Archive for the ‘31 Days of Horror’ Category

  • 10 Oct

    Posted by


    Category

    A Month Of Horror – Chapter 3

    0
    PhantomOfTheParadise7

    .
    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.

    TheCaller1
    TheCaller4
    TheCaller5

     

    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…

    AptPupil2
    AptPupil3
    AptPupil4

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 09 Oct

    Posted by


    Category

    A Month Of Horror – Chapter 2

    4
    TheBlackCat

    .
    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.

    TalesFromTheDarkside1
    TalesFromTheDarkside3
    TalesFromTheDarkside5

     

    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.

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 05 Oct

    Posted by


    Category

    Classic Horror Movies for People Who Don’t Like Gore

    20

    We’re into October now, so expect to see a concentration of posts about horror films from us this month – Bob has already started his annual horror capsule posts (see part 1 here). This particular post actually originates thanks to a friend asking me if I had a post anywhere talking about classic horror films that relied on atmosphere and creepy chills rather than gore and jump scares. Given that creepy atmospheric horror films are my favorite kind (in fact, the only kind of horror films I’d watch until a couple of years ago), I happily said I’d put one together this week, just in time to plan some classic Halloween viewing for the month of October. I’ve chosen fifteen films, ranged between atmospheric, disturbing, creepy, culty, and just plain enjoyable, trying to stay a bit off the beaten path, though there are a few quite well-known films in here. (Note that some may have a modicum of bloodiness, especially moving into the color films of the ’60s (Hammer, Bava, Corman), but it’s very restrained and unrealistic compared with the gorefests of later years.) I’m sure there are a lot more than just these – please feel free to add more in the comments. I’d love to find more films like these myself, since, as I said, they’re my favorite.

    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.

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 04 Oct

    Posted by


    Category

    A Month of Horror – Chapter 1

    0
    KiRei6

    .
    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.

    Scre4m1
    Scre4m4
    Scre4m5

     

    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.

    CurseDeathSpirit1
    CurseDeathSpirit3
    CurseDeathSpirit6

     

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 04 Dec

    Posted by


    Category

    Even More (Really Belated) Horror…

    17

    What do you mean, it’s not October anymore? How did that happen? Ah well, good horror is still good horror even if it’s a month late, and after sitting down with more than twenty horror films in October/November I didn’t want to let them all go past without comment. And yet I STILL didn’t get to Carrie or Army of Darkness or The Wicker Man, or any of the J-horror on my list. I figured I’d tend toward older films this year (as I often do anyway, but I’ve been in a particularly old-movie mood lately), and that’s pretty much how it turned out, helped along by Cinefamily‘s William Castle series.

    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 – (4.5/5)

    28-weeks-later.jpg

    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 – (4.5/5)

    profondo-rosso1-560x266.jpg

    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.

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 01 Nov

    Posted by


    Category

    The Horror Comes To An End…For Now

    11
    HellboundHellraiserII3

    .
    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.

    SickNurses5
    SickNurses7

     

    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.

    TheBlackScorpion4
    TheBlackScorpion6

     

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 24 Oct

    Posted by


    Category

    The Horror Continues Unabated…

    9
    HouseByTheCemetery7

    .
    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.

    NightMonster1
    NightMonster2

     

    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.

    HorrorHouse1
    HorrorHouse3

     

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 12 Oct

    Posted by


    Category

    The Horror So Far…

    24
    ChildsPlay3_2

    .
    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.

    ChildsPlay3_2
    ChildsPlay3_3

     

    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.

    Frozen2
    Frozen5

     

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 01 Oct

    Posted by


    Category

    A Montage for a Month of Horror

    35

    Is it cliche by now to focus on horror movies during October? Wait, don’t answer that – because we don’t care. We love horror films here at RowThree (well, most of us do anyway) and so a good portion of the posts for the next 31 days will be devoted to just that.

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

     

  • 27 Oct

    Posted by


    Category

    31 Days of Horror: Day 23 – Peeping Tom

    3

    Peeping Tom One SheetMy original plan was to mention the Canadian movie Pin during the 31 Days of Horror. It is a fun little look at schizophrenia that scared the bejesus out of me when I was a teenager. Now that I have revisited it I spent some time trying to decide whether or not I’d recommend it. I’ve let it sit just floating around in my mind since I watched it back in the beginning of October and contemplated over it. I had pretty much decided to do the write up until this past weekend when I came across Michael Powell’s 1960 horror thriller Peeping Tom.

    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.

    Peeping Tom

    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.”

    


  • 25 Oct

    Posted by


    Category

    31 Days of Horror: Day 21 – Braindead

    2

    Braindead ALA Dead AliveLong before Peter Jackson was known as the guy who brought Lord of the Rings to the screen he was known for his B movies. In 1987 he wrote, directed and produced Bad Taste, then in 1989 brought us Meet the Feebles and then in 1992 he wrote and directed what is likely the most gory and bloody zombie movie ever: Braindead which was released in North America as Dead Alive.

    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.

    Braindead

    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.

    


  • 25 Oct

    Posted by


    Category

    31 Days of Horror: Day 20 – Who can Kill a Child?

    2

    Who can Kill a Child?What happens when you take the concept of a zombie movie and replace the zombies with children? Well, you end up with a smart and chilling Spanish horror movie called Who can Kill a Child? (¿Quién puede matar a un niño?). In Narciso Ibáñez Serrador’s 1978 horror movie a pair of British tourists arrive at a small rural island only to discover that all the children have turned on and killed all the adults. You might be thinking right now, “Oh great, an old Children of the Corn flick” and I’ll tell you that nothing could be farther from the truth.

    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.

    Who can Kill a Child Scene

    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.

    

Page 2 of 4«1234»