haunting and disturbing beauty that draws people to it. Dr. Génessier is one of the most clinical and detached monsters I’ve seen in cinema – he doesn’t even seem to care that much about his daughter Christiane, whose facial scarring he’s trying to fix via skin grafts. She even indicates that she’s more of a guinea pig to him, a convenient way for him to practice surgical grafts of this level of complexity. Despite our intellectual understanding of her plight, it remains a little hard to empathize with her – that’s partially due to the blank mask she wears to cover her injury, and also to her seeming indifference (for a while, at least) to the girls her father kidnaps and operates on to get faces for her – but in a way, that very distance is horrific in and of itself. Christiane doesn’t say a whole lot, so we’re mostly left with this masked girl wandering around an ornate house, a house which is hers but yet she seems utterly alien in it. That otherworldly quality continues to the ambiguous but poetic ending; the film is more like a strange dream than a horror film (it doesn’t go for scares), though I will say, the operation scene was far more graphic than I expected!
1960 France. Director: Georges Franju. Starring: Pierre Brasseur, Alida Valli, Juliette Mayniel, Edith Scob.

The Wicker Man

Another one that’s been on my horror to-watch list for years; how I made it this long knowing as little about the story as I did I’m not sure. I knew there was something about a remote village and cultists, but that’s about it. Religious/ideological battles are at the heart of this film much more strongly than I expected. Police detective Woodward heads to this remote Scottish village on a tip that a girl there has gone missing, but when he gets there, everyone (including the girl’s mother) denies that she even existed. Sensing something’s up, the detective keeps poking around, running across rituals and teachings that hearken back to pre-Christian paganism. He doesn’t appear to be a particularly strong Christian in a personal sense, but he’s explicitly saving his virginity for his upcoming marriage, and when confronted with the contented villagers practicing public orgies and teaching their children about the Maypole as a phallic symbol, he can’t quite stand it and goes all holier-than-thou on them, much to their amusement. The film skews toward the pagans for much of its running time, as Woodward comes across as a bumbling interloper interfering in things that aren’t his business, but that only makes the eventual climax that much more disturbing. Note I didn’t say “scary.” The film isn’t really scary in a visceral way, but by end (which is somehow both surprising and inevitable), it is existentially frightening. I suspect that sense will increase on rewatch, when I’m not as focused on figuring out what’s going to happen. Oh, and for the record, I did love the inclusion of all the weird folk music which almost threatens to make the film an out-and-out musical for a little while. It’s a weirder film than I was expecting, but a less scary one.
1973 UK. Director: Robin Hardy. Starring: Edward Woodward, Christopher Lee, Diane Cilento, Britt Ekland, Ingrid Pitt.

Child’s Play

My boyfriend cajoled me into watching this despite my protestations about doll fears (damn those ventriloquist dummies), arguing that it was the first of a franchise and I’d stated my intention to watch the originals of the major horror franchises. Turns out, it wasn’t as bad as I was expecting; the voodoo element of soul transference was a fun surprise, the pacing of the film is pretty solid, the effects on Chucky are good, the kid is quite good, and those swooping camera moves are fun if a bit over the top and cliched. I do think there were a few too many “oh, he’s not dead YET?” continuations, but aside from that, I was pretty entertained. I do not intend on watching the sequels, though.
1988 USA. Director: Tom Holland. Starring: Catherine Hicks, Chris Sarandon, Alex Vincent, Brad Dourif.

Pit and the Pendulum

I quite enjoyed the Corman-Price take on The Masque of the Red Death, so I figured I’d circle around for another dose of their Poe cycle, and I enjoyed it too. Here John Kerr (a little wooden) hears that his sister has died suddenly and goes to visit her husband Price at his remote castle. Price is apparently devastated and eventually lets out that his wife died after a growing fixation on the castle’s torture chamber, left there by Price’s Inquisitor father. More and more macabre details emerge about Price’s childhood and his father, as well as the potentiality that his wife was actually still alive when buried – a fact that seems more likely as she takes to haunting the castle. It all builds to a climax with the titular pit and pendulum, but the more ghastly moments spread throughout involve B-movie scream queen Barbara Steele, who carries off the part of wife Elizabeth with panache that puts even Price in his place. It’s a splashy big colorful film (it is in color, despite my only finding quality promo images in B&W online), with lots of relatively mindless fun to be had.
1961 USA. Director: Roger Corman. Starring: Vincent Price, John Kerr, Barbara Steele, Luana Anders, Antony Carbone, Patrick Westwood, Lynette Bernay.

Paranormal Activity

I was more amused than intrigued by the first Paranormal Activity‘s marketing campaign, and didn’t rush out to see it, especially as reactions seemed pretty split between “it’s the scariest thing in the world ever” (which I didn’t particularly care to see) and “it’s not scary, it’s totally stupid” (which also isn’t particularly tempting). As is typical for me with films that most people seem to either love or hate, I’m right down the middle. I liked a lot of things about it – the evocation of the demon using very small touches, like a moving sheet or a shadow on a door, are evocative and effective. It does well with creating its mood. On the other hand, almost everything is telegraphed well in advance, so very little of it is actually scary. And the editing drove me crazy – if this is supposed to be a found footage film, with everything coming from the boyfriend’s camera, why are there so many random little edits everywhere? I mean, he didn’t pause and unpause the camera as he’s walking across the room (the camera would’ve jostled a bit while he did, besides why would he), and whoever found the camera later wouldn’t have bothered with editing out a half-second here and there as the guy’s crossing the room. And those edits were EVERYWHERE. So it succeeds on creepy, suggestive low-budget special effects, but it utterly fails as a found footage film, and that’s such a big part of it that I have to mark it down a lot for that.
2009 USA. Director: Oren Peli. Starring: Katie Featherston, Micah Sloat, Mark Fredrichs.

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Just for the record, Elisha Cook Jr. is awesome. I thought that needed to be said.

Dead Of Night (1977 – Dan Curtis)
No, not the classic 1945 anthology of horror stories called Dead Of Night, this is the 1977 not-quite-as-classic anthology of horror stories called Dead Of Night. In this case, it’s three completely separate unlinked stories (without even a wraparound story for good measure) that were made for TV and bundled together as a single movie. Actually, there is one uniting characteristic across all three of them: each story was written by Richard Matheson (he of “I Am Legend” fame and countless other novels and short stories). It shows through in the concepts behind the stories and the way they are structured (if not in every spoken line) and this helps to make for a quite entertaining 70 odd minutes. The opening story is the least effective, but that may be partially due to my inability to see Ed Begley Jr. as anything but the perpetually goofy Dr. Victor Erhlich from TV’s St. Elsewhere. He plays a young man devoted to restoring old cars and finds that his latest project has actually driven him back to its own past. I like the way the time travel element is handled (no weird vortex needs to be entered, etc.) and where the story ends up, but it’s all rather flatly told. On par with an average Twilight Zone episode (which still isn’t exactly bad). The second story moves things in a more interesting direction even though it begins and initially unfolds as your typical Victorian vampire story. Patrick Macnee stars as the concerned husband who calls in a friend to help find the reasons behind his wife’s apparent vampire attack wounds. The town is locking itself up at night and the servants have departed, but things may not be what you expect. A very nicely told and quite tense thriller. The final story simply entitled “Bobby” is, apparently, the one everyone remembers from its original showing on TV (similar to how everyone remembers that last story in Trilogy Of Terror with the tribal doll) and it’s obvious why that is. After a distraught mother contacts the spirit world and asks that her recently drowned son be returned to her, she gets a big surprise – he shows up in the pouring rain on the doorstep. However, and you had to see this coming, all is not what it may seem…The boy starts to question and turn on her until it becomes a bit of a life and death hide and seek game. Terrific use of lighting to build atmosphere (yes, it’s cliche to have a lightning storm happen during these type of scenes, but it establishes mood wonderfully well) and a kicker of a final image (that also leaves the viewer to fill in the blanks as to what happens next). I can imagine the talk in the grade 7 hallways the day after this aired…

Day Of The Dead (1985 – George Romero)
Took me awhile to get to the third installment of Romero’s “Dead” films, but I’m (mostly) glad I finally got there. I’ll blame Romero’s tandem non-Dead films Martin and The Crazies for delaying me as I felt I needed to see them first. That actually worked out well since the former is likely his best film and the latter was still very solid and led to an even more solid remake. Back to zombies though…Day Of The Dead shares a lot with its predecessors: zombie bloodshed, crappy acting, rag tag group of individuals hemmed in by zombies, terrible character development, a satirical approach to broader subjects and poorly thought out dialogue. The good moments are awfully entertaining as the zombies really tear into their victims (apparently you really need to dig out those central organs for the tasty sections) and you never can quite tell when the next kill is going to happen. Yeah, the gore and effects are over the top, but I laughed long and heartily along with them. The overlong scenes of this group of twelve talking (I think it’s safe to say that stating that the movie ends with fewer than that is not a spoiler) occasionally threaten to derail the whole enterprise, but it always managed to save itself. The military characters are far too one-dimensionally racist, power-hungry and violent which in turn makes them awfully dull and waters down the larger satire of military control over large populations. Particularly when the scientists aren’t exactly an engaging lot either…Still, the zombie carnage is highly entertaining.

Mark Of The Vampire (1935 – Tod Browning)
At only an hour, Browning doesn’t have a whole lot of time to pack in his story, his characters, his monsters and his creepiness into Mark Of The Vampire, but he still somehow manages to do so in a very satisfying way. And that’s even with a complete change of pace, plot, story and mood with about 10 minutes left. I’ll admit I wasn’t overly thrilled with that particular turning point, but it made for something different and certainly can’t take away from the fun of the preceding 50 minutes. As you watch all the scenes of Dracula (Bela Legosi) and Luna slowly walking the halls of their mansion or wandering towards their prey at night, it becomes obvious that Browning had worked extensively in silent movies. The silence of those scenes and the glowing of the monsters provide all the spookiness you might want (bonus: lots of spiders, bugs and bats thrown in for good measure). Browning isn’t afraid to add some subtlety either – whether it’s having Luna just slightly widen her eyes in order to command her victim or changing up the lighting for an added surreal effect. He also wisely decides not to add any broad humour which, for me, sometimes impacts how well some of these old horrors work (see The Black Cat).

30 Days Of Night (2007 – David Slade)
Both better and worse than I expected. The look of the film is sharp, detailed and quite lovely given that most of it happens “at night” (the story occurs in the Northern reaches of Alaska where the winter has just moved into a month of darkness) and the colours remain deep and rich. The action is actually comprehensible and not completely chaotic (only occasionally suffering from jittery fast motion) and the performances by Josh Hartnett (not one of my favourite actors) and Melissa George are strong and feel right for the characters. The flip side is that the story strains at its edges to make sure you believe the 30 days of darkness angle, but by trying to close off the realistic avenues of escape for its characters, it can’t help but then make you think about what they missed or got wrong. And it’s not a short list. First and foremost is the idea that as soon as the sun sets on a specific day (at which point a good chunk of the population leave for areas of greater daylight), it then literally completely disappears for a full month. I can let that slide (though it’s a bit frustrating), but the vampires are another issue. Initially they appear to be interesting in both design and behaviour, but when they start speaking to each other in their own language (with nothing of interest to say) and don’t stay consistent in their actions (their intelligence as well as their strength seems to waver throughout), I got a bit bored of them. Having said that, the film does provide some good tension as well as surprises and at just under 2 hours doesn’t feel overly long. It’s ending was somewhat unsatisfying though – whether it was partially to do wanting to leave a crack open for a sequel or just laziness towards wrapping things up is hard to say.

Cinefamily played this animated short last week before their feature silent presentation, and I loved it. It’s a bit on the experimental side, one of the earliest films (1933) from animation pioneers Alexandre Alexeïeff and Claire Parker using their pinscreen animation technique. I don’t really understand how the pinscreen thing works – apparently there’s a screen with thousands of pins, and you make the picture by pushing some in and others out, creating shadows of different lengths when lit from the side – but this is some of the most interesting, evocative animation I’ve ever seen. I’ve always found the Fantasia version of Mussorgsky’s “Night on Bald Mountain” pretty scary, but this one is incredibly disturbing and hauntingly beautiful.

Watch the short after the jump. I do apologize for the obnoxious logo soundbyte at the beginning.

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It slices, it dices and it delivers horror!

Man In The Attic (1953 – Hugo Fregonese)
This 1953 retelling of Jack The Ripper, even at a fairly lean and condensed 82 minutes, feels a bit stretched – particularly with the two (not very good) musical numbers thrown in. Granted, they do provide moments which allow the infamous slasher (an alternately socially awkward and frightening Jack Palance) to get all hot and bothered by the main dancer’s overt sexuality. After moving into the upstairs rooms of the dancer’s parents’ house (the economy has impacted the family so they need to take in borders), Jack becomes the object of desire for the dancer and feels attraction for her as well. Unfortunately his prior scars haven’t quite healed and he is compelled to occasionally hit the streets and commit his heinous acts. There’s nary a drop of on-screen violence, but there’s some nice shadowplay and the two main killing scenes are somewhat chilling in how the women react to the unseen killer. Overall, not too bad, but heavily dependent on Palance’s nervous performance.

The Amityville Horror (1979 – Stuart Rosenberg)
There’s something about 70s horror films – the steady creep, the look and feel of their surroundings and, as with the original “The Amityville Horror”, their pace. In this case, it grabs you early and ever so gradually reels you in with very few slow spots (OK, the sex scene between James Brolin and Margot Kidder was a bit longer than I would’ve liked…). To be honest, not much happens for most of the movie, but it manages to keep you just a little bit nervous throughout and always waiting for the next incident. I’ve somehow managed to avoid this blockbuster (I believe the short doc on the DVD stated that this was the largest grossing independent film ever at the time and held the record for a good 4-5 years afterwards) up to this point – I had always thought it would be a fairly tedious affair with much mumbo-jumbo. Instead it’s quite engaging and all the mumbo-jumbo segments are delivered with a whole lot of gusto from both Rod Steiger and Helen Shaver. The ending sort of gets away from the film a bit and it sputters just when it should be vrooming, but when a movie can build the tension this well (and throw in a bleeding stairway too), that can be forgiven.

Mad Love (1935 – Karl Freund)
Based on “The Hands Of Orlac” (the basis for a whole raft of other films, including the 1924 silent of the same name directed by Robert Wiene who also did “The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari”), this version is dominated by the presence of Peter Lorre. Not an authoritative presence, but one that demands just as much attention – in just about every frame he is unsettling, creepy and somewhat disturbing. His performance might be viewed as slightly comic by today’s standards, but I love how Lorre never quite relaxes into any semblance of normalcy. The lovely expressionistic sets add a good deal to the proceedings, but I must admit I wanted more – the hospital of Dr. Gogol (Lorre) is filled with uneven doors and odd shapes, but it doesn’t quite get the time to really instill that sense of a world askew. And things definitely go off the rails as the story moves forward. Gogol is obsessed with Yvonne Orlac the lead actor of a local Grand Guignol style horror theatre, but she resists his advances since she is married. When her concert pianist husband has his hands crushed in a train accident, Gogol sees his chance to not only get closer to Yvonne but also to toy with her husband. After surgically replacing the pianist’s mangled hands with those of a recently executed murderer, Gogol tries to convince him that he’s going crazy. If the film has a flaw, it’s that it’s too short (68 minutes) and that it could’ve pulled together even more eerie moments. However, any Peter Lorre – especially of this caliber – is a good thing.

Martyrs (2008 – Pascal Laugier)
That was not a pleasant experience. That’s not to say that this wasn’t well-made, extraordinarily tense and even kind of brilliant at times, but the sheer brutality that happens on screen with never a pause for anything else, bordered on painful. Though it begins to make a point of how society’s treatment of its young women is like a form of torture as it forces so many conventions and expectations on them, it ends up somewhere completely different. I’m not sure I liked where they ended up considering the assault I had just witnessed, but I have to admit Laugier surprised me at each turn and left me with indelible images and a few things to ponder. However, the unrelenting and nightmarish violence the women in this movie are subjected to is very hard to sit through – even though I understand the point of it in the context of the film, it does leave you wondering why you continue to watch. I didn’t hate the film by any stretch, but I can’t really imagine what circumstances would lead me to ever recommend this film to someone else.

[rec] 2

The first [rec] was a fantastic example of the first-person camera found-footage technique (one of the few that’s fairly internally consistent), and made great use of its claustrophobic environments. The second one picks up right where it left off, with our intrepid reporter in the attack on the verge of being caught by the virus’s progenitor, then cuts to a SWAT team about to enter the building to shut down whatever is causing the attacks. The scares here aren’t as effective because they’re more out in the open – instead of a creepy feeling of something being just out of sight, the infected here are right there in your face. Which is more gross, but less scary. There are some really interesting things done with structure, though, as parts of the film are done from the point of view of a group of kids who think it’d be cool to break into the building – they’re pretty freaking annoying, but seeing some of the things from a different perspective is nice. The tension ramps up toward the end, and there’s a fairly neat use of night vision. I enjoyed the film, but it doesn’t have the pure viseral thrills of the first.
2009 Spain. Directors: Jaume Balagueró, Paco Plaza. Starring: Jonathan Mellor, Manuela Velasco, Óscar Zafra, Ariel Casas, Alejandro Casaseca.

The Bat

This month’s Silent Treatment program at Cinefamily screened the rare silent horror film The Bat, one of several “haunted” house crime thrillers of the time. In the opening scene, a master criminal known as The Bat (because he dresses like a bat) manages to burgle a millionaire’s home right under the noses of scads of police, who he magnanimously tipped off to his plans. It plays like Fantomas or Les Vampires, and has gorgeous Expressionist photography as we see him set off to another job, a bank robbery. But turns out the bank owner may not’ve been on the up-and-up either, as he seems to have disappeared and the majority of the bank’s money as well. At least, I’m pretty sure that’s how it went down. I was in and out doing volunteering stuff during some of this exposition. Anyway. Before long, the plot converges on a country home owned by the bank owner, but currently being leased to the imposing Miss Cornelia and her niece, where police and private detectives, bank clerks and criminals, not to mention a hysterical maid, all try to figure out where the money is and stay safe from The Bat, whose identity is kept a secret to the bitter end. The promise of the early scenes is squandered a bit in the long, comedic center section with all the characters (except Miss Cornelia and the Bat, both of whom are self-possessed to a fault – a real stand-off between these two would’ve been something to behold!) bumbling about. But the end pulls it back together for a satisfying conclusion. Bonus: Even though I’ve read that this isn’t the inspiration for Batman, there’s basically a batsignal moment that’s pretty awesome to see.
1926 USA. Director: Roland West. Starring: Emily Fitzroy, George Beranger, Jack Pickford, Jewel Carmen, Tullio Carminati, Eddie Gribbon, Charles Herzinger, Louise Fazenda, Robert McKim.

The Skeleton Key

I’ve tended to avoid most mainstream horror movies for the past several years, mostly because they aren’t frankly very good. I’m not sure I’d call The Skeleton Key GOOD, per se, but I had an enjoyable time watching it, and it definitely has some intriguing concepts under the hood. Kate Hudson takes a job caring for an older man who’s had a stroke at the old Southern mansion home he and his wife share in the bayous of Louisiana. You pretty much can’t have a supernatural horror flick set outside New Orleans without voodoo (or hoodoo, as the film distinguishes them), and sure enough, turns out the house originally belonged to a Southern gentleman who had no concept of his black servants being anything more than “the help,” when in fact, they were hoodoo practictioners of the highest order. Hudson stumbles into all this and OF COURSE won’t let it go and OF COURSE goes investigating in locked rooms and OF COURSE starts playing with spells herself and OF COURSE gets herself into deep trouble. Most of it is fairly predictable, but it has a few genuinely interesting twists, and watching Gena Rowlands go to town in her hammy part more than makes up for some wooden line readings from Hudson. Plus Peter Sarsgaard is on hand to be his usual self, full of benevolent menace.
2005 USA. Director: Iain Softley. Starring: Kate Hudson, Peter Sarsgaard, Gena Rowlands, John Hurt, Joy Bryant.

Dead of Night (rewatch)

This was one of the first horror films I remember seeing that I actually liked – a trend in my tastes toward creepy B&W atmospheric horror that hasn’t really abated, despite my new openness to other subsets of the genre. I included it in my list of classic horror films last week, but it had been a long while since I saw it. When TCM played it this week, I jumped at the opportunity to see it again and share it with my boyfriend (who thankfully also enjoyed it). What I’d forgotten before this rewatch was how quickly it jumps into the frame story, no explanation, just the guy driving up to the country house where he has a weird sense of having dreamt about all these people before and an incredible ability to predict things that will happen throughout the evening. Intrigued by his uncanny sixth sense, the other guests start telling about their own experiences with unexplained phenomena – each of these stories could easily be a Twilight Zone episode, and they all have that feel of something just outside normal, none moreso than the frame story. Often frame stories in anthology films are throwaway and rather tiresome, but I really love this one, and the way it circles in on itself and the other stories at the end is surreal and genuinely intense, even though several of the stories are not particularly scary. I was a little afraid it wouldn’t hold up to my memories on rewatch, but it did. I still love it.
1945 UK. Director: Basil Dearden, Alberto Cavalcanti, Robert Hamer, Charles Crichton. Starring: Mervyn Johns, Roland Culver, Mary Merrall, Googie Withers, Frederick Valk, Anthony Baird, Sally Ann Howes, Robert Wyndam.

Jaws (rewatch)

Watching this again, I’m not entirely sure what genre it should be. I guess all creature features tend to be lumped into horror, but it plays more like a character drama punctuated by bursts of intense thrills. So, creature feature drama thriller, I guess. Whatever it is, it’s damned impressive, even thirty-five years later. Countless films have tried to capture whatever it is that makes Jaws special, but few even come close – the pacing is perfect, building up the tension before the shark attacks and letting it go just at the last minute, or temporarily difusing it with a red herring. The fact that the film comes right out of the gate and makes a dog and a little boy among the first set of victims is telling – it remains shocking. Thrills aside, the real pleasure here is the interactions between the three very different characters who go after him. Beginning as stereotypes, but not sticking to them, Brody, Quint, and Hooper have a competition/companionship vibe among them that’s much stronger than most creature features have time to establish. Sure, the movie has great special effects (you’ll rarely notice the shark is animatronic), thrilling action, and even awkward humor in the form of the dumbass mayor and his cronies, but the depth of character and willingness to linger on the in-between moments are what make Jaws great.
1975 USA. Director: Steven Spielberg. Starring: Richard Dreyfuss, Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, Lorraine Gary, Murray Hamilton.

The Uninvited (rewatch)

It’s been so long since I’ve seen this one I didn’t remember anything beyond the descriptor “creepy haunted house movie.” Which could describe umpteen different movies. A rewatch was definitely in order, especially since I’ve continued to mention the film as an example of the kind of 1940s quiet horror that’s closest to my heart even as my memory of it faded into nothingness. Ray Milland and Ruth Hussey are brother and sister who buy a deserted seaside mansion, only to discover that it’s routinely filled with noises of crying, flickering candles, creeping coldness, and a scent of mimosas, none of which can be explained scientifically. It all seems bound up in the former owner’s granddaughter, who lived in the house until she was three and her mother died falling off the cliff. The next logical step – hold some seances! Of course. It’s a charming little film, really, with a nice crotchety performance from veteran Donald Crisp as the dour grandfather, and some really effective special effects on the ghost. It’s not particularly scary, but it definitely has the quietly chilling atmosphere down pat.
1944 USA. Director: Lewis Allen. Starring: Ray Milland, Ruth Hussey, Donald Crisp, Gail Russell, Cornelia Otis Skinner, Alan Napier.

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The horror just keeps on comin’!

The Caller (2011 – Matthew Parkhill)
For a film about which I had heard absolutely nothing and which was given to me by a friend (Thanks Dave!) with the following description “It wasn’t terrible…”, The Caller was a very happy surprise. There are plot holes a mile wide (similar to time travel paradoxes, the story would be hard pressed not to have a few incongruous moments) and some scenes that frustrate due to the main character’s poor decisions (ie. if she just did what any logical person would do, the story would have petered out), but director Matthew Parkhill injects the ever-wonderful DREAD into the movie by using great framing of his character (she appears behind bars numerous times over the course of the film) and using a very solid sound field that doesn’t fall back to the same old obvious tricks. A very nice lead performance by Rachelle Lefevre rounds out this tale of a recently separated woman (with an awful ex) who answers a call in her new apartment from a stranger living 30 years in the past. As their relationship builds and deteriorates, the calls become more threatening since the past can reach out and change the future. One of the better straight to video releases I’ve seen in some time.

Apt Pupil (1998 – Bryan Singer)
Singer’s follow-up to “The Usual Suspects” was a bit of an odd choice – a story of a high school student who, after becoming fascinated with the Holocaust in school, finds a Nazi war criminal hiding out in his own town. In exchange for hearing the Nazi officer talk about his horrible acts in the prison camps, the teenager promises to keep his years long secret safe. It gradually shifts towards a battle for control between the two and becomes an interesting look at how some people can be capable of almost anything especially when their own self-interests are in peril and their backs are up against a wall. The descriptions of the war crimes committed are indeed horrifying and truly unnerving, but basing your horror movie around these inhumane acts is a strange concept. However, as it moves away from these straight recollections, it becomes a tense battle between the teenager (Brad Renfro) and war criminal (Ian McKellen – fabulous as always). Though it stumbles a bit trying to wedge in all the closing plot points (and adds in a few more ridiculous coincidences), it still remains an effective thriller with great shot choices from Singer – from the get-go you know you are in the hands of someone who knows what to do with a camera. Its horror is certainly far beyond any monster or nighttime ghostly vision…

Phantom Of The Paradise (1974 – Brian De Palma)
De Palma’s rock musical variation on Phantom Of The Opera always struck me as being a bit too goofy to really be considered a horror film. Turns out I was right, but it doesn’t mean it’s not fantastically fun. I’m not likely to run out and buy the soundtrack tomorrow, but the songs are actually pretty memorable and fit the within-the-film musical. Said stage production is being put on by famed record producer Swan (played by Paul Williams) after having stolen all its music from a piano player named Winslow who auditioned for him. After being framed by Swan and sent to jail, Winslow escapes, tries to stop Swan releasing his music and becomes horribly disfigured in a record pressing plant. Swan chooses a young singer (played by Jessica Harper who would go on to appear in “Suspiria”) and convinces Winslow (now with a mask to hide his scarred face) to finish the musical for her. Buried below the stage of the Paradise theatre, the “phantom” works long and hard to finish the music for his new muse, but Swan has new plans for everyone. As you might expect, it doesn’t quite end smoothly. The set designs and De Palma’s camera angles are the real stars here and it makes for a goofy but very entertaining take on the classic horror tale. And the last 15-20 minutes or so are deliriously nuts.

Event Horizon (1997 – Paul W.S. Anderson)
It’s not that I wasn’t enjoying this almost 15 year-old space horror, but by the half hour mark I felt I could just stop the film and write the review. Great atmosphere, fine build-ups while searching the abandoned ship, false scares, cardboard characters, stock dialogue, lazy and mostly pointless CGI – the good stuff is good, but why-oh-why do they have to be so lazy with the rest? A fine example of this lazy thinking is the little bits of CGI refuse that rattle around the abandoned ship in weightlessness – the crew have already mentioned several times how the temperature in the long abandoned ship is a deep freeze and yet one of the items that floats by is a full water bottle complete with sloshing sounds of its contents. Picky? Sure, but it goes to show the attitude in the creation of the film. However, the first hour certainly doesn’t waste a lot of time as it delivers a great vibe, never gets boring, provides a solid amount of creep and even the unwarranted jump scares are kind of fun. However, the last half hour pretty much spirals out of control in trying to literally show the private hells of some of the crew and what lies beyond the gateway the ship has opened. It’s a mess and loses all the tension of the first hour. A shame.

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After being a bit focused on family Thanksgiving holidays, I’m licking my chops to get at this next set.

Tales From The Darkside (1990 – John Hamilton)
By whatever name this film is known (it’s also been called Creepshow 3 internationally), it still follows the standard conventions of the horror anthology film: a single wraparound story allows for several disparate short tales (20 – 30 minutes each) to be told. Pros and cons abound with this approach of course, but the high watermark for me has always been the Amicus films from the late 60s and early 70s which perfected the style (for the horror genre anyway) with titles such as The House That Dripped Blood and Tales From The Crypt. The law of diminishing returns seems to hold if you consider this one to be the third Creepshow entry – the first wasn’t perfect, but had some very entertaining stories and a few fun “scares”. The second left the inspiration behind, but still zipped it’s way through it’s three stories. With this edition from 1990, none of its three segments are out and out bad, but each fails to really pay off. The first is probably the best – a Mummy inflicts the same procedures done on it on others – and has the biggest name stars (Christian Slater, Steve Buscemi and a very early role for Julianne Moore), but it doesn’t really have anywhere to go once it completes its first couple of kills. Still, it’s well directed with some solid moments. The second (starring David Johansen) is far less effective as we watch a hit man get contracted to kill a cat. The last is really only interesting on two fronts. The first being that it is essentially a remake of “The Woman In The Snow” – my favourite of the four stories from the classic Japanese film “Kwaidan” – though it doesn’t attempt to mimic the gorgeous and surreal look of the original. The second is that it provides some fine creature effects. Otherwise it was deadly dull (granted, as soon as I realized it was a remake I knew exactly where the story was going, but that’s still no excuse for being dull). The less said about the wraparound story with Debbie Harry, the better.

In Dreams (1999 – Neil Jordan)
Neil Jordan tries his hand at the horror-dream film with this story of a woman who is haunted by dreams of children underwater. The true horror of these visions shows itself when she realizes that she is somehow linked with a serial child murderer and that her own young daughter may be at risk. Though the film boasts a solid cast – Annette Bening, Robert Downey Jr., Aidan Quinn and Stephen Rea – the acting is its biggest issue. Particularly the performances of Bening and Downey Jr. who both obviously try too hard. They don’t necessarily have to come across as “being natural”, but I shouldn’t be pulled out of their scenes as I notice them “act”. Having said that, the movie has many solid things going for it: the cinematography (especially underwater) is wonderful, the story (though slightly convoluted) is both surprising and engaging and the horror isn’t thrust upon you in undeserved jump scares (which I admit I assumed would be the case). The frightening moments in the story are when you think about what just happened and you put yourself in the character’s shoes.

Mill Of The Stone Women (1960 – Giorgio Ferroni)
This Italian film is much more Hammer gothic than Giallo (which, given its 1960 date, makes a whole lot of sense). Though it borrows heavily on Italian set design and use of colour to light tense scenes filled with anticipation, the pace and story are much closer to how the great British studio would have handled this material. The story is set around a windmill in which sits an old carousel of mannequin women who rotate around the stage whenever the wind blows and the mill’s arms turn. The women appear to be models of famous women throughout history who were killed (Joan Of Arc, etc.). A young writer is hired to pen a story about the 100th anniversary of the mill and while there he meets the very ill daughter of the caretaker. She suffers from a disease that may cause her to expire almost instantaneously with any imposed stress and so she remains in the mill with her personal doctor. The young man feels that something is not right, but then wonders if he is losing his mind when he witnesses the daughter die and sees her alive and kicking again the very next day. It’s a slowly paced movie that creates its mood around the mill itself. Slow camera dollys, ominous creaks and the nighttime hues all chip in to make the mill become an additional character in the film. The broad acting and overdubbed dialogue might be difficult for some to handle, but the film proves rewarding if you have the patience.

The Black Cat (1941 – Albert S. Rogell)
The second of two The Black Cat films that feature Bela Lugosi, this 1941 feature is a mix of comedy and haunted house similar to something like The Old Dark House. It’s a bit broader in some of its funny business (some of which is far too forced from star Broderick Crawford), but is definitely memorable for the creaks and moans the house provides, several key scenes and a great finale. I’ve owned the movie for well over a year (as part of the Universal Horror: Classic Movie Archive 2 disc set of 5 films), but assumed it was the earlier Black Cat film that I had seen and so put it aside for later. Fortunately there was discussion about it at both Cinema Styles and the great Arbogast’s blog (if you aren’t following Arbogast’s 31 Screams feature throughout October, you are frittering your life away), so I dug it up. Despite some misgivings about the style of comedy, I’m still very glad I did.

Haxan (1922)

There are a number of good silent film choices here, but this one is a little under-the-radar unless you’re a real classic horror or silent film aficionado. Benjamin Christensen’s Haxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages purports to be a documentary depicting the history of witchcraft from the middle ages through the Puritan era and to modern day (which Christensen connects via the modern “hysteric” – his thesis, such as it is, is that witches in earlier eras suffered from misdiagnosed mental illness, hardly an original thought with him), but really, it’s an excuse to gleefully show flights of fancy into the devil’s lair, detail objects of torture, and basically let his imagination run wild. It’s stylistically flamboyant, too, and though a lot of it is humorous now (the modern day parts are particularly earnest in a laughable way), a good portion of it is genuinely creepy and it’s definitely an unforgettable visual experience.
1922 Denmark. Director: Benjamin Christensen. Starring: Benjamin Christensen, Maren Pedersen.
Other silent films to try: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Nosferatu, The Phantom of the Opera.

White Zombie (1932)

I’m a sucker for voodoo-type zombie movies, and though this one has its slow and dated moments, it also does a great job of getting to the heart of the voodoo zombie situation, with a cruel mill owner (played by Bela Lugosi) controlling his workforce by having turned them all into mindless zombies who do his bidding. The main plot concerns a neighboring plantation owner who turns to Lugosi to get him to do the same to the woman he loves – who’s about to marry another man. But that doesn’t turn out too well. The most chilling scene shows the actual process of zombification, which takes some time, during which the victim is aware of what’s happening but is unable to stop it. That moment alone? Worth the whole movie.
1932 USA. Director: Victor Halperin. Starring: Bela Lugosi, Madge Bellamy, Joseph Cawthorn.
Other early sound films to try: the Universal horror cycle (especially Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein and Dracula), Freaks, The Mystery of the Wax Museum, The Old Dark House, Vampyr.

Cat People (1942)

One of the go-to sets of films for classic creepy atmosphere is the filmography of producer Val Lewton. Head of his own unit within RKO Studios in the 1940s, he produced a series of B movies exemplary for their noirish photography and literary qualities – oftentimes he was given a horror-esque title and then he went and made a creepy little drama, far better than the schlock the studio probably expected. All of the Lewton films are worth watching, but Cat People is one of the best. Simone Simon plays a lovely girl with a dark secret – she’s descended from an Eastern European people who morph into cats, sometimes with deadly consequences. Director Jacques Tourneur consistently turned out the most iconic Lewton pictures, his eye for shadows and contrasts unmatched (he’d later go on to direct quintessential noir Out of the Past).
1942 USA. Director: Jacques Tournier. Starring: Simone Simon, Tom Conway, Kent Smith.
Other Val Lewton films to try: I Walked With a Zombie (my personal favorite, but not particularly scary), The Body Snatcher, Isle of the Dead, The Seventh Victim, Ghost Ship.

Dead of Night (1945)

The anthology horror film has enjoyed a long and popular history, and Dead of Night was probably one of the first. A frame story tells of a man having a strange nightmare involving a country house and an eclectic group of people there. When he heads out for work that day, he finds himself going to that house and meeting those people. As he starts telling them of his dream, they each have a strange story to tell as well. These stories vary in quality and tone – some are almost purely comedic, as in the ghost golfing story, others are pretty creaky, but a couple will really get under your skin, especially the Michael Redgrave-led story about a ventriloquist’s dummy. My continued unease with ventriloquist’s dummies likely started with this film, though plenty of other films and shows have certainly found them horrific as well.
1945 UK. Directors: Alberto Cavalcanti, Charles Crichton, Basil Dearden, Robert Hamer. Starring: Mervyn Johns, Robert Wyndam, Michael Redgrave.
Other 1940s-1950s horror films to try: The Uninvited, The Wolf Man, House of Wax, The Bad Seed

Horror of Dracula (1958)

Hammer Films has been a big name in horror production companies since the 1950s, noted especially for their lush and colorful take on classic horror franchises, and though Horror of Dracula wasn’t their first film, it’s one of the main ones that really set them on the map. It brought Christopher Lee into the role of Dracula for the first time, a role he’d continue to play for Hammer for years. It’s a slightly bloodier take on the title than you’ll find in the original Bela Lugosi Dracula, but still fairly mannered as horror films go. In fact, the thing that makes Hammer films stand out is how solid the best ones are as costume dramas, though some of the acting here and there is a bit suspect (oh, Michael Gough, you’re a treasure). The story here is a slight variation on Stoker’s Dracula, with Jonathan Harker returning to try to finish off the vampire he’d originally encountered before events of this film began.
1958 UK. Director: Terence Fisher. Starring: Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Michael Gough.
Other Hammer Horror to try: The Curse of Frankenstein, The Mummy (1959), The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Revenge of Frankenstein, The Brides of Dracula, Quatermass and the Pit.

The Fly (1958)

The original version of this story, which is now perhaps more associated with David Cronenberg’s 1985 remake, has a scientist working on a teleporting machine – while testing it on himself, he accidentally encloses a fly with him and ends up with the fly’s head on his body at the other end. A sort of sci-fi/horror hybrid, with a B-level feel that works perfectly with the pulpy subject. A lot of it is more ethical exploration (how does the wife react to her husband’s new condition) and mysterious inquiry (how can we fix this), but there are definitely a few horrific moments. The very last shot is unforgettable and still sends chills up and down my spine every time I think about it.
1958 USA. Director: Kurt Neumann. Starring: David Hedison, Patricia Owens, Vincent Price.
Other classic sci-fi/horror films to try: Them!, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Thing from Another World, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Incredible Shrinking Man.

Village of the Damned (1960) / The Innocents (1961)

The British really excelled at atmospheric horror in the 1960s, so I’m going to include a couple here together. Village of the Damned and The Innocents share a cast member in young Martin Stephens as well, pretty much the creepiest kid you’ll ever see in cinema. In Village he’s one of a pack of children mysteriously conceived at the same moment in a small village who share similar visages and even seem to be able to mind-meld with each other to communicate and enforce their will on others. In The Innocents, he’s a child under the care of new governess Deborah Kerr who may or may not be possessed by the spirit of the estate’s former caretaker. In both films, Stephens is preternaturally creepy, but the chilling atmosphere of both films is pretty unbeatable. Of all the films on this list, I’d recommend these two the most for pure atmospheric chills. Skip the sequel Children of the Damned, though. It’s crap.
Village: 1960 UK. Director: Wolf Rilla. Starring: George Sanders, Barbara Shelley, Martin Stephens.
Innocents: 1961 UK/USA. Director: Jack Clayton. Starring: Deborah Kerr, Martin Stephens.
Other atmospheric British films to try: The Haunting (1963), The Day of the Triffids; and actually, The Others (2001) fits in here stylistically. Per Kurt: The Wicker Man (1973) and Don’t Look Now.

Mr. Sardonicus (1961)

B-movie horror maven William Castle was the master of the gimmick, with every film having a little gimmick that set it apart from most normal films at the time. Some were elaborate, like the seat buzzers that shocked patrons during The Tingler, while others are fairly tangential, like the life insurance policy you had to sign in case Macabre literally scared you to death. He’s best known for The Tingler and the original version of The House on Haunted Hill, but when I watched through his films a couple of years ago, I found Mr. Sardonicus the most chilling. A nobleman in a remote European castle has his face twisted into a horrifying grin thanks to his misdeeds, and he goes to all manner of horrors to try to fix it – the story of his misfortune and subsequent even worse actions is told with relative restraint, but the sight of his face and the psychological knowledge of his predicament are quite disturbing and affecting. Castle’s movies in general tend toward the goofier Hitchcock-lite suspensers, but they’re a lot of fun to watch despite not being particularly scary.
1961 USA. Director: William Castle. Starring: Guy Rolfe, Ronald Lewis, Audrey Dalton.
Other William Castle films to try: The House on Haunted Hill (1959), The Tingler, Homicidal, Strait-Jacket, 13 Ghosts.

What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)

Not so much a horror film as a thriller, perhaps, but I find Bette Davis truly frightening in this film, so I’m including it. She’s the well-past-her-prime former child star who’s desperately trying to relive her glory days, while Joan Crawford is the crippled sister who once had the stunning adult career Davis longed for and never achieved. Now they live together in a mutually destructive relationship, as Davis psychologically tortures Crawford, though that’s not the whole story by any means. The parts where Davis regresses into Baby Jane’s persona are simultaneously terrifying and heartbreaking. The film is campy as hell, but these two great purveyors of camp know exactly how to make it work, and they do at every single moment.
1962 USA. Director: Robert Aldrich. Starring: Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Victor Buono.
Other disturbing campy horror thrillers to try: Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte, Carnival of Souls, Shock Corridor, The Naked Kiss.

The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1963)

If Dario Argento is Italian horror’s master of gory set-pieces, Mario Bava is Italian horror’s master of beautifully atmospheric creepy thrillers. The Girl Who Knew Too Much owes a lot to Hitchcock-type suspense (even the title), but with a bit of extra terror and weirdness thrown into its story of a girl who witnesses a murder but then can’t make anyone believe she has. Bava has a cinematography background, and it shows in spades – his mastery of black and white shadows and contrast is top-notch, and I’ve hardly ever been as visually enthralled with any other horror films as much as I am with his. As I said, this one is more a creepy thriller. Some of Bava’s other films are more typical horror.
1963 Italy. Director: Mario Bava. Starring: Letícia Román, John Saxon, Valentina Cortese.
Other Mario Bava films to try: Mask of Satan (aka Black Sunday), Black Sabbath, Blood and Black Lace. (I haven’t seen all of these, so I can’t speak to the gore factor, but they’re all 1960s, so can’t be too bad.)

The Birds (1963)

I’ve mentioned Hitchcock a time or two in other entries, so let’s throw in one from the master of suspense himself. Psycho is his most iconic horror film, but I found myself much more disturbed by The Birds, thanks to the utter unmotivatedness of the attacks. The long slow spells make the punctuations of violence much more visceral, and Hitchcock’s sense of timing has never been better. It’s one of my favorite Hitchcock films, and that’s saying a lot.
1963 USA. Director: Alfred Hitchcock. Starring: ‘Tippi’ Hedren, Rod Taylor, Suzanne Pleshette.
Other horror-leaning Hitchcock films to try: Psycho, Spellbound (for the Dali dream sequence alone), Frenzy.

The Masque of the Red Death (1964)

I’ll be honest, I’m including this one to represent Roger Corman films at least partially because I haven’t, uh, actually seen any other Roger Corman films. YET. I really liked this one, though, one of several Edgar Allen Poe-based films Corman and Vincent Price did together. Like a lot of horror films of the era, this one is as much costume drama as it is horror, but there’s still some real psychological horror going on here, as Price’s Medieval-esque prince terrorizes the peasants in the village surrounding his castle while holing up to escape the ravenous Red Death sweeping the countryside. The prince is sadistic and cruel, putting even his guests through humiliating exhibitions while casually torturing peasants, but the Red Death isn’t through with him yet. Corman’s use of color is striking here, with deep reds standing in for the blood that only appears occasionally.
1964 USA. Director: Roger Corman. Starring: Vincent Price, Hazel Court, Jane Asher.
Other Roger Corman films to try: A Bucket of Blood, The Little Shop of Horrors, Pit and the Pendulum, The Raven, The Tomb of Ligeia.

Repulsion (1965)

Psychological horror of the best kind, with Roman Polanski directing Catherine Deneuve for the first of two very solid collaborations (the other being Belle de jour) in the role of a repressed young woman whose fantasies come out to play in very destructive ways when she’s left alone in her sister’s apartment for a few days. Her terror of men and sexuality leads to hallucinations of grasping hands reaching through the walls in one of the movie’s more famous scenes. Deneuve is basically batshit crazy here, and beautifully so.
1965 UK. Director: Roman Polanski. Starring: Catherine Deneuve, Ian Hendry, John Fraser.
Other psychological horror/thriller films to try: Cul-de-Sac, Rosemary’s Baby, Hour of the Wolf, The Collector, Bunny Lake is Missing.

The Orphanage (2007)

And one that’s not a classic…yet…but exemplifies the current trend in Spanish cinema toward exceptional psychological horror. The Orphanage was produced by Guillermo Del Toro, but directed by Juan Antonio Bayona, showing a lot of skill in his feature debut. In the film, Belén Rueda returns to the orphanage where she grew up, intending to re-open it herself as a home for disabled children. But when her own son starts acting strangely and eventually disappears, she starts thinking that maybe the spirits of the orphanage aren’t quite as peaceful as she thought. This movie (and others, many of them directed or produced by Del Toro) represent the best of current Spanish genre cinema, and their style is exactly the moody, atmospheric, psychological horror that I love so much in the British films of the 1960s. I hope this trend continues and spreads.
2007 Spain. Director: Juan Antonio Bayona. Starring: Belén Rueda, Fernando Cayo, Roger Princep.
Other contemporary atmospheric horror films to try: The Devil’s Backbone, Julia’s Eyes, The Others, I’m Not Scared.

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And the blood is flowing already…
 
 
As I did last year, I plan to document the horror movies I watch this month with short blurbs – though this time I’m looking to do shorter posts more frequently.

Scre4m (2011 – Wes Craven)
Though I enjoyed all three previous Scream films and their desire for being self-referential, there was a diminishing level of returns that made a strong case for stopping at only a trilogy. A decade later, with reboots and remakes being all the rage, there’s a certain amount of logic in bringing back a fourth movie. Kevin Williamson is back with pen in hand to work out the details on paper and his script does a decent job of creating a reason for the story to continue. It pulls in recent horror movie and social media conventions while keeping a sense of mystery to the final reveal, but in the end the movie neither scared nor surprised me. And shouldn’t I be scared and surprised by a Scream movie? I was decently entertained, but I don’t think that’s necessarily the only thing they set out to do. Wanna see something scary? Go watch a different movie.

Curse, Death & Spirit (1992 – Hideo Nakata)
When diving deep into a director’s past work there’s always an element of risk. Early efforts can be short of confidence, crammed full of film school techniques and be too heavy-handed with actors – all of which can lead to rather turgid affairs. Of course, depending how much you subscribe to the Auteur Theory, you may find anything by your favorite helmer to be of interest. Early low-budget horror films (old pink films in the case of many Japanese directors of a certain vintage), made for TV movies or even commercials can give interesting background and context for future work. Themes they return to over and over may surface for the first time in their short films or feature debuts and this can give clues to gaining better understanding across all their work. So you never quite know what you’re going to get…In the case of Hideo Nakata, the DVD entitled “Curse, Death & Spirit” provides three short horror films (each around twenty minutes long) that he made for TV in the early 90s. The word “film” might be stretching it somewhat since all three clearly have the look of a made for TV project from 20 years ago: the look of all the shorts is flat, colours are either drained or way over saturated and the special effects are hardly “special”. Those qualities alone don’t make these shorts bad, of course, but they sure don’t help improve matters. In any case, there are plenty of other reasons why none of these stories work. The first of the three is called “The Cursed Doll” and is based around a large doll that seems to possess the spirit of a family’s eldest daughter who died many years previous in a fire. The appearances of the doll are unfortunately laughable by today’s standards as each one has that shimmery feel of an overlaid video segment and movement is obviously done by moving that segment of the doll within the main frame. Combine this with flat acting and zero tension or atmosphere (though a few closeups of the doll are slightly creepy) and you have the worst short of the bunch. That’s not to say that things improve dramatically as the second one starts. The acting reaches a low point in “The Spirit Of The Dead” as a young boy encounters a spirit while on a camping trip with his mother, her friend and her friend’s two kids. When the boy encounters the female ghost in the woods, it wishes to steal him away for herself. One of the few well-realized moments of the series comes one night in the tent when the mother wakes up to see the disembodied head of the female spirit rising out of the floor of the tent to gaze upon the boy. Unfortunately, even this moment is shortly ruined by the strange decision to make the spirit’s face almost clown-like in its eagerness to take the boy. The final tale is easily the best and is likely where most people interested in Nakata’s back catalog may find some relevance. “The Haunted Inn” actually shows some focus on pace and building tension as three teenage girls go off for a weekend of relaxation away from home. Though the effects are no better in this story, Nakata seems to have figured out that he can still create some horror without having to rely on the limits of technology – a creative use of lighting, music, camera angles and makeup can work wonders. Though that doesn’t quite happen here, there is finally some semblance of actual dread to be had. For those who have a strong interest in Hideo Nakata’s career and rise to being one of the better known current day Japanese directors, this set of three films might be of interest. Otherwise, there’s really nothing to be gained from watching any of it.

Ki-Rei: The Terror Of Beauty (2004 – Katsuya Matsumura)
A lovely young cosmetic surgeon seems to have it all: a booming practice for both young and old women seeking to keep their looks in step with what society expects, the ability to charge exorbitant prices and a relationship (which seems to only involve sex) with a handsome doctor. Until one day a new customer arrives: Yoshie has a face like a potato and desperately wants to be beautiful. She convinces the surgeon to operate on her after hours without any nurses and her requests soon cover her entire body. When she doesn’t receive the immediate satisfaction she craves, she demands even more surgery. Things devolve from there…Though the movie feels like it was shot on video, the muddy texture and blown-out whites actually provide a strange dreamlike quality that works in its favour. The bright sunlight outdoors and the shining surgery lamps seem to indicate heavenly possibilities for Yoshie, but the reality is a hellish nightmare. The film does flail a bit in getting across its point of the dangers of chasing the impossible expectations of beauty placed by society on women, but for every misstep it provides an interesting take on the horrors of this unnecessary surgery. The acting is as flat as the film’s look and a voiceover feels redundant, but in the end it’s reasonably effective at providing disturbing moments – both visually and as food for thought.

This was essentially my next movie queued up when Kurt posted the T is for Thread short film. That would’ve made a fine intro to this…

The Stepfather (1987 – Joseph Ruben)
Even though you may know where the story is going and be able pick at numerous plot holes, “The Stepfather” is a pretty solid thriller. Not a whole lot of killing or bloodshed, but Terry Quinn’s tightly coiled killer feels like he could spring at any moment so the tension is kept at sizeable levels throughout. The guy has already killed his previous family, so you know that the likelihood of something setting him off with his current family is almost a certainty. His new wife has a 16 year-old daughter who is troubled at school and doesn’t trust her new stepdad, but you can’t blame her for thinking something is up with the guy – he’s a little too wrapped up in his idea of what a real family should be and occasionally breaks into little tantrums in their basement. It’s extraordinarily hard to believe that the girl (played by 23 year-old Jill Schoelen) would actually be in thta kind of trouble at school (most unconvincing expelled student ever), but you can forgive a movie that moves this steadily towards its final showdown. I will assume that I have no need to see the recently remade version…

I’ve got them in here in the order I liked them, most to least, though I should note that I saw all the Castle films and all the Argento films in a theatre with very good audiences (and all the gimmicks intact on the Castle films), so I’m sure that made an incalculable difference in some cases in terms of how I responded to them.

28 Weeks Later – ****½ (4.5/5)

2007 USA. Director: Juan Carlos Fresnadillo. Starring: Robert Carlyle, Rose Byrne, Jeremy Renner.
More epic tragedy than horror film, 28 Weeks Later far outstripped its predecessor for me. I had put off watching it for a long time because while I appreciated some of the things 28 Days Later did, I really disliked the ending, which kind of put me off seeing the sequel, but enough people told me I should that I finally sighed and bit the bullet. And it had me totally rapt from that incredible opening sequence all the way through. The quiet moments are as full of dread and horror as the frenetically-edited (but rarely incoherent) chases, and the lengths that those who are still human go to in order to survive are just as horrifying as the infected – and that’s what really set this film apart. The most terrible moments in the film aren’t jump scares, attacks by infected hoardes, or even when our now-infected hero attacks his loved ones, but when the human Carlyle abandons his family, and when soldier Jeremy Renner realizes he’s been ordered to shoot everyone, whether infected or not, and the line between monster and protector becomes indistinguishable. The horror here is human. But there are no good choices, no satisfactory options in this world, and that’s what Fresnadillo captures so well.

Deep Red – ****½ (4.5/5)

1975 Italy. Director: Dario Argento. Starring: David Hemmings, Daria Nicolodi, Gabriele Lavia.
Okay, I have to talk for a second about how I saw this. Cinefamily flew in a print from Italy, something which is apparently NEVER DONE, and theatres here just about NEVER show Deep Red in 35mm. This print had seen a LOT of use in Italian grindhouse theatres, was in terrible shape (it took two projectionists like 20 hours of work just to make it feed through the projector without breaking), and didn’t have subtitles – they manually ran an .srt file on a secondary projector. There were skips here and there cutting out whole lines of dialogue. The theatre got some negative feedback for the choppiness of the print, but I thought the experience of seeing it that way was incredible. Sure, I might’ve missed a few lines of dialogue here or there, or the plot might’ve jumped a bit, or the subtitles might’ve been a tad off…but I’ll probably never have the opportunity to see a film print of Deep Red again. Plus I loved the movie, print defects and all. When I saw Suspiria last year, I enjoyed it for the set-pieces but thought the plot was a a bit thin – Deep Red was perfect. It was great visually, if perhaps not quite as flamboyant, and had a really well-developed, if admittedly far-fetched, twisty-turny plot. Plus a couple of scenes that will likely be filed under “things that freak me the hell out” forever.

Thirst – ****½ (4.5/5)

2009 South Korea. Director: Park Chan-wook. Starring: Song Kang-ho, Kim Ok-bin, Shin Ha-kyun.
This is easily one of the most intriguing and thoughtful vampire films I’ve seen recently, with a Catholic priest becoming a vampire through a blood transfusion as he was volunteering for a medical experiment. The “thirst” of the title refers to the literal vampiric thirst for blood, but also the general thirst for carnal pleasure as expressed through his uncontrollable desire for a woman who’s all too willing to indulge him – her own thirsts are even stronger than his, and not tempered by the moral and ethical compass that fights with the vampirism for control of his actions. It’s horror really only in the sense that all vampire movies count as horror – in tone it’s much more a meditative drama punctuated with some violence and some uncomfortable comedy. Park certainly bit off a bunch thematically with this one, and it ended up being pretty satisfying for me – and I’m still thinking through some of the implications it brought up.

The Orphanage – ****~ (4/5)

2007 Spain. Director: Juan Antonio Bayona. Starring: Belen Rueda, Fernando Cayo, Roger Princep.
I remember when this film came out and I was still not into horror at all and was afraid this would be too much horror for me, despite how much Guillermo Del Toro’s name as producer intrigued me. Thank goodness I’ve gotten over my horror aversion and watched this, because it’s damn good (and not actually very horrific, more moody and creepy). The main character returns to the now-defunct orphanage where she grew up, hoping to turn it back into a home for children. But when her adopted son begins acting strangely and putting far too much stock in a set of invisible friends, then eventually disappears, she fears that the orphanage isn’t as empty as she thought – what could’ve happened to keep the ghosts of the other children here? The mood is extremely effective here, as is the simple image of the child who wears a sack on his head. The ending didn’t totally gel for me, but the rest of the film was so solid that I still really enjoyed it overall.

The House on Haunted Hill – ****~ (4/5)

1959 USA. Director: William Castle. Starring: Vincent Price, Carol Ohmart, Carolyn Craig, Richard Long.
The original 1959 version, with Vincent Price inviting six people out to a haunted mansion with the promise that he’ll give them each $10000 if they stay overnight. It’s a pretty simple concept, but even after having seen five other William Castle films this month and beginning to get a handle on his twist endings, I didn’t catch all of the directions this was going to go. But the thing that really elevates this is Price’s exquisite delivery of some pretty fun dialogue – I mean, pretty much every scene between him and his wife is absolute gold. Throw in film noir fall guy staple Elisha Cook as the nervous house owner who completely believes in the ghosts and the obligatory ingenue couple, along with a couple of genuine scares, and you’ve got the makings of some delicious classic horror.

The Girl Who Knew Too Much – ****~ (4/5)

1963 Italy. Director: Mario Bava. Starring: Leticia Roman, John Saxon, Valentina Cortese.
After seeing The Mask of Satan (aka Black Sunday) last year, I knew I had to have at least one Bava film in my viewing this year. Bob’s horror montage dictated it be this one, because I’m a sucker for low-angle black and white shots of pretty blondes and swinging light bulbs, apparently. Anyway, this is more of a suspense thriller than a horror film, but that could actually be said of a lot of pre-1970s films – the line was blurrier then, especially in non-monster films. The blonde in question is an American visitor in Italy who witnesses a murder one rainy midnight, but the next day can’t convince anyone it happened. But enough weird stuff keeps happening that she keeps doggedly investigating on her own. There’s a lot of fairly bad dialogue and “wait, really” moments in here, but that kind of adds to the fun once you let it, and there’s no doubt that Bava is an absolute master cinematographer. This film is so gorgeous that even if you lose our heroine in her hair-brained schemes to booby-trap the house where she’s staying, you’ll still have plenty of pretty to distract you.

House of the Devil – ****~ (4/5)

2009 USA. Director: Ti West. Starring: Jocelin Donahue, Tom Noonan, Mary Woronov, Greta Gerwig.
This film has probably come up randomly in Row Three comment sections as much as any other film in recent months, and I can’t resist things that so many R3ers praise the way they’ve praised this. Especially when they’re honest about its flaws and still enjoyed it. And that’s pretty much how I felt about it, too. The deliberately paced build-up with the girl getting a suspicious baby-sitting job in the middle of nowhere and slowly realizing that not everything is quite on the up and up is marvelously constructed. And the style throwback is so effective that my boyfriend was like, wait, what year is this from again? There are some great scares in here, but while I expected some jump scares, there were a number of what I’ll call chilling realization scares, too, which I find much more satisfyingly scary than simple startles. [spoilers by suggestion/comparison in the next sentence] I’d heard that the ending isn’t quite as compelling as the build-up, and I get that, but I almost think the ending seems like a bit of a let-down not because there’s anything inherently wrong with it, but simply because it pales in comparison to the ending of Rosemary’s Baby, which the film can’t help but evoke.

The Masque of the Red Death – ****~ (4/5)

1964 USA. Director: Roger Corman. Starring: Vincent Price, Jane Asher, Hazel Court, David Weston.
This may, in fact, be the first Roger Corman-directed film I’ve seen, and I enjoyed it far more than I thought I would – I went into it with a “well, this is on Instant Watch and I did want to watch some more Vincent Price movies so I guess this one will do” mentality, but the use of color in here is pretty awesome. Right up there with Hammer Horror. Price is a Satan-worshipping medieval Prince who holds a giant masque ostensibly to keep the nobles safe from the Red Death ravaging the nearby village, but with various cruel games in mind as well. There’s a lot of weirdness in here, and what with the evocations of more than one Poe story PLUS the medieval class warfare PLUS the Satanism PLUS the general cruelty PLUS the surrealistic dream sequences PLUS I don’t what all else you kind of feel like they’re throwing in the kitchen sink, but somehow it all worked on just the right over-the-top level for me.

The Tingler – ****~ (4/5)

1959 USA. Director: William Castle. Starring: Vincent Price, Judith Evelyn, Darryl Hickman.
I think my 4/5 rating only really applies if you see this as originally intended, with the seat-tingling gimmick in place. Cinefamily went all out for William Castle, reproducing every single one of his gimmicks, and this was easily the most elaborate (they promise to do this one again next year and better, now that they’ve learned how to wire the seats more effectively!). Without that gimmick, the film is probably a 3.5/5 just based on sheer chutzpah of making a film based entirely around the concept of a giant centipede-like creature inside your body that lives on fear and kills you if you don’t scream. I mean, REALLY? But having Vincent Price on board to sell this crazy idea in utter seriousness goes a long way, so it’d be fun even without the gimmick. With it, it’s GENIUS. Add in a sold-out audience of exactly the right kind of people for this film, and this was an awesome way to spend Halloween.

White Zombie – ****~ (4/5)

1932 USA. Director: Victor Halperin. Starring: Bela Lugosi, Madge Bellamy, Robert Frazer, John Harron.
Some day I’m going to write something about how deeply disturbing and in a way terrifying I find voodoo-style zombies, often even more so than post-Romero zombies, which have become just about the only conception of zombies in popular culture. A person having the power to turn someone utterly mindless and powerless and yet the zombie still be so close to human – not ravenous or dangerous on their own, but a simply vacant – I find that really compelling and existentially frightening in a way that pure monster kill-them-or-be-eaten zombies are not. Anyway. White Zombie is considered the first zombie movie, and it’s these voodoo zombies we’re talking about, with Bela Lugosi the supremely creepy zombie master. There’s a lot that’s creaky about this film, but it has so many elements that totally fascinated me – the possibility of turning someone BACK human again, for example, and especially the scene with such gradual zombification that the person was aware of what was happening but unable to stop the slow loss of themselves. The connections with human slavery is particularly strong as well, as is often the case with pre-Romero zombies.

Homicidal – ***½~ (3.5/5)

1961 USA. Director: William Castle. Starring: Glenn Corbett, Patricia Breslin, Jean Arliss.
William Castle apparently saw Psycho, and thought, hmmm, what can I do to top this? And of course Homicidal isn’t a masterpiece like Psycho, but damn if it wasn’t over-the-top fun. A woman pays a random bellboy to marry her in a secret, middle-of-the-night ceremony, then kills the judge, ditches the bellboy and returns home to the house where she cares for a paralyzed older woman. Is she or is she not married to the house’s owner? Does this young man have an odd relationship with his sister or does he not? There’s so much interpersonal weirdness just below the surface here, and it’s absolutely impossible to even mention all of it without spoiling the ending, which is an absolute no-no with this film. Suffice it to say that it’s so utterly revealing that it makes you rethink the whole first part of the film (at least some of it). Now, it’s still not a great film due to the dependence on that twist and some uneven performances, but I pretty much loved it. Especially when thinking about it in relation to Psycho. No, really, there’s even a section that totally rips off Marion driving in the car!

Opera – ***½~ (3.5/5)

1985 Italy. Director: Dario Argento. Starring: Cristina Marsillach, Ian Charleston, Urbano Barberini.
This played a double bill with Deep Red and though I didn’t love it quite as much, it still definitely had its moments. It’s much of a “create a situation and pile on the horrific experiences” kind of film, based loosely on The Phantom of the Opera, with a young wanna-be opera star groomed for stardom by a mysterious entity within an opera house, but his obsession gets all out of control, leading to ever more extravagant and unbelievable explosions of violence (several of them involving him taping needles to the heroine’s eyes so she’s forced to watch him murder her friends). I found much of it fairly laughable, but have to give it serious props for the single shot (pun intended) in the entrance hallway of the apartment, and the virtuoso sequence with the ravens in the opera house.

Mr. Sardonicus – ***½~ (3.5/5)

1961 USA. Director: William Castle. Starring: Ronald Lewis, Guy Rolfe, Audrey Dalton, Oskar Homolka.
The gimmick for this Castle film is the Punishment Poll, where the audience ostensibly gets to vote whether the main character/villain should be punished further for his crimes against humanity or if he’s suffered enough and should be spared further torment. And to Castle’s credit, it’s actually a rather difficult decision when it comes down to it. The story follows a Dracula-like trajectory, as an English doctor is summoned to a fictional Eastern European country under mysterious circumstances, to find that his nobleman host has had a mystical disfigurement. The things Sardonicus has done in order to try to reverse his disfigurement are indeed horrible, but he’s also a somewhat tragic figure, and the film balances these two things much more subtly than you’d expect from Castle.

Session 9 – ***½~ (3.5/5)

2001 USA. Director: Brad Anderson. Starring: Peter Mullen, David Caruso, Stephen Gevedon, Josh Lucas.
Brad Anderson gets a lot of love around here, and a lot of people have been bringing up Session 9 in conversations about his more recent films. When it popped up on Instant Watch, I figured, what the heck. And I’ll admit when it comes to creepy atmosphere and effective camerawork, it’s pretty dang good. I wasn’t really convinced by the story or resolution, though, which seemed to come out of nowhere and kind of fell apart when I started scrutinizing the details. I’ll give it an above average rating for mood and look, but I’ve liked Anderson’s other films more overall.

Strait-Jacket – ***½~ (3.5/5)

1964 USA. Director: William Castle. Starring: Joan Crawford, Diane Baker, Leif Erickson.
So William Castle’s gimmick in Strait-Jacket is…Joan Crawford. That’s it. But really, isn’t that enough? In the opening sequence, Crawford kills her husband and his lover viciously with an ax, leading to her being put away in an asylum for some twenty years – when she returns, her now-grown daughter tries to integrate her back into society. But is she ready? Do we need to lock up the axes? This is blown incredibly over the top, but it works almost because of that, and I for one will admit I didn’t see the twist at the end coming at all.

A Nightmare on Elm Street – ***½~ (3.5/5)

1984 USA. Director: Wes Craven. Starring: Heather Langencamp, Robert Englund, John Saxon, Johnny Depp.
I’ve been wanting to catch up on some of the original slasher films, at least the first ones in the major serieses, for a while now. This was the only one I got to, but I enjoyed it more than I expected to, once I gave up any pretense of taking it seriously. I’m kind of wondering now what Scream was supposed to be parodying – this already seems like a parody of itself, but perhaps I’m coming at it from a too-modern point of view. I did really like the girl’s tenacity, and the idea itself of a murderer who kills through dreams is clever.

The Old Dark House – ***½~ (3.5/5)

1932 USA. Director: James Whale. Starring: Boris Karloff, Melvyn Douglas, Gloria Stuart, Lillian Bond, Charles Laughton, Raymond Massey.
This falls squarely into my “I liked it because I like 1930s style non-scary horror films” bias. It has a trio of young people who get stranded in the middle of nowhere near a big, scary [old, dark] house and take shelter there, but the proprietors are…odd…seemingly afraid of the house or something inside it themselves. Soon another couple take refuge in the house as well, leading to the obligatory romance subplots which never seem to annoy me in 1930s films they way they do in contemporary films. All the normal types are there – the gung-ho men who want to face the danger head on, the lazy fop who’d rather stay out of it, the ingenue who needs saving, and the streetwise girl who keeps things lively. Not to mention the thing at the top of the stairs… Yeah, a lot of it is fairly cliched now, but like I said. It hit my buttons, so I enjoyed watching it.

13 Ghosts – ***~~ (3/5)

1958 USA. Director: William Castle. Starring: Charles Herbert, Jo Morrow, Martin Milner.
A family on the brink of economic ruin find an unexpected reprieve when an eccentric relative leaves them a mansion – with the stipulation that they must live in it along with the thirteen ghosts he had been studying before his death. This is a pretty silly film in a lot of ways, and even the Ghost Viewer gimmick (which shows the ghosts onscreen if you look through one panel and hides them via color filtering if you look through the other) is fairly weak in comparison with some of Castle’s others, but I still enjoyed watching this, if only for the endearingly awkward acting and interplay of supernatural and very human villainy.

House of Wax – ***~~ (3/5)

1953 USA. Director: Andre de Toth. Starring: Vincent Price, Frank Lovejoy, Carolyn Jones.
Having caught the 1933 version of this story (The Mystery of the Wax Museum) last year, I was eager to check out the better known Vincent Price this year. Despite expectations, though, I ended up thinking this was pretty forgettable – it has Price and some nice use of Technicolor, but it lost most of the spunky ’30s charm that I liked so much about the ’33 version. Like, the Glenda Farrell character (my favorite part of the earlier film) is nowhere to be seen.

Macabre – **½~~ (2.5/5)

1963 USA. Director: William Castle. Starring: William Prince, Jim Backus, Christine White, Jacqueline Scott.
My least favorite of the William Castle series, largely because it didn’t have enough of a gimmick or innate charm to overcome the wooden acting and some rather unbelievable plot elements. I mean, all the Castle films kind of have those two things, but the others all had something more – some outrageous twist or over the top gimmick that made it worth while. This one’s gimmick was selling life insurance in case the movie scared you to death – which makes sense when you see climax of the film, but it isn’t really remotely scary. The basic story has a man’s daughter being kidnapped and buried alive, so he has a limited amount of time to find her. It has a few moments of cleverness, but the number of red herrings thrown in tended to make me just not care that much. I didn’t actually dislike it, I just found it a lot less memorable than the others.

It! The Terror from Beyond Space – **½~~ (2.5/5)

1958 USA. Director: Edward L. Cahn. Starring: Marshall Thompson, Shirley Patterson, Ann Doran.
A sort of horror/sci-fi cross, as a group of astronauts gets picked off one by one by a mysterious creature brought back from Mars. This is definitely B-movie schlock, and I enjoyed it from that point of view, but ultimately I wanted it to be even more schlocky or over the top or something – it ended up just sitting there in this kind of “overly serious but not quite enough to be hilarious” space. Also, it took me like a week to get through it on Instant Watch because a lot of parts just aren’t that interesting.

Link – *½~~~ (1.5/5)

1986 USA. Director: Richard Franklin. Starring: Elisabeth Shue, Terence Stamp.
This. Is a terrible, horrible, very bad, not good movie. Which makes me extra glad that I saw it at Cinefamily for one of Doug Benson’s Movie Interruption shows. Basically, comedian Benson and a few of his friends sit down and MST3K a movie live. This time he had Adam Scott and Elisabeth Shue there with him, a nice touch since Link is an early role for Shue. She was a great sport about it, too, and provided funny bits of production info to go along with Benson and Scott’s merciless jabs (she was also mercilessly jabbing, no worries). The story is about killer chimps, and it is terrible. And awesome, when MST3Ked with a large audience. And somehow Terence Stamp is in it. I can’t really explain that.

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It’s not a laughing matter…October has come to an end and so has my run of horror. I managed to squeeze in a final 16 (I like symmetry – 3 posts, 16 films each), so here they are:

Sick Nurses (2007 – Piraphan Laoyont, Thodsapol Siriwiwat)
It was hard to tell whether I was laughing with or at this movie – most times I think I was doing both. Set in a hospital that apparently avoids having any live patients, a group of scantily clad nurses hang out in their dorm like quarters while harvesting organs from dead bodies acquired by the chief doctor. After one of them threatens to break the whole operation wide open (when the doctor refuses to marry her), she’s killed by the group and returns as a black ghost to seek vengeance. It’s all completely ridiculous and poorly acted, but in a way that feels intentional. The corridors are always brightly coloured, the girls are always in short skirts or skimpy clothing and none of the actresses has met a facial contortion they didn’t fully embrace. There’s no rules for the ghostly appearances (they can even happen in tandem it seems), but a few of them are actually reasonably well staged – not in any frightening or overly creepy way, but enough to make you think “well, that was pretty cool”. Perhaps that’s not what you really want to look for in a horror movie, but it did end up being somewhat goofy fun. There’s also the mandatory shower scene, though in this one the nurse has an entire shower – shampoo and all – while completely clothed. That was one of those moments when I wasn’t sure where to direct my laughter…At the movie? With the movie? Whatever the case, I sure did laugh.

The Black Scorpion (1957 – Edward Ludwig)
You may notice there are no screen grabs of people for this film. It’s not that there aren’t human characters, but they simply aren’t necessary in comparison to Willis H. O’Brien’s wonderful stop motion animation (he was a mentor to Ray Harryhausen). A recent volcanic eruption has opened up the ground and allowed these cave dwelling massive scorpions access to the outside world. They feast in the evenings and have been attacking cattle, but now they’re branching out. In order to stop them, a team go down to their lair to investigate, but find that there are many more of them than they expected (and that there are also huge worms and spiders in the depths of the Earth). It’s not overly interesting whenever the scorpions aren’t on screen, but they get their fair share in the latter part of the film, so it’s still an overall good time. Not quite as strong as “Them”, but in the same league as that classic giant ant movie.

Dead Alive (1992 – Peter Jackson)
Possibly the goopiest film ever. I’ve held off this one for some time even though many have praised it to the skies and ranked it in the top reaches of the horror genre. I’m not a gore hound, so I wasn’t relishing the idea of gore for gore’s sake, but this turned out to be inventive, silly and a lot of fun. And yes, pretty damn disgusting. Peter Jackson and company were obviously just goofing around and trying to out-gross the previous gross-out and they pretty much succeed – every additional body part that gets lopped off or scampers away on its own or gets shredded by a lawnmower is just a bit more over the top than before. It doesn’t really make sense why meekish Lionel Cosgrove digs his mother back up, but I don’t think they were really trying to achieve a grand story arc here. Perhaps that’s why this was also known as “Braindead”.

Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988 – Tony Randel)
I think I preferred this to Clive Barker’s original. The first movie’s introduction of Pinhead and the rest of his Cenobite cronies was certainly freakish and terribly disturbing, but I never quite felt the horror of what was beyond them. The follow-up brings a very interesting take on Hell (one of the better ones that I’ve seen – though not quite rivaling Jigoku) and how one would experience eternity trapped there. The re-birth of Julia in buckets of blood was truly disturbing and kind of nausea-inducing, but I suppose they were aiming for that so job well done…I didn’t overly enjoy that particular section, but the rest was very creative and perhaps a shade less cheesy than the first.

Night Of The Creeps (1986 – Fred Dekker)
One of the many 80s horror movies that I’m finally getting around to seeing and which was fondly remembered by many , Night Of The Creeps was released fairly recently to much acclaim and enthusiasm. I should track down some of the reviews of those who re-watched it for the first time in 20 years to see how it stacks up for them. Not that it’s bad – it’s actually a good deal of fun and frivolity – but it’s fiercely dated. The clothing, hairstyles and music place it so firmly in the mid-80s that I considered spinning the Miami Vice soundtrack on my turntable. The “hero” of the story is bland beyond all comprehension (he played Rusty in European Vacation – widely accepted as the worst of that series), so he doesn’t help the proceedings much during the buildup, but once the alien leech thingies start popping into people’s mouths, turning them into zombies, laying eggs and then exploding out of them, it’s smiles all around.

Strange Vice Of Mrs Wardh (1970 – Sergio Martino)
One of the stronger Italian giallos I’ve seen of late. Though most of the female characters are relegated to standard roles of screaming and being unable to defend themselves (especially since they faint so easily), it was nice to see a couple of instances where the woman exerted some amount of control on a situation. The story’s pretty entertaining, if perhaps completely unbelievable and dependent on too many coincidences and far too convenient timing. Martino doesn’t always capture the murders themselves in overly interesting ways, but he otherwise has a great eye for an interesting shot and makes great use of depth of field. Some of the usage of zooming and quick cutting seems a bit dated, but he never overuses it and manages to create several moments of rising tension due to his cross cutting between different scenes. Of additional benefit is the presence of the lovely Edwige Fenech.

Noriko’s Dinner Table (2005 – Sion Sono)
“Are you connected to yourself?” “Only being close to death can make you appreciate living.” “We all just want to avoid pain.”

Heady stuff. If you were wondering whether Sion Sono’s horror sequel to his earlier 2001 Suicide Club was going to find some dark corners to explore, it does. However, it isn’t really a horror film. Nor is it a sequel (since it begins before the first film and spans a much greater period of time). It deals with some horrific concepts, actions and even images (in particular, it revisits the mass suicide of young school girls on a subway platform from the previous film and gives additional context to it), but it doesn’t work on providing immediate scares. Since this is a very talkative movie, it leaves you with concepts, ideas and emotions that will bounce around in your head for awhile. It’s when they pop out that you need to be worried. It starts, appropriately enough, at a dinner table – 17 year old Noriko, her younger sister Yuka (probably only about a year younger) and her parents are passively eating their end of day meal like most other families. Noriko is just picking at her food, though, since she’s sulking due to a fight with her Dad who won’t let her go to university in Tokyo. Feeling isolated, she latches on to the web site haikyo.com where she becomes very involved in discussions with like minded girls. This spurs her to run away to Tokyo and meet up with her new friends. The leader of the group is Kumiko who runs a “family rental” business that provides paying customers actors to fill any particular role they want (usually one vacated by a previous family member who has left). As the chapters unfold (each of the four main characters has one named after them), Yuka also runs away from home to join the group and their father investigates and finally makes his way to Kumiko. The overall guidance that she provides her followers seems to be that you need to lose yourself before you can find yourself. Though Noriko claims she finally becomes the person she always wanted to be after joining the family rental service, the conversations they have in their “roles” are incredibly mundane – they aren’t actually living now that they’ve become cyphers for other people’s needs. It’s within this deep loneliness that they are supposed to truly discover themselves and really become connected. It’s a rich, dense and difficult world that Sono has created and once again a fascinating and constantly engaging story that surges forward due to his choices of music, narration, and structure. He’s become one of my favourite current filmmakers.

Cry Of The Banshee (1970 – Gordon Hessler)
Vincent Price, Elizabethan England setting, witchcraft, filmed in 1970. Need I say more? Oh, titles by Terry Gilliam. Bonus.

The Prowler (1981 – Joseph Zito)
If you’re going to go the Slasher route for your horror movie choice, you can certainly do a lot worse than this early 80s example. The story is set during the first high school grad dance the town has seen since a double killing at the last dance 35 years ago. The murders were tied to a Dear John letter one of the returning vets received, and decades later someone in military fatigues is still pretty peeved about it. It follows a lot of the standard conventions – very vague characters (except the Final Girl who gets a bit more screen time), girls with “loose morals” end up being targets and characters being chased make really stupid decisions (at one point a girl is walking down a flight of stairs and notices the killer a flight above her – instead of continuing down the stairs to leave the house, she runs to a hallway and tries to get into several rooms and eventually makes her way out a back staircase when she was on the front one in the first place!) – but it handles them quite well, takes its time with some of the scenes and provides some good scares. And who doesn’t like a good pitchforking?

Madman (1982 – Joe Giannone)
If you’re going to go the Slasher route for your horror movie choice, you can certainly do a lot better than this early 80s example. OK, so it’s not that different than the previous movie described above (a madman who killed his family years ago still lives in the woods and reappears whenever someone says his name out loud), but the execution simply isn’t there. The characters are less than shells, story threads are left dangling and there’s never really a sense of anticipation built up as another death approaches. There’s one or two inventive scenes and it never really tries your patience that much, but I suppose that may not be the most ringing endorsement ever.

The Crazies (2010 – Breck Eisner)
A great looking, well acted and pretty faithful remake of Romero’s original from 1973, this past year’s The Crazies is a whole lot better than I ever expected it would be. That’s not to say it’s without problems – though this is more violent and gory than the original, it’s far less angry and perhaps isn’t all that great at making its points. One can see how dropping out just about any point of view or interaction with the anonymous soldiers in their Hazmat gear hammers home the fear of government intrusion, etc. but it doesn’t add a lot to think about. Having said that, the film is really well constructed and with Timothy Olyphant, Radha Mitchell and Joe Anderson doing fine jobs holding down the fort, I was happy to follow it through it’s attempt at a realistic scenario. There’s a great amount of attention put in each setup, framed shot and usage of natural landscape.

The Eclipse (2009 – Conor McPherson)
Less a horror film than a weighty look at the struggles of a few characters to move on with their lives. In particular there’s Michael, recently widowed and finding it hard to get anything in gear. It’s actually been about a year since his wife passed away, but he still thinks of his children as being the age they were at that time and won’t confront his grief. The literary convention at which he volunteers brings him into contact with several new people – a full of himself author (played by Aidan Quinn) and another writer who actually manages to divert Michael’s attention (Iben Hjejle). There’s a great deal of imagery and careful framing around religious artifacts, but the core of the film is about people obscuring their own views of what is best for them and their families. Michael is often cast is very dark shadows and struggles daily to put a smile on his face. The few shocks in the film seem a bit out of place, but are very effective given Michael’s state of mind. Yet another beautiful looking film, this also has a lovely main storyline even though it may prove a bit slow for some.

Zombie (1979 – Lucio Fulci)
So this is the pinnacle of Fulci’s output, eh? Oh there’s plenty to remember here – the eyeball pierced with the sharp piece of wood is indeed as wince inducing as you might expect (even with the obvious dummy stand-in), zombie vs. shark was extremely enjoyable and his raft of slow moving mummified zombies was impressively creepy – but overall it’s flat and, most unforgiveable of all, kinda dull. It shouldn’t be, but aside from some vague voodoo references in regards to the zombies, there’s little story to care about and very little exciting going on. Sure there’s a few group zombie scenes and those just risen corpses look pretty cool, but Fulci just doesn’t seem to be able to carry any energy through any section of the movie. It just wilts after anything reasonably entertaining or shocking happens. It’s likely not as bad as all that, but I was hoping some of Fulci’s “genius” would show through here.

Suck (2009 – Rob Stefaniuk)
A dangerous sign for a movie is when it starts packing in the cameo appearances. Stefaniuk’s Suck was built around the concept. Alex Lifeson, Alice Cooper, Iggy Pop, Henry Rollins, Moby and Carole Pope all swing on by for in-and-out moments of screen time (and most actually come across pretty well) in this tale of a struggling club band who start finding success as the band members become vampires. There’s lots of saturated colours, vivid images and other rock and roll references to go along with the goofy performances and occasional clever analogies to real band-on-the-road issues, but it really hangs by a thread sometimes. The band’s French Canadian roadie provides most of the laughs while other moments seem greatly forced and simply not that funny. There’s a tendency to use a far greater number of techniques and effects than is really necessary (the stop-motion car as they travel between cities, the sped up motion when a vampire is feeling sick, the music videos of the band’s songs, etc.) and it dilutes the potential of what you could do with musicians clawing for success and then having it dangled in front of them – with a small price to pay. I eventually found a good rhythm with the movie, but early on I thought it was going to be a painful 90 minutes.

Bride Of Chucky (1998 – Ronny Yu)
After finally getting Child’s Play 3 under my belt at the start of my October marathon, I figured it would be fitting to end it with the two follow-on Chucky films. The third installment was bordering on straight to VHS video quality, but its two sequels dwarf it. The tone of this film works perfectly with everyone on board with the concept of two talking dolls forcing a young teenage couple to drive them to a graveyard to retrieve an amulet that will allow the souls in the dolls to return to flesh and blood hosts. Jennifer Tilly is just wonderful as Chucky’s old girlfriend (when he was just a simple multiple murderer) and equally good as the voice of Tiffany the doll (it doesn’t really matter much how her soul gets transported into the female doll, just that it is). A few gory kills and finally some consistent banter for Chucky. The movie stands tall on the shoulders of its trio of Child’s Play films – it’s really on another level (and it’s the best looking by far of the bunch). Tremendous fun. And talk about setting up your sequel…

Seed Of Chucky (2004 – Don Mancini)
Possibly the most entertaining movie I’ve seen all month. Fun, smart, self-referential, a spiraling piece of deconstruction, gory, silly, satirical, surprising and sharp. And fun. Jennifer Tilly is even better here than in Bride – though she once again takes on the voice work of Tiffany the doll, she also plays herself – currently making a movie called “Chucky Goes Psycho” co-starring Chucky and Tiffany. When the dolls’ confused child shows up from England (just go with it), he manages to accidentally re-animate the dolls and mayhem of the bloody kind results (this is likely the messiest of the series). There’s some debate as to whether the little Brit is actually a boy or a girl (checking anatomically with dolls can sometimes still leave you undecided apparently), so Chucky calls him Glen and Tiffany calls her Glenda. Needless to say, the child doll has some issues and they’re slowly getting worse (Tiffany is trying a 12-step program to help her stop killing, but Chucky just can’t kick the habit). Meanwhile Jennifer is concerned about her stature in Hollywood and wants better roles than stupid doll movies while also struggling to keep to her diet (“she’s so fat” Tiffany says at one point). Tilly is fantastic here – not only gorgeous and sexy, but having a blast playing at the plight of female actresses in Hollywood. I was certainly biased going in that I would like it, but didn’t think it would be this terrific.

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Another 16 horror films. Another 16 first time viewings. Yes, my eyes are getting bleary – why do you ask?

A wide range of reactions again:

Night Monster (1942 – Ford Beebe)
Another short and sweet hour-long early chiller from the “Universal Horror: Classic Movie Archive” DVD set. I’m really enjoying this set – the movies may not actually be “classics” as advertised, but they do what they set out to do with charm and even a bit of style. This particular selection focuses on an old rich gentleman using black magic to get his revenge against the doctors that couldn’t cure his ailment. It doesn’t take great advantage of either Bela Lugosi or Lionel Atwill, but it follows through with its premise, throws big shadows on the wall and has a skeleton materialize in a drawing room. Quality entertainment to be sure.

Horror House (1969 – Michael Armstrong)
Frankie Avalon does horror? Sort of…He’s top-billed in this slight, yet still mostly entertaining late-sixties “Hey, let’s go spend the night in a haunted house” tale, but fortunately he’s only sporadically used (no offense to the guy, but his lone American accent and attempt at being a bit of a bad boy doesn’t work so well amongst the other hep cats). It’s oddly plotted in that far fewer murders than you’d expect actually occur and the gang leave the haunted house much sooner than you would hope – specifically, just when things are getting interesting. The acting is very solid, though, and it’s still reasonably fun outside the horror elements. Sorry about the blurry screencaps though. I had fully intended to grab some shots via my capture card (since this was off PVR), but by complete force of habit, I deleted the movie as soon as I finished watching it. So this is what Google Search gets you.

Captive Wild Woman (1943 – Edward Dmytryk)
The last of the Universal Horror set, this yarn of a circus animal trainer helped by a half woman/half gorilla (the result of a mad scientist’s freak experiment) is an interesting mix of horror and circus documentary. The various footage of lions and tigers being trained in the ring is, believe it or not, really quite captivating, surprising and not just stock footage filler (though it was apparently taken from another movie entitled The Big Cage from a decade earlier). Dmytryk adds some nice touches to an otherwise pretty basic story (which is padded even for its short run time) and went on to make the great “Murder, My Sweet” only about a year later. The film was also the first of a trilogy based around the gorilla-woman (the other two being Jungle Woman and Jungle Captive), but it sounds like they should have let the beast go free after this first one…

The Crazies (1973 – George A. Romero)
“How can you tell who’s infected and who isn’t?”. In Romero’s film, the crazies of the title are a town’s residents who are infected by a military weapons test and begin to go insane. Since they also become violent and murderous, the military steps in to “help”. When they shut down the perimeter of the town and move everyone (crazy and not yet crazy) to the school gym, things start to go haywire and those not yet infected become just as angry as those who have become certified. Romero’s message about armed conflict is none-too-subtle, but still reasonably effective as we watch the crazy folks treated not much different than those who have yet to fall victim. It’s somewhat hampered by some downright terrible acting (I know Romero was still doing his form of guerilla filmmaking, but couldn’t they have found some local community theatre players to do better?) and a rather scattered approach to the plot, but the image of the soldiers in gas masks while everyone else is left to fend for themselves is one that lingers.

Calvaire (2004 – Fabrice Du Welz)
The English title for this trip to the backwoods of Belgium is “The Ordeal” and what an apt title that is. The main victim of the distress that follows is an entertainer named Marc Stevens who travels between small resorts and old folks homes to put on his one man show of traditional song crooning. He has a vehicle breakdown on the way to his next event and ends up asking for help from an innkeeper whose place is deep in the forest. Turns out that may not have been his best move. It goes beyond picking the wrong place to seek help though – apparently this neck of the backwoods is ripe with deeply weird folk. The innkeeper has “plans” for Marc and then things just go from bad to worse to holy crap for him while every avenue of escape seems to get closed down. It’s a very unsettling movie from that point of view and, though not overly graphic, it can be hard to watch the degradation inflicted upon Marc. I can’t honestly say I enjoyed the film, but it sure is effective. I would hazard a guess that Du Welz would be happy with that reaction.

House By The Cemetery (1981 – Lucio Fulci)
I’d venture to say this is my favourite Lucio Fulci film so far. Of course, that’s not saying a whole lot at this point. It’s by no means perfect, but this tale of a kid and his parents moving into a house with a past threw in its share of effective scenes using both suspense as well as sudden unexpected occurrences and gore. Unfortunately its plot occasionally borders on nonsensical. Even within the history it creates for itself, the movie doesn’t seem to want to stay consistent. Another problem is one that pops up a lot in Italian films of this era – the awful dubbing of the actors. It’s a long standing issue with me and Italian cinema (even masters like Fellini) since they seem not to care a great deal about getting the natural rhythm of speech to sync up with the person’s physical mannerisms and emotions. It’s particularly bad here especially with the role of the young boy who is the central focus of the film. He is badly cast, a poor actor and abysmally dubbed. It hurts the film as it’s visually one of Fulci’s better efforts that I’ve seen.

Mother’s Day (1980 – Charles Kaufman)
As parents, my wife and I have tried to instill tolerance in our son. He’s still in grade school, but we’re slowly working on him to understand different issues and put them in proper context. One of our many approaches is to suggest that the word “hate” not be so casually used on a day to day basis – there are far better ways of describing your dislike towards something or somebody. It’s too easily used to describe small and very inconsequential things and contributes to the continued slide towards splitting everything into the black and the white. Having said that, I hated this movie. Hated it. Hated the characters, the actors, the juvenile and laboured humour, the lazy approach towards setting up scenes, the crass way they injected the “horror” scenes with “humour”, the clumsy music and essentially the entire concept. I hated the fonts used for the movie title, the designers of those fonts, the disc the movie came on, the manufacturers of that disc and every little pixel that shone on my screen. I suppose I shouldn’t expect a great deal from Troma, but this was bloody awful. Forget the plot, this was mean-spirited, terribly unfunny (when it so obviously thinks it’s hilarious) and dull. I hate you Mother’s Day. And I hate you for making me use the word hate so much.

Martin (1977 – George A. Romero)
Martin may very well be Romero’s best film. Creepshow is probably his most fun and it’ll take a lot to bump Dawn Of The Dead away from being my favourite of his, but this little slow burning gem really does a great job on all fronts. I’m not sure I’ve seen Romero frame his scenes better than here or actually take time to build a character as strong and interesting as Martin – a reluctant and sexually confused vampire in street clothes. It’s a bit awkward in spots (mostly due to the limitations of the actors), but I loved how it played Martin’s current day issues against the black and white flashbacks in his mind of similar situations when he was a younger lad a scant hundred years ago or so. Not at all what I expected.

The Nun (2005 – Luis de la Madrid)
Don’t be fooled, this isn’t a killer nun story. It’s a vengeful killer nun ghost story. An important difference. To get the ghost, you need a back story and that’s where the film begins – six young girls are attending a strict boarding school where one of the nuns is convinced that the only way to complete purification of the soul and the removal of all sin is through pain and suffering. As you might expect, she isn’t winning any favourite teacher awards. While handing down one of her punishments one day, the girls gang up on her and end up killing her. They dump the body in a reservoir, but years later when it gets drained, her ghost returns to finish her work with these now grown up women. She needs water in order to appear, so we end up with numerous scenes of a CGI nun materializing in sinks, tubs, etc. I have to say I had fun with the first half hour or so of this movie during the first couple of visits by the nun. We discover that she is dispatching the ladies in specific ways to match the same fates of the saints with whom they share names. It’s kind of ridiculous, yet still a bit creepy to see a nun, in full habit, appear in a kitchen sink and wield a carving knife. The movie begins to take its toll, though, as it become increasingly difficult to make it through any of the dialog scenes. All the actresses are Spanish, but for some reason they insisted on doing the entire movie in English – even the one young girl (a daughter of one of the ladies) who says she doesn’t speak Spanish has a very noticeable accent and struggles with sounding anywhere near natural when speaking. As the appearances of the nun become longer and with little to no change in the setups, the film also started to simply get monotonous. Combined with those painful line readings, I felt like my prayers were answered when the whole thing finally ground to a halt. There is some fun to be had though in those first bits and if they could have realized it was all a bit silly, this particular nun may have converted me.

Conjurer (2008 – Clint Hutchinson)
Taking chances with straight to DVD horror can be a dangerous game, but sometimes, sometimes it can be well worth the long odds. Not that Conjurer is a startling display of freakish scares, but I greatly enjoyed it’s very slow-paced approach to the story of a husband and wife who leave the city after the loss of their unborn child. It’s a common theme – I’ve already seen a few like it this year – but it’s handled at quite a lovely pace here by building bits of tension scene by scene. It does this by making the shack out back of their new house an eerie and ever increasing focus of their problems. Whether it’s actually haunted or it’s simply their own fears driving them crazy, you know it’s going to be the cause of their downfall. I wouldn’t imagine this would sell well in the multiplex, but I’m sure glad I caught up with it.

The Haunting (2007 – Elio Quiroga)
I told you parents losing their children was a common theme this year. This Spanish film (yes, the Spanish actors actually speak Spanish this time!) may not have the most original title, but it manages to stay pretty spooky throughout and stay pretty true to its shaky premise. New parents Francesca and Pedro rent an old isolated home from the Catholic Church and try to start fresh after struggling with a tragedy from years past. The house, however, has some old dark secrets that may be slowly driving Francesca mad on a nightly basis. The Church has kept the basement and attic locked to the new tenants and don’t want the truth to come out about the visions that three young girls had there some 50 years earlier. The movie opens with footage purportedly from old documentary reels that used to play before features. They were entitled “No-Do” (the Spanish name of this film) and were equivalent to North American newsreels – except that they were mostly used for General Franco’s propaganda and control of information. What we see is a lighthearted explanation of the imaginations of three young girls who claim to have seen the Virgin Mary. What really happened, we learn, was far more sinister.

The Final Destination (2009 – David R. Ellis)
The fourth Final Destination film is a patched together, character-free, 3-D cashgrab that runs long at 82 minutes. Though I didn’t see the 3-D version, every 3-D shot is beyond obvious and looks like cheaply made CGI. So why was it still pretty damn entertaining? Well, mostly because the movie knows it isn’t very good and is simply a set of Rube Goldberg death machines – not overly clever ones, but still reasonably passable ones that keep you curious about how the next person is going to buy the farm. The 3-D may even have made it more fun in theatres with CGI snakes and gears and nails and guts and so forth flying at your face. To restate: it’s not very good. One wishes they had put more effort in making you care even just one little bit about any of the characters, put more effort into building nervousness leading up to the next death and put at least some effort into making the 3-D more clever than a 20 minute 3-D Muppet movie at Disney. If you accept they didn’t put much effort into it, though, you might actually enjoy the ride.

Splice (2010 – Vincenzo Natali)
Your feelings about Splice may very well depend on your familiarity with and enjoyment of older sci-fi and horror creature features. In both, the scientists need to be blind to the obvious issues while also being remarkably intelligent, the plot must allow for their experiments to continue even when permission and funding run out and the acting is ratched up a notch or two (sometimes even three). If you expect or at least can handle those elements, you might very well have fun with Splice. Not that it’s exactly like those earlier films…The special effects, of course, are much more modern and, for the most part, seamless, but the plot also advances the typical scenarios of creature features and takes them further down the path. It can be a bit silly, but once the scientists utter the words “what’s the worst that could happen”, you should be expecting and relishing that. Feel free to analyze the film for further statements regarding societal impacts of genetic experiments, but don’t forget to have fun with it too.

They Wait (2007 – Barbarash)
I’ve been reasonably lucky with the straight to DVD picks I’ve been gambling on so far. Typically I’ve been choosing the ones that are closer to being ghost stories than slasher or monster films and the success ratio has been distinctly higher with that approach. They Wait is another example. A young couple and their six year-old son return home to North America from Shanghai for a family funeral, but it is unfortunately timed to coincide with Ghost Month – a time when the gates of Hell are open to angry spirits to return to terrorize the living. The building where they are staying during their visit contains some hidden family history that needs to be revealed once the young boy gets possessed by one of the ghosts. The secret to this type of film is not to rush through to the jump scares and to take its time in developing the atmosphere around the characters as well as a feeling of dread. For the most part, the film is quite successful in achieving this. The characters aren’t quite as fleshed out as they could have been and the story has some holes, but when the few jump scares do come, they’ve been earned. One annoyance though…The film specifically mentions Shanghai in an on screen title, but it refuses to name Vancouver (where the film was most obviously shot) – it’s always referred to as the “Pacific Northwest”. Sheesh.

Strange Circus (2005 – Sion Sono)
When I mentioned to a friend that I was going to watch Sion Sono’s 2005 film Strange Circus this week, he gave me an interesting comparison point to Sono’s latest venture: “It’s like Cold Fish on acid”. Having just seen that particular blast of fearless phenomenal filmmaking at this year’s Toronto International Film festival, I was rather puzzled. “But, but…”, I stammered in response, “how can that be? Cold Fish was on acid!”. Maybe it was an Inception type of multi-layered effect – what happens if you take acid while already on acid while in a dream? Well, I suppose you might end up with something like Strange Circus. I don’t mean to overemphasize the drug angle here since the film does have an overall arc, structure and focus, but after a bright red screen opening quote from Huysmans’ “Against The Grain” (considered to be a novel without a plot or any structure) about a girl severing a man’s head and bringing it to her mother, a brief interlude at a circus like show that invites its bored, costumed audience to kill themselves on stage and a young girl’s walk through a completely blood-red smeared hallway, the hallucinogenic quality of the movie is pretty apparent. The film’s method of disorienting the viewer by showing scenes that could be from dreams, in progress novels, past experiences or current reality certainly is a challenge to follow at times, but the bigger challenge is dealing with the central concept of a man who sexually and mentally abuses his wife and twelve year-old daughter. Sono manages to avoid any cheap or exploitative situations, but still emphasize the subservient roles many females are forced into in a strongly patriarchal society – roles that seem to be handed down from one generation of women to another. As with many of his other films, he uses repeated, delicate and well known musical themes to underscore certain moments and to build levels of tension. This time he calls on Bach, Liszt and Debussy to provide his soundtrack. Sono also packs some truly beautiful images into what is overall a truly disturbing and unsettling film. It’s yet another example of how Sono has become one of the most interesting, fascinating and completely fearless filmmakers around these days.

Dead Silence (2007 – James Wan)
Say what you will about James Wan’s follow up to Saw, but this is one very good looking movie. Greens and yellows are hard to come by while blue and grey are the dominant colours. This allows the red (a car, a curtain, a bow tie, blood…) to really pop. There’s also some nice framing choices as well as some great depth of field in many shots. How’s the story though? Well, it’s actually not a bad little tweak to the ventriloquist dummy genre of horror – the dummies in this case are just the vehicle from which the vengeful spirit reaches out. However, in a similar manner to their recent Insidious, Wan and his co-writer Leigh Whannell get a bit too messy and sometimes just don’t know when to stop. Not just by adding too much to the story, but knowing when to leave well enough alone with the sound design. One of the concepts of the film is that when the spirit shows up, you must not scream – if you do, you’re dead. Just before an appearance, typically all sound around the possible victim drops away, so traffic sounds fall to the wayside, a kettle whistle goes silent, etc. A sudden vacuum of sound can be a powerful tool when looking to put an audience on edge, but the filmmakers just can’t seem to live without that rising tone of urgency in their score to indicate that “something’s about to happen”. It’s unnecessary and typically ruins what were several moments that were quite spooky. Frustrating, but still a reasonably enjoyable film.

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A quick scan of some of the horror films I’ve been watching this month – 16 so far and all of them first time viewings. I try to mix them up – not only catching up with movies I’ve wanted to see for eons, but also ones I just stumble upon or had heard nothing about previously. It usually leads to an interesting and fun month of viewing:

Child’s Play 3 (1991 – Jack Bender)
Why start a month of horror with the third in a series of Chucky films? Well, even though I did like the first two more than I expected (not really as horror films, but they were self-aware fun), it was mostly to prepare myself to watch both “Bride Of Chucky” and “Seed Of Chucky” – two films I’ve been eager to pop in the player. I mean, I couldn’t watch them without the full back story now, could I? It was good to get the final installment of the initial trilogy behind me – it’s easily the worst of the bunch. Oh sure, The Chuckster gets off a couple of zingers, drops the old f-bomb a couple of times and even manages to use a walkie-talkie while throwing a hand grenade, but it’s not much more than that. Not a single human actor registers, the story is lame (Chucky is reanimated in a new doll and follows his old owner to military school still hoping to take over his body) and it isn’t scary or even tense for one moment. By this point in the series, though, I guess that’s not what the movies are about. There is some colourful art direction in the final showdown in a haunted house ride, so along with a foul-mouthed, heavily armed, freakish looking kid’s doll the movie does have a few things in its favour.

Frozen (2010 – Adam Green)
The concept is an easy elevator pitch: “Three people are stuck on a ski lift with the resort closed for the following week”. Can it actually sustain itself for a feature length film, though, and keep it interesting and tense with occasional shiver-inducing moments? Apparently it can. Like many of these beautiful-young-people-in-danger stories, the opening can be a bit of a struggle as you try to figure out whether you care about these navel-gazing characters. Fortunately they do end up with some subtle shades and the premise gets underway in a fairly realistic way. Since it looks like they used an actual old style ski lift as a location, you can feel the height and the frigid surroundings almost as much as the characters. Sure it stretches itself out more than needed, but it captures the many scenarios that could play out – broken limbs, escape possibilities, frostbite and other natural obstacles are all thrown into the mix.

Don’t Look Up (2009 – Fruit Chan)
What a calamitous mess. Ever since his breakthrough film “Ringu” (and the success of the U.S. remake “The Ring”), I’ve wanted to see Hideo Nakata’s early horror film “Don’t Look Up”. Using the story of the haunting of a film production which is set on a soundstage from a previously haunted film production has great possibilities, but for some strange reason it was never released in Region 1 (and as far as I can tell not easily available in other regions – at least, certainly not for cheap). So when I found a remake of it produced by Nakata and helmed by Chinese director Fruit Chan (he made the “Dumplings” segment of “Three…Extremes”), it sounded like it would be worth a try. Short of one or two well-realized images (a shadowy figure appearing on film, hands arising from a backpack, eyes on a video screen), there’s nothing here. Crappy CGI, terrible performances by everyone (in particular the main actor) and sloppy story-telling. Simply not worth your time.

Critters (1986 – Stephen Herek)
I guess this turned out to be exactly what I expected it to be: a mid-80s creature feature with some cheesiness, a story that’s pretty inert and some fun moments. Not quite enough fun moments to sustain it for 82 minutes, but Dee Wallace Stone and M. Emmet Walsh are always welcome. The creatures from outer space are Gremlins-lite, but have a vicious streak about them. Aside from some havoc that the shapeshifting bounty hunters cause in town, the action all takes place on one family’s farm. This reduces the carnage, but I’ll give them critters one thing – they offed Billy Zane pretty darn quick. Give them credit for that.

The Fourth Kind (2009 – Olatunde Osunsanmi)
The biggest problem with this faux “true story” account of an Alaskan psychologist’s documentation of her interviews with alien abduction survivors is that it doesn’t take advantage of the “real footage” that it so breathlessly proclaims to be terrifying. It opens with Milla Jovovich talking directly to the audience describing the role of Dr. Abigail Tyler that she will be portraying and the odd circumstances around the city of Nome Alaska – a place where they have the highest ratio of FBI visits in the country and numerous disappearances and suicides. It’s an interesting trick to morph between the supposed real interviews with Dr. Tyler and the dramatized ones with Jovovich. It actually helps somewhat in allowing the audience to go along with the conceit of the film. Unfortunately, they use the same technique with the rest of the “documented footage” – the interviews, police car camera video, etc. all flip between the “real” video and the polished dramatized film – and it takes away any of the suspense and creepiness from those sections. There was one very effective moment in one of the video camera segments which was sudden, jarring and creepy without any obvious special effects, but they never were able to achieve anything quite like it during the rest of the movie. It’s a reasonably well made drama with some frightening ideas, but it never manages to do what it promises. Extra demerits for both Jovovich and director Osunsanmi telling the audience at the end (in oh-so-solemn words) that they should believe what they want to believe.

The Daisy Chain (2008 – Aisling Walsh)
Creepy little girl movies seem to be a genre unto themselves. Typically there’s the quiet little girl – a little bit cute, a little bit unsettling – who has suffered a family trauma of some kind and then manages to ingratiate herself on a new family only to start the whole cycle anew. Welcome a new addition to the fold: “The Daisy Chain”. Actually, not quite so new since the film has been around for 2 years before just recently arriving on DVD shelves. Despite starring Samantha Morton, containing some beautiful cinematography and being really strong overall, it appears the film never made any major headway. Set in a remote village in Ireland, it plays off the concerns of the locals that the young girl in question is a fairy changeling. It does it in a fashion that doesn’t really leave too much to the imagination, but it builds things up at a wonderful leisurely pace, taking full advantage of its stunning setting and Morton’s sympathetic face. The very ending didn’t quite work for me, but I absolutely enjoyed everything leading up to it. A great surprise.

Eden Lake (2008 – James Watkins)
Certainly the most disturbing film I’ve seen this month. It actually shares a lot of commonality with Confessions, Japan’s submission for the upcoming 2011 Oscars’ Best Foreign Language Film. Neither seems to show a great deal of confidence in the youth of today and their ability to be concerned with anything or anyone but themselves. “Eden Lake” does cover a wider swath, though, as it examines the main male character’s (Michael Fassbender) concerns about his own masculinity, the role of parents in their own children’s attitudes and even a smidge of class warfare. The story focuses on Steve and Jenny as they get away from the city to spend a weekend of camping out near Eden Lake – a spot that is destined for new housing and suburban malls. They meet and then get on the wrong side of a group of teenagers and things spiral down from there. These aren’t just your typical punks though…These are pretty much the worst kids EVER. It’s a tough watch at times as it just sinks lower and lower into a depressing view of our future generation. I can’t say I enjoyed the experience, but I sure was unnerved at times.

The People Under The Stairs (1991 – Wes Craven)
I’m coming to the realization that I’m not much of a Wes Craven fan. OK, I like the “Scream” films and all their self-referential fun and admit that I mostly enjoyed the cheesy “Deadly Friend”, but I simply don’t get the reverence given his “The Hills Have Eyes” or the first “Nightmare On Elm Street” – both of those latter films have interesting concepts, but the terror is always undercut by uninspired humour and overdone effects. “Shocker” was even worse as it provided an added layer of mean-spiritedness to things. His 1991 offering “The People Under The Stairs” careens off the rails by mixing the ever-present unfunny comedy with over-the-top (but not in a very fun way) evil antagonists and not very horrifying scenarios. The bad guys trap people in their house for their nefarious purposes and they become devolved primal beings. For all its potential to stir up feelings of dread about what lurks in the shadows of a house and beyond its walls (as well as its analogy to the way big cities hide certain denizens in their ghettos), it fails at every turn to make you care.

Man Made Monster (1941 – George Waggner)
There’s a lot to be said for a movie that states its business and proceeds to take care of it in just under an hour. Especially when it features Lon Chaney Jr. and loads of electrical-charge-generating lab equipment that zots, crackles and buzzes. Chaney is an affable survivor of a bus accident where the rest of the passengers were killed when the bus became electrocuted. Curious as to why he was able to survive it, two scientists (one good and one evil) invite him to participate in some experiments to determine what they can learn from him. Our evil doctor actually wants to transform him into a mindless automaton who only lives to be energized by electricity and to do his master’s bidding. There’s something genuinely charming about the film (and that’s not meant in a condescending way) that makes it feel shorter than it already is. Lionel Atwill is terrific as the bordering-on-insane Dr. Rigas and never resorts to all out crazy maniacal laughter, but does still manages to show flashes of madness. Of course, Chaney’s glowing body when he’s all charged up is kinda cheesy-looking, but I never felt like laughing AT it. Part of this is due to Chaney’s own charm on screen from his initial happy-go-lucky self through his slow disintegration.

Demon City Shinjuku (1988 – Yoshiaki Kawajiri)
This is, in many ways, a prototype for a basic average anime film. Stock story, very stock characters, creative visuals, gorgeous colours, choppy movements and a headlong rush to wrap everything up by the 80-minute mark. A token amount of nudity here, a little blood splatter there and a world-is-coming-to-an-end scenario fill out the script. It’s reasonably entertaining while it’s on, but will likely fade from memory not long after you’ve watched something that reaches for a bit more complexity, some character arcs and a fully satisfying conclusion (something like the director’s own “Ninja Scroll” which was 5 years down the road from this effort). It opens straight into action – a fight for Tokyo right on its own rooftops between former students of the art of Nempo. As it turns out, one of them has made a deal with darker forces and gained an upper hand in the contest. This first battle gives a taste of further fights to come as it uses lovely saturated colours, fairly simple and uncluttered backgrounds and never bogs itself down. The design of Shinjuku fills it with dark spaces, long shadows and deep blues and reds to make for a compelling backdrop to the numerous battles against other demons. Those battles are the main reason to watch the film, but it handles the build up to them by creating an atmosphere of impending doom. The look of the city alone helps this, but they’ve taken care in the design of the sound field to ensure that it feels like each corner of the city might have something else lurking in it. Unfortunately the backdrop to the story is far more interesting than the story itself. The characters have little of interest to say to each other along the way – no funny quips, no reveals of back story, no insights – and don’t give you much to hang on to at all. For such slim character development, you have to wonder how the filmmakers suddenly found themselves at the point where they needed to cut things short. The last two demon battles and, unforgiveably, the final showdown are done at a rate that indicates either some kind of outside studio interference or perhaps simple boredom from the filmmakers who found themselves itching to get on with some new project. Perhaps they figured they had already done as much as they could with the uninspired storyline.

Horror Island (1941 – George Waggner)
A slight film whose initial half drags with too many characters and not enough interest, this early 40s “horror” entry still manages to entertain by the end of its hour length. I was losing a bit of patience with the movie as it set up a weekend excursion to an island for tourists to find treasure and get scared by ghosts. Schemer Bill Martin and his crew have plans to turn big profits from the these excursions, but they didn’t plan on a cloaked man joining their trip and actually killing their guests in order to completely claim a real treasure for himself. It’s only when they get to the island that the humour begins to work a bit better, the many passageways of the castle they are staying at come into play and unexpected revelations from the characters start popping up. By no means a solid movie, but it still managed to entertain me by its end.

Pumpkinhead (1988 – Stan Winston)
“I don’t do special effects. I do characters. I do creatures.” Stan Winston was regarded as one of the best make-up and effects guys to work in the business (the Terminator films, Aliens, Jurassic Park, A.I. and Avatar) before his death in 2008. Too bad he was so good at his day job (multiple Oscars and other awards) because he only found time to direct 2 feature films – one of them being this absolutely solid creepy tale of a man’s wish for vengeance and the beast brought to life to carry it out for him. Lance Henriksen is the devastated man who seeks revenge upon the city kids who accidentally cause the death of his only son. Deep in the backwoods lives a witch that helps him resurrect Pumpkinhead, a creature from the graveyard. The creature is quite brilliantly realized – no choppy CGI movements or cheesy guy-in-suit here – but Winston brings that additional creepy feeling to the screen with shafts of light cutting through the blue and orange cinematography. There’s some dodgy acting amongst the young folks, but Winston was clever enough to kill the worst ones off first. Even though I was forced to watch a “formatted for your TV” version, this is still one of my favourites of the month so far.

Reading up on Winston a bit, I also found the following quote: “People who are afraid to go to horror movies are generally afraid their whole lives. People say to me, ‘Do you have nightmares?’ I never have nightmares! And I go to movies and see the most bizarre things in the world, and go… Wow that is really sick, how fun is that! And I don’t have to carry it around. I think that’s very healthy.”.

Pulse (2006 – Jim Sonzero)
You know what? I didn’t hate this movie. As a long time fan of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s “Kairo” – known as “Pulse” in North America – I had steadfastly avoided this U.S. remake. I just didn’t think it could live up to the original and the previews indicated it took the story to places I didn’t think were very interesting. I had a sudden urge to check it out though and thought that maybe it could stand on its own. As it turns out, it doesn’t, but it’s a lot better than I thought. The look of many of the sequences certainly gets across the loneliness and disconnected feel of what the story is trying to get across, but it never quite sold me on what was happening to the population of the city or why the main characters had managed to avoid it. Once they started battling the “system”, the movie started to lose me. I do have to come back to comparisons, though, because the remake includes so many of the key scenes. Some are recreated quite well, but many miss the mark. In particular, the slow moving crab lady of “Kairo” – what made it so very effective in the original (apart from its brilliant use of sound) was that it was an actual woman walking towards the camera. The CGI ghost and its staccato movements just don’t give the goosebumps…

You know what I do hate though? The 4 minute bonus feature on the disc that attempts to bring science to bear on ghosts from “the other side”. I say “attempts” because they don’t actually provide a single piece of data or reference a single study – just a bunch of people ominously informing the camera that the evidence is “piling up”. Anecdotal stories from people about weird things happening does NOT count as scientific evidence. Just because these people want to believe in the paranormal doesn’t mean there’s any good reason to do so. If any of the various paranormal activities was ever proven or even if any of them had one single peer-reviewed study to quote, I’d find that terribly exciting. However, there’s nothing – and to totally misinterpret the fundamentals of the scientific method purely to try to make the movie seem more plausible is deplorable. I’m trying not to hold it against the movie itself, though, which was better than I expected.

I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997 – Jim Gillespie)
You know what? I didn’t hate this movie either. I’ve also long resisted this one simply because it just didn’t sound at all interesting or fun. It has some major problems – the plot falls apart at the end and both male leads are pretty awful – but it actually gave some reasonably well-deserved jump scares and was more engaging then it really had any right to be. I give credit to both of the female leads, in particular Sarah Michelle Gellar during one sustained chase scene. I thought it might be smarmier than it was, but it managed to reign that aspect of its script in enough not to be annoying. Well, not too annoying anyway.

The Hitcher (1986 – Robert Harmon)
Now here’s one I’ve been meaning to catch up to for quite some time. Stuff that didn’t surprise me: 1) Rutger Hauer was absolutely perfect in the role – I totally believed he cut that guy’s head off simply because he said he did; 2) it was far more tense than it was scary – not a bad thing. Stuff that did surprise me: 1) C. Thomas Howell wasn’t very good – it’s not that I expected him to be fantastic, but I didn’t think he’d be quite as unnatural as he was; 2) the plot seemed to get away from the filmmakers around the time that Howell’s character became the fugitive; 3) what a great looking film this was – the scenery was used wonderfully, the framing of the characters heightened the suspense and the cinematography was lovely.

The Flesh And Blood Show (1972 – Pete Walker)
I was very impressed by Pete Walker’s “Frightmare” last October and bought it along with several other Walker horrors in a set. As I watch the others, though, I’m getting diminishing returns. “The House Of Whipcord” was good and a bit campy, but far too slow at times. And now I’ve reached “The Flesh And Blood Show” which, though still enjoyable at times, is even more uneven and very oddly plotted. A group of actors gather for rehearsals at an old abandoned theatre and murder rears its ugly head. It’s set up really well, contains some fine acting and a great environment for the mayhem to occur, but it never kicks into a higher gear. The first death just kind of occurs and the characters either don’t believe it happened or don’t seem overly concerned, so things just go back to where they were. The tension never ramps up, any momentum built up is dropped by the wayside and everything just comes to an end at some point. Not terrible, but a disappointment considering the possibilities.

So to kick things off, here’s a little video we created set to the tune of “Batcat” by the great band Mogwai…

In the opening scene of Peeping Tom we witness a solitary man (Carl Boehm) walking up to a lone woman standing in the street. On his way to her the camera focuses in on his front and we we see that he is holding a video camera. The view switches to that of the camera being held and we are witness to him picking up the prostitute and heading to her room near by. Once in the room she begins to undress while making some small talk. As she sits on the bed a strange look comes to her face as a bright light shines down upon her, she screams and we cut away. The woman has been killed and we learn from the police that they have never seen anyone look as scared as she did. We watch later as the killer views the film in a dark room.

One evening on his way home the killer watches a birthday party taking place through a window. He enters into the house and starts to head up stairs. It is at this point that we learn that his name is Mark Lewis when he is invited in by Vivian (Moira Shearer) who’s birthday it is. Mark is shy and turns her down citing that he has to work. Vivian is attracted to Mark and comes up to see Mark. Mark at this point has already gotten ready to watch his film. He quickly cleans up and invites her in. The two hit it off and Mark is able to overcome his shyness when she wants to see his films. Mark proceeds to show her a film which his father filmed while he was growing up. Even with Mark being quite strange and the film obviously shows that Mark had a very difficult childhood Vivian is not deterred.

He wants a relationship with Vivian and sees her as something perfect and is unwilling to ever film her. While his relationship is growing he continues on his path of murder. He makes friends with a stand in at the film studio for which he works with the offer of filming her and making her into a star. This leads to her eventual murder and the police linking the two murders by the similar look of terror on her face.

The police are getting closer to tracking down Mark and he knows it but it does not bother him. He continues on his planned path with the intentions of finishing his “documentary”. Everything builds up to the point when Vivian finally views Mark’s film and her finding out just what Mark scares his victims with.

While Pin provides an excellent look at schizophrenia Peeping Tom does so much more that provide a look into a mentally unstable person. It touches on Freudian aspects of the relationship between Mark and his father and how someone like Mark could be created and delves into. Mark is quite the sympathetic murderer. We truly care for him and want him to be helped yet we also cant help but be drawn into watching the acts that he is committing. This is most interesting aspect of the film as it deals with the voyeurism. It is very easy to draw a relationship between the audience of Peeping Tom sitting in a dark room watching Mark murder women to that of Mark himself sitting the dark room viewing himself committing the murder.

At the time of its release Peeping Tom was panned by the critics en masse. Now, 48 years later it is one of the classics of British Cinema and is lauded by critics and film maker alike. Martin Scorsese himself commented:

“I have always felt that Peeping Tom and 8½ say everything that can be said about film-making, about the process of dealing with film, the objectivity and subjectivity of it and the confusion between the two. 8½ captures the glamour and enjoyment of film-making, while Peeping Tom shows the aggression of it, how the camera violates… From studying them you can discover everything about people who make films, or at least people who express themselves through films.”

Just like several later horror movies Braindead opens with a scientist discovering a rare monkey and attempting to bring it back into the city. Like the rest of the movie this first scene uses a fair amount of humour interspersed with the horror. The scientist threaten off the local natives who want to keep the animal from getting out. After the initial chase scene the scientist ends up being bitten and his guides hack him apart with a large machete. The murder of the of the scientist is bloody and funny as hell.

After we return from the credits we discover that the guides still want money so they take the monkey to the city anyway and hand it over. From there we zoom over to the city of Wellington where Lionel Cosgrove lives with his overbearing mother and Paquita (Diana Peñalver) the local shopkeeper is told by her fortune telling grandmother that she will fall in love with Lionel but that he lives with death. Darkness surrounds Lionel. Lionel and Paquita go out on a date at the zoo and Lionel’s mother, who is spying on him gets bit by monkey. According to the zoo keeper the monkey is actually a Sumatran Rat-Monkey, a hybrid that resulted from the rape of tree monkeys by plague rats. Lionel’s mother first gets sick and then slowly turns into a zombie.

Lionel has to deal with his mother who is a zombie. Instead of trying to kill her he instead decides that it would be better to keep her sedated the entire time. This of course fails and slowly over time he ends up with more and more zombies under his control. Each of them is kept sedated and tied up but hijinks of course occur. Everything happens from the catholic priest and the nurse zombies having sex all the way to zombies turning into super zombies.

Braindeadis another one of those great over the top midnight madness movies that is a real blast to watch with a large crowd. The reason it is such a success is that it is also a pretty smart movie when it comes down to it. The humour is hillarious. The highpoint of which has to be when Lionel takes the zombie baby out to the park. Watching both Lionel’s reaction to the baby escaping and the other mothers at Lionel’s eventual capturing of the baby had me rolling in stitches.

I don’t think any review of Braindead would be incomplete if the lawnmower is not mentioned. Once the zombies are running through the house at full force Lionel comes in to battle them, not with an axe or bat but instead a lawnmower tied upside down in front of him. I have never seen this much blood and gore thrown around. This is a classic scene that just needs to be seen to be believed. I do not think I can do it justice by trying to describe it.

If you are looking to be scared I suggest looking elsewhere. I did not jump once during the movie. What I did do was have a total blast of a time and was laughing my ass off for the majority of Braindead. In many ways I would love to see Peter Jackson return to these smaller B movies. I doubt it will ever happen which is a shame as this one is truly a classic.

The initial few minutes of Who Can Kill a Child? will let you know right off the bat that this is not a simple horror movie. During the opening the audience is provided with a montage of documentary footage that depicts atrocities that have been committed against children throughout the world. This is the only explanation we are ever given for what is to happen to, Tom (Lewis Fiander) and Evelyn (Prunella Ransome) and the children themselves.

When Tom and Evelyn arrive at the island they immediately encounter several of the children. The children mostly ignore the two adults. The young boys are somewhat sullen and the girls all grin and play in a creepy way. When Tom and Evelyn can not find any adults Tom comments that they must be off at a local festival. What makes this entire initial scene work is a combination of the stark daylight and the simple absence and loneliness of the village. Tom and Evelyn’s vacation changes fairly quickly when they discover a young child murdering an old man down the street. They realize that that everything is not right and they are soon running for their lives from the children.

I’ve already mentioned the daylight aspect of Who Can Kill a Child?. The entire movie takes place during the day and it completely proves that horror movies should not rely on the dark to create atmosphere. The bright of the afternoon can be just as chilling as the night. The second aspect of what makes this movie a success is the question proposed in the title. Throughout the second half of the movie this question comes into play. When Tom eventually kills one of the children Evelyn has a strong reaction to his actions. There was nothing else that Tom could do but this does not matter to her. This is not a horror movie where you cheer and applaud when the killer’s are taken down, instead you have to question whether you yourself would be able to kill a child.

In the scene where Tom kills the one child the rest of the children back off, not out of fear but out of caring and concern for their fallen comrade. It is in this scene that Serrador’s point is pushed home. All of the horrors adults have committed against children has finally found an outlet. It has taken over the children. The children are not mindless they still care about each other but they want revenge against the adults for all of their inhumanity they have shown in the past.

Imagine waking up to find your father ranting about being an agent of God and that he has been charged with murdering sinners. This is the basic premise behind Bill Paxton’s 2001 horror Frailty.

The movie opens up with Fenton Meiks (Matthew McConaughey) wanting to speak to FBI Agent Doyle (Powers Boothe). Meiks believes that his brother Adam (Levi Kreis) is the notorious “God’s Hand” serial killer. He continues to explain that he needs to tell the story of his father and brother now that his brother has committed suicide because he was unable to stop all the “demons”. He explains how he took his brother’s body and buried it in a rose garden as he had promised to do when they were children. The boy’s father explained to them that he was given the power by and angel to know when someone is truly evil. If he touches them he will know and has to act. The angel gave him three objects to help with his quest. He was given gloves to wear so that he can interact with people without always seeing, a lead pipe to knock them unconscious, and an axe to kill them with. The two brothers reacted to this news in completely opposite ways. Adam accepted what his father has to say and wanted to follow in his footsteps. Fenton refused to believe in his father.

The story of the brothers and father is told in flashbacks during the conversation between the older Fenton and Agent Doyle. Both Fenton and Adam are pushed by their father to first witness the killings of these evil beings. Their father tells them that what he is doing is not murder because they are not truly human. By the time the boys have witnessed and participated in a few of the killings Fenton has had enough and he calls the Sheriff in to stop his family. His father kills the Sheriff and blames Fenton and says that it is actual murder because the Sheriff was a good man and that Fenton himself is actually a devil. His Father then tells Fenton that he was told by the angel to destroy Fenton but after Fenton begs for mercy he is locked into the cellar by his father to starve.

A fair amount more happens as the brother’s grow up and Frailty has a fair amount more to say than one would initially believe. It touches on the themes of good versus evil, father and sons and the relationship between brothers. It is a smart classy horror movie that did fairly well in the box office and ended up with pretty positive reviews but for some reason it just fell off the radar once it ended up on DVD. For me it is one of those great WalMart bargain bin finds. It has a strong compelling story with enough scare factor to be a really good horror movie. Plus it does not hurt to have Bill Paxton as a lunatic father waking his kids up in the middle of the night in order to tell them about murdering evil people. I can just imagine my son screaming and running under the bed if I ever woke him up in the middle of the night like that. He would never sleep again.