Zombie Strikes Again

In the interest of the holiday, I find myself compelled to watch Halloween in some way, shape or form. It seems a necessary tradition as Hallow’s Eve looms large. This year, I’ve opted for Rob Zombie’s re-telling from 2007.

I  cannot decide if it’s terrible or if it’s bad enough to be good. Zombie has a penchant for all things trashy and irritating, as evidenced by the characters he creates, and the grating, mindless dialogue he favors in his films. In Halloween, we are introduced to Michael Myers, a young emotionally disturbed boy living a less than promising life with his stripper mother, deadbeat stepfather (of sorts) , his whorish older sister and baby makes five. Mikey has been caught killing cats, much to his mother’s stupid response of ‘so he found a dead cat, big deal’. He rapidly escalates one Halloween night, and proceeds to violently slaughter his ‘dad’, sister and her boyfriend. All this violence is cut to Zombie’s favorite image, his wife (Sherri Moon Zombie, who’s ‘acting’ I HATE. I am thrilled whenever she’s not on screen). Ma’s striptease is splashed throughout Mike’s night of blood, until she returns home to find her little masked boy on the step with baby.

The film proceeds to follow Michael through his adolescent years in an institution, which proves to be fairly pointless and really hurts the pace. The film tries to convey, repeatedly, that Myers is a soulless monster, after having spent a great deal of time showing us that he is merely a traumatized child who has spiraled into madness.  Eventually, after some fairly unnecessary time spent with the hospital’s trashy redneck staff (note: the trashy theme returns), adult Michael ( who has had an outrageous growth spurt) busts out and seeks out his baby sister. Typical Halloween-ness ensues, complete with heroine Laurie and her trashy friends, who’s dialogue seems to be Zombie’s fantasy of how high school girls talk, rather than any I’ve ever met. At this point, nothing new is offered.

Now, this review sounds all bad, doesn’t it? What do I appreciate? The scene in which young Michael bludgeons his sisters boyfriend with a baseball bat got under my skin. it is chilling and feels infused with genuine rage, despite the fact that the actual contact is off screen and we are only privy to an essential ‘after’ shot. Zombie retains the bare bones of the booming score from the original, complete with thudding tension and that infamous killer on the loose track. The music has been tweaked and updated in a successful way that still manages to evoke that feeling of wanting to look over your shoulder. That being said, Zombie tends to have a knack for soundtracks (1000 corpses and The Devil’s rejects relied heavily on musical mood), but he doesn’t employ that talent here, borrowing a lacklustre 70’s jam. I appreciate the slicing and dicing, the impact of gore and admittedly, this film fulfills some sort of morbid slasher need that the original, in all it’s classic glory, doesn’t manage to provide.

The acting is mostly passable, though Scout Taylor-Compton makes little impact as Laurie. Zombie finds moments for all of his horror buddies to make an appearance, which tends to seem a little forced. As noted before, Sherri Moon Zombie is a soulless monster of an actress, and I couldn’t wait for her to die off, which took much too long. Malcolm McDowell is a competent actor, admittedly the only one who surfaces here, but the dialogue he’s got to work with is often moronic and nonsensical, so while I wanted to like him, I couldn’t help but feel he only gave half an effort for half a movie. I cannot complain about the lighting, the cinematography, the framing, any of that technical stuff, but neither can I say it moved me to rave. Perhaps the flaws in this film are all so glaringly clear that the positives are buried deep.

As I conclude this review, it’s clear to me that, by and large, I don’t think this is a very good movie. I don’t put a lot of stock in Zombie’s directing career, though I find myself always wanting to root for him. He offers some great gritty elements in his pictures, but gets caught up in awful dialogue and maddeningly dumb characters. He tries so hard to be hardcore and zany and awful and manages to succeed mostly at the awful part. Why do I own so many of his movies? Must be subliminal messaging.

 

Family Friendly Fear

As a child, I had a morbid fascination with Poltergiest (1982). This may be a result of my older brother and sister chanting ‘Carol-anne……..we love you Carol-anne…….” in creepy voices at me long before I had ever seen it. Once I finally did, I reveled in the creepiness that is this film, even though it has an element of goofy, manufactured, over the top terror. From the moment I watched Carol Anne (Heather O’Rourke, poor Heather O’Rourke) chatting in the glow of the TV with a dead eyed look of wonder on her face, I was sold.

The film follows a family who lives in a community that was built on a burial ground (it seemed less cheesy in the 80’s me thinks). Some sort of entity makes its way into their home via television static and communication with their blonde, angelic little girl, Carol Anne. Shenanigans ensue. Furniture moves,utensils bend, decidedly creepy clown toys come alive, trees eat kids. You know, poltergeist stuff. This movie put the word poltergeist on the map, it showed us all the ‘symptoms’ as it escalated in the family’s home. The build up of weird goings on is a fun ride, but things take a turn for the worst when Carol Anne disappears. The family find themselves fighting something unseen for the right to their home, their security and their child.

You know the drill. We all know what it’s about. Directed by Tobe Hooper and ‘written’ by Stephen Spielberg (there are many rumors that SS had a great deal more weight in the area of directing than he is credited for, previously referring to Hooper as ‘not a take charge kind of guy’), this movie is pure entertainment. Sure, when I was ten, it creeped me the f&$k out, but as I’ve gotten older, it seems to have a comedic effect, even the scares seem a tad ridiculous. I can recall being unnerved as a child by the ‘face melting’ scene, and by the simple presence of Tangina (Zelda Rubenstien, broad was creepy….sometimes I still squeak ‘this house……is clean’ to my husband just to drive him nuts.).  The scene involving Carol Anne being sucked into the closet always felt a tad laughable, but eerie with it’s strange glowing light and askew angles. The shots of the ‘twister’ outside and the tree eating Robbie always felt a little bit like the Wizard of Oz, to me, in a wonderful way.

Poltergeist has decent acting, a fairly compelling story, c;ever momentsthroughout that keep us at the edge of our seats, and a great deal of dedication in it’s scares and effects. The addition of the paranormal researchers living in the house is one that has been recreated often in films since, along with many other trademarks. The film inspired many subsequent horrors to come, it’s clear it had a huge impact on many. It can’t help being so campy and dated, but that is much of it’s charm, it retains a glorious sense of nostalgia that I can’t help but feel compelled to participate in each October. I faithfully wait for it to appear on TV, curl up on the couch and enjoy the dramatic score, the flickering lights, the bobbing skeletons in the pool, the murderous trees and the buckets and buckets of ectoplasmic goop.

One day, i dream of easing my children into horror movies with this glorious piece, a family friendly fear fest. Memories in the making.

 

A for Effort

I went into this low budget horror from director Sean Mcgarry expecting to disappointed, much like all the other recent low budget films I’ve seen. Somehow, this film managed to compile all the grit and charm, annoying characters and terrible acting of 80’s B movies with A for effort special ‘effects’ to create a hilariously fun ride.

Yes, this is the FIRST death.

Hallows’ Eve (2013) centers on a young girl named Eve. Eve stutters and is inexplicably the butt of a clan of local kids’ fiery rage. They chase her and chuck pumpkin goop at her, which leads to a confusing tractor accident, which somehow leads to some horrific facial scarring.

Cut to the future. Eve is still a weirdo. Her family runs some sort of haunted house/farm/corn maze ordeal and repeatedly invites the evil local kids who bullied Eve to participate in the festivities. Those annoying youngsters have all grown up to be thoroughly annoying teens. They wander about the farm aimlessly, getting high, making out and getting in fights. One boy has an extremely out of place hallucination about witches chanting something about innards and pigs flying. Eventually, this clan of kids begins to get picked off. This is where the fun begins.

In a rapidly escalating set of murders, we watch semi POV, as the hooded killer bashes heads, slashes throats and drills eyeballs. The effects are nearly laughable, but the amount of blood and attempted gore used comes off more as endearing than pathetic. The death scenes felt a little like a horror movie Tarantino would’ve created when he was 14. You just can’t help but shout along with the screechy score, What?! What is this now?? Are you kidding me??

The acting (‘led’ by actress Danielle Harris, who I know only from Zombie’s ‘recreation’ of Halloween), is sub par, but aside from the opening scene with young kids, isn’t distractingly bad. The fact that the characters are largely unnamed and unexplained and entirely moronic and annoying proves to be a bit off putting, but it does tend to make their deaths that much more embraceable. The story (what story?) makes no damn sense,and the scenes are primarily disjointed. The dialogue sounds like it was created by a roomful of  drunk monkeys and a set of malfunctioning typewriters. There are almost no redeemable qualities in this one.

Almost. Except that campy, over the top, nonsensical, clearly low budget gore. Those splatter moments carry a SleepAway Camp charm, a sense that someone had great intentions but couldn’t get the idea off the ground. You can’t help but laugh amiably as an eyeball spins on a blood soaked drill, or as some very questionable looking intestines come spluttering out of what seemed to be a small stab wound. Heads are chopped, pretty young things impaled, and what would a horror film be without a little chainsaw action?? This movie is a mess, but it’s a fun mess, as long as you don’t go in expecting polished, clean, or even lucid. Enjoy the corn syrup, kiddos!

 

 

The Scary Movie Aisle

Every horror fan has fond memories of roaming through their childhood movie store, staring at the worn and weary VHS cases in the horror section. I would find myself wandering from the safety of the Disney section to the very nearby guts and gore and ghosts and gasp section. Movie cases like these:

 

I’d peruse the cases, rarely even bothering to read the descriptions. The tag lines and the cover art were generally enough for me, and, looking back, the covers so often failed to reflect what the film itself was about. One particular case that always stuck out in my mind, and one who’s description I never bothered to read, was this one:

This weekend, I achieved a childhood dream and finally watched Monkey Shines (1988).

The clever little rhyme states :

Once there was a man, who’s prison was a chair

He had a little monkey, they made the strangest pair

The monkey ruled the man, it climbed inside his head

And now, as fate would have it, one of them is dead.

 

The story follows Allan (Jason Beghe) recently paralysed after an accident. he is trying to find his way in a new life where he is only able to move his head. His scientist/junkie friend Jeffrey (John Pankow), who happens to be experiment on monkeys by injecting them with brain serum in an effort to make them smarter, sets his friend up with his own little monkey buddy named Ella. Ella, the charming little Capuchin, comes with a trainer, Melanie (Kate Macneil), who hits it off with Allan right away (you know, after Allan’s post paralysis gef gets caught boning his doctor (Stanley Tucci)).  The film strolls along at a steady, albeit unscary pace, for a great deal of it’s running time. However, what it lacks in scares it does manage to offer in drama and utter adorableness. Ella is enjoyable to watch as she scampers about and retrieves things with her tiny human hands.

Sooner or later, things go awry. Ella has a run in with the nurse’s bird. She is escaping at night and running amuck, taking Allan’s consciousness with her. She seems to be, somehow, infusing him with animalistic rage. It seems Ella is jealous of anyone who becomes close to her owner, which leaves Jeffrey, Melanie and even Allan’s mother at risk. Soon enough, Allan finds himself face to face with a murderous monkey, with somewhat scary, but mostly hilarious results.

I had always assumed that Monkey Shines was a film about a toy monkey that housed an evil spirit or some such thing. I was quite surprised to learn that it was actually quite a well thought out character drama with a hit of pseudo science and psychological intrigue. Directed by famed ‘Dead’ director, George Romero, the film offers hints towards his usual style. Red filtered shots and some pov movement angles remind us of our directors trademarks. he builds up the tension with skill, and that’s a task when the homicidal tension is between man and monkey.

The acting is skilled and the characters are genuine. Beghe and Macneil offer passable performances, their characters come across as likeable and endear at times, despite Allan’s tendency towards pouty rage. John Pankow tosses himself fully into his role as near mad scientist Jeffrey, and really gives it his all. Though his tactics tend towards the slightly sinister, he steals the scene when he is on screen.

The score of the film is sharp and suspenseful at times, and a tad overwrought at others, but it seems to mesh well with the tendency for the film to feel just a tad overwrought anyway. Monkey Shines is a fun picture, one that I’m glad I was able to track down and enjoy all these years later. For a film that could’ve turned silly very quickly, Monkey Shines is actually a pretty decent movie, and it delves into almost comical subjects with a great deal of style.

 

Sexy Maniac

Amityville Horror (2005)

This film isn’t all that great. It isn’t really necessary. But it does have some redeeming qualities…….

 

That is all.

End review.

 

Getting in the Mood

Trick ‘r Treat (2009, Michael Dougherty) has all of the atmosphere and charm of a grown up Hocus Pocus; a movie to set the tone of the holiday, and set the mood for pumpkin carvings, fake blood, candy corn and whatever spooky goings on you’ve got planned.

Released in 2009, straight to DVD after some struggle and with a great lack of marketing, Trick flew far under the mainstream, radar, but was wildly anticipated by horror fans. Dougherty’s directorial debut, Trick is an anthology of Halloween featurettes that combine in a town that truly celebrates the holiday. A young couple fights, as a girlfriend denounces Halloween with disastrous results, a dull principal with a secret plays host to a number of trick or treaters, a clan of girls seek out a party in the woods as well as eligible men, young kids collect jack o lanterns in an effort to play a prank on an outcast, an introverted man learns to embrace the season whether he likes it or not. The film’s adept cast includes Brian Cox, Anna Paquin, Leslie Bibb, and Dylan Baker. All the acting blends perfectly into the film.

Dougherty has a certain skill for atmosphere, and manages to convey an eerie tone throughout the film, each scene lit heavily by candle glow, and characters often bathed in flickering shadow. His ability to maintain this constant mood allows the film to feel creepy from the strat, not relying on climactic moments and gorey scenes to carry us through. Those moments appear, for certain, but they are not all the film has to offer. The gore and action does not disappoint, though it has a certain subtlety to it, without huge streams of splatter and splash.

Trick ‘r Treat delivers on all fronts, and as such, does not lack in story. It offers us a chronology of Halloween shorts that blend smoothly, each with it’s own personality, and each with a great deal to offer. The stories blend myths and legends, and manage to comb in a large dose of originality. The visuals themselves look lovely, somehow, with beautiful set design and skillful framing. Dougherty uses clever angles and movements in his direction that feel fresh and somehow pay homage to classic horrors of decades past.

Trick ‘r Treat is a delightful film, and I urge you to add it to your yearly mood setting list. Grab a pumpkin, grab a knife , turn on this film and carve away. And ‘don’t forget to help me with the eyes.’

 

Aberration, You Ain’t Kidding

Thirty something moon faced ‘teens’ flirt and fight in Aberration (2013, dir. Douglas Elford-Argent).

Chritsy (Gwendolyn Garver) is a mousey ‘high school’ girl who has odd dreams about grudge-looking ghosts. This most recent ghost seems to be trying to tell her something, and it’s up to her and her rape-faced almost boyfriend Kyle to unravel the mystery.

Ack, what mystery. No shock here, no budget, no decent effects and an insultingly lame story. The acting is laughable, and the actors themselves are clearly far beyond high school age. I’m talking soccer moms and dads, reliving pathetic memories.  Garver as the main character is the least offensive, though she’s not likely to be winning an Oscar any time soon. The rest of the cast come across as local yokels who were roped in to read a line here and there, lines, that, in fact, make little sense and are painfully dumb. In one scene, a police officer with a hilariously Canadian accent, tries to bargain with Christy. If she really, truly can look him in the eye and say Kyle isn’t guilty, he won’t take them to the station. Ah, what? haha ok, dude, whatever.

There is nothing original about this low budget crud bucket. It steals a revenge ghost plot from the grudge, and utilizes the same repeated images of a ghostly eyeless boy as it’s tired old scare over and over. Some violent scenes near the end are humorously bad, and finally did evoke a bit of a smile from me, but they do not make this film worth it. Lack of budget isn’t an excuse for this film, which seems to think it’s audience is full of morons who’ve never seen a horror film in their lives. Give us a little credit, Aberration.

 

Inner Goldblum

Viewers and horror fans alike have taken issue with 28 Days Later (2002, Danny Boyle). Oft known for revolutionizing zombie films with the addition of the fast zombie, 28 Days has made an impact. The trouble? Many an audience member would complain that this is not, in fact, a zombie movie.

must go faster

No, the monstrous creatures that attack and maul victims are not the living dead, they are the infected. They are contaminated humans, plagued by Rage, a disease that preys on an instinct already present in the human race, exacerbating it to the point of mania. They have not died and awoken from their eternal slumber to plod and shuffle and search for brains. They are not zombies. So what?! Who cares, anyway?  What’s in a name, after all? Technicalities.

28 Days Later follows Jim (Cillian Murphy) as he awakens in hospital to find himself in a new and terrifying world, one of infection and mindless violence. He teams up with Selena (Naomie Harris) and the two try to survive in an apocalyptic wasteland, infused with human monsters from both ends of a very wide spectrum. Silent, still shots of London’s empty roads are haunting. The city’s skyline gone dark sets an eerie mood from the start. The director favored Canon XL1 cameras, and the tones tend towards acidic yellow hues and pale, colorless greys. This lends a sickly pallor to the film, suggesting subtlely of the world’s diseased state. This film is clever in it’s use of social commentary. Danny Boyle used images from his research into events of social unrest. He has noted certain shots were inspired by photographs he had seen from Rwanda and Sierra Leone. Boyle has recreated these images from moments of genocide and slaughter. One such scene involves Jim stumbling across the dead body of a woman and her dead child, a chilling image that calls to mind a recurring theme in the film, ‘people killing people’.

Director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland have given nods to classic zombie films, paying homage to Romero’s gems and a number of other works. They’ve chosen to modernize the concept of zombies by preying on the idea of a blood borne illness that spreads alarmingly fast and inhibits it’s victims in an Ebola-like way, but activating that anger factor, a psychological element. The infected are a fast moving horde, splattered with gore and dripping with blood. Their faces hemorrhage, their bodies are emaciated, but their speed is frenetic and frightening. The scenes in which our characters (Jim, Cillian Murphy, Selena, Naomie Harris, and other skilled players) are pursued by the packs of infected are chilling. Much of these moments are shot in tilted shadows, camera angles askew and off putting. often we see only the silhouettes of monsters approaching at breakneck speed, and the inner Jeff Goldblum in us all mumbles ‘must go faster. must go faster!’. Close up shots of the infected are just as impactful, as their pallid features are obscured by eyes and noses gushing blood, not cheery red Argento blood, but dark and messy and splattered blood.

28 Days Later is an energetic and exciting film, with some serious suspenseful action. That being said, it also manages to have some very tender moments full of genuine emotion, reminding the audience of the other side of human nature. This film is smart and frightening. I recommend it in a dark room without commercial breaks. Take the time to watch the real thing, unedited, and give it the time it deserves to enjoy. There’s lots to absorb here, and it plays on some surprisingly heavy themes. If you’re not in it for themes, enjoy some really epic scenes involving some truly memorable effects and scares. Maybe it’s too soon to be a classic, at just over ten years old, but I think this one is destined to last.

 

 

The Eternal Sea

Gregory Peck’s magnificent eyebrows. That is all.

I will hit you with my ring hand

The Omen (1976, Richard Donner).

Ok, maybe that’s not all, but it’s an unavoidable perk.

The Omen, riding on the wave of the religious controversy that was The Exorcist and perhaps the evil baby syndrome of Rosemary’s Baby, burst onto the scene with the story of the antichrist on earth. Heavy on the biblical (though much of it not legit) and milking the creepiness that is a young child in horror, The Omen terrified audiences with scenes of violent death and moderate gore. Had this movie not had a cast of truly skilled actors (primarily Gregory Peck and Lee Remick) who took the script and story seriously, The Omen could very easily have spiraled into a hokey film. The quality of the acting and the directing carries this story, that feels oh so fantastical and tends to focus on deaths and events that, in other films, might feel cliche and blatant. In this film however, the violence, the story, even the fantasy is fluent and feels clean and professional.

Something of the film stills reeks of a bad 70’s movie, as though somewhere, on a couch covered in potato chip crumbs, is the chubby sister of The Omen, watching this movie, jealous of her sibling’s success and thinking ‘that was my idea first’.  There is a feeling of a bad movie infused with the acting, directing and funding necessary to make it a hit, and somehow make it a classic.

And The Omen is a classic. Audiences were shocked and horrified by the film’s brutality, the religious connotations, the alleged curse on the cast and crew. The stuff of legend, The Omen offers technical skill in the film making, the death scenes are memorable, shot with the skill of true craftsmen. The score is epic and highly unnerving (not to mention award winning). The young child, Damien, our ‘villain’ (Damien, really, was responsible for very little of the carnage present) unnerved viewers and wormed his way under their skin.

I thought we were going….to McDonald’s

An entertaining film, memorable moments, great acting, and as always necessary, the cleverest of skills geared towards marketing. This one had the money behind it to roll in the dough once it hit theaters, and there is a feeling of detachment,  a sense that film makers were in this one for the hit, not for the story. Somehow, I’ve always felt that The Omen, while technically proficient, and without blatant flaws, lacked some semblance of heart and genuineness. but big budget be damned, a horror classic is a horror classic, and it gets the job done.

 

Mother, No!

Am I the only one who ever had a little bit of a crush on Norman Bates? I mean, before all that cross-dressy-stab-stab stuff surfaced, anyway. Boyish good looks, unusually charismatic awkwardness?The guy IS a family man, after all, kind of dude you take home to mom? Unless you get to meet his first….

Hitchcock’s self funded ground breaking classic Psycho (1960) withstands the test of time, even still. It’s trademark piercing, grating music  instantly calls to mind blood down the drain. Hitchcock sucked the audience in from the very start with a smidge of scandal and left them cringing as the film’s big name star bit the bullet early on. The story never really was about Marion, anyway. The story was always that of Norman, oppressed young man at the mercy of an overbearing mother. What made this film shatter the minds of theatre goers, aside from the brutal (for the time) violence, was the villain. Psycho made ripples in the movie world because it’s terror clung to the back of the boy next door, the unassuming neighbour, the everyday man in the motel. After all, we all go a little mad sometimes.

Acting? Top notch, certainly notable accolades to Anthony Perkins as the tortured Bates, and Janet Leigh as the film’s most memorable victim. The score? Still immediately recognizable, chilling, screeching notes of climactic moments compliment the slower scenes thudding, walking tones, working to build up an ominous mood. Direction? Am I going to argue with Hitchcock? Not likely. The man utilized point of view shots and fast moving close ups to mimic the viewpoint of the victims and killer alike. Memorable moments include, of course, Leigh’s death, the swirling shot of her lifeless body, mirroring the swirling of blood down the drain. The swiftly moving shot of Armagast’s last moments as he stumbles down the stairs, backing hurriedly away from his killer. The uncomfortable view of Norman peering through the motel wall as Marion undresses, the light gleaming upon his face in the shadows.

Psycho remains an eerie tale, one that Hitchcock infamously worked hard to create, against recommendations of Hollywood bigwigs. He saw potential in the story the world didn’t want to hear (the novel by Robert Bloch, the script later by Joseph Stefano) and tossed fear in the faces of movie goers who’s idea of horror thus far stretched only to the unbelievable, monsters, vampires, frankenstein. Psycho brought to light the most frightening of villains, the odd fellow down the street.. Psycho not only made audiences afraid of showers, it made them afraid of each other.