Horrorfest 2014: The Sacrament

And now the final film of Horrorfest 2014, another Ti West joint, 2014's THE SACRAMENT. In short, THE SACRAMENT is a fictionalized retelling of the Jonestown massacre. Most of the details are there, although they're a little compressed and simplified, as well as updated so it can take place in contemporary times.

Joe Swanberg and AJ Bowen star as a cameraman and reporter for an online news site who become facsinated with their photographer friend's (Kentucker Audley) tale of the cult his sister (Amy Seimetz) has joined. They decide this is perfect material for their news site and accept an invitation to come visit the sister at the cult's remote, isolated compound in South America.

When they first arrive, things are definitely weird: there are guards with machine guns and the only way in and out of the compound is by a helicopter ride from the airport followed by a 2 mile drive into the wilderness. But, upon interviewing the members of the commune, it starts to look like they might all just be happy living off the land, away from the evils of modern society, as one big happy, hippie family.

Still, our heroes aren't convinced, and they're even less convinced when they interview the leader of the commune, known only as Father (Gene Jones), who speaks to his flock via loudspeaker throughout the day (and night) and is strangely defensive whenever he's questioned about seemingly simple concepts, like whether or not it's cool to have taken all of his commune members' life savings and property in order to help build this commune.

Of course any audience member in the real world knows it's only a matter of time before the whole group drinks the Kool Aid and dies. And, that's exactly what happens.

So, on one hand you have an inherently interesting story. The whole Jonestown thing is endlessly fascinating and it's a story that couldn't have been made more apt for a horror movie (or serious drama) by a screenwriter. It's one of those things where the truth is stranger than fiction.

On the other, it's a well known story and suffers a little from that. You know where everything is going from the beginning of the film, so there's little in the way of surprises, and it becomes a waiting game for the inevitable.

That said, it's a beautifully shot and well acted waiting game with a highlight performance from Gene Jones as the menacing Father. Jones is an actor you might recognize from any number of character parts in a million movies, so it's nice to see him shine here with a big, meaty role.

Having now seen all 3 of Ti West's feature length flicks throughout the course of 2 Horrorfests, I can say he's got the goods to make something really memorable. He's obviously good with actors, he's a master of tone and pacing, and, as mentioned before, his movies look like a million bucks even though they're low budget. The only thing lacking is the perfect story -- West does a lot with a little, that's for sure, but it'd be interesting to see what he could do with a really thoroughly fleshed out screenplay with a real beginning, middle and end, where all the stuff he's good at is just a bonus instead of the main attraction.

Well, anyway, there you have it: another year, another Horrorfest. Happy Halloween!

Horrorfest 2014: The Innkeepers

Let's check out something newer now, with Ti West's THE INNKEEPERS from 2011. I watched West's earlier flick, HOUSE OF THE DEVIL, for a previous Horrorfest and was impressed with it, so I was looking forward to this one as well.

THE INNKEEPERS stars Sara Paxton and Pat Healy as the 20-something employees of the soon-to-close Yankee Pedlar Inn. The inn has a macabre history involving a woman (Brenda Cooney) who killed herself at the inn after being left on her honeymoon. Our two heroes are both into ghost hunting, and view their last few nights working at the inn as their last chance to capture some real evidence.

The inn is sparsely populated, but among the few guests is Kelly McGillis as an actress-turned-psychic in town for some kind of psychic convention and, later, a creepy old man (George Riddle) who requests one of the third floor rooms even though they're not furnished anymore.

Like HOUSE OF THE DEVIL, THE INNKEEPERS is a really slow burn, relying more on suspense and character work than on shocks or thrills. There are a few legitimately good scares throughout the movie, and a thrilling conclusion, and the character stuff between the two leads is nice (they're both likable enough), but the overall story didn't keep my interest as much as HOUSE OF THE DEVIL did.

I'm not sure if it's just the premise or what – HOSUE OF THE DEVIL had more questions built into it from the beginning than THE INNKEEPERS does. The more questions you have, the longer you can tolerate suspense, because you want to figure out what's going on. In THE INKEEPERS there's nothing really to figure out – either the place is haunted or it isn't, and I'm guessing since this is a horror movie, it is.

Horrorfest 2014: Twins of Evil

You don't think I'd let Horrorfest go by without a visit from Hammer Studios do you? Of course not. This year we've got 1971's TWINS OF EVIL. This wasn't on Time Out's list and isn't on Netflix, either, but it was showing at the Hollywood and I couldn't pass it up.

Hammer stalwart Peter Cushing stars as a witch-hunting puritan in a small 19^th century village. In between burning seemingly innocent women at the stake, he suspects the local Count (Damien Thomas) is in league with Satan.

Meanwhile, a pair of recently orphaned, beautiful, young twins arrive to live with Cushing, their uncle. One of them is sweet natured and God fearing while the other is more adventurous and curious about "sin." Of course, no sooner has she overheard Cushing railing against the Satan worshipping Count than she decides she simply MUST meet him.

Meanwhile, again, it turns out the Count actually does worship Satan. Not only that but he's recently turned into a vampire.  So, this is kind of interesting. Early on in the movie you hate Peter Cushing because he's being an intolerant dickhead, preying on innocent women and burning them at the stake for crimes like living alone or not getting married. He even interrupts the Count's rendezvous with a peasant woman and you're kind of on the Count's side because he hates Cushing, too.

But once the Count turns out to actually be in league with Satan, and a vampire to boot, things change. Cushing still sucks but in this one case he just happens to be right. So now he's the guy who's going to have to kill the Count.

Anyway, of course the twin who has a crush on the Count runs off to meet him and falls under his spell. There's a few twists and turns here and there as the twins switch places a few times and you never quite know what Cushing's going to do.

Like most Hammer flicks, TWINS OF EVIL moves along at an energetic pace and is never boring. There's plenty of sleaze, Cushing is great as always, and the twins really are beautiful.

Horrorfest 2014: Shivers

Now let's go back to David Cronenberg for his first flick, 1975's SHIVERS. Turns out Cronenberg's been into "body horror" since day one.

SHIVERS takes place in a state of the art condominium that is totally self sufficient, with on site stores, medical centers, and everything else you could think of. The film starts as an infomercial for the community, then doesn't waste much time before getting to the horror.

It seems a mad doctor (Fred Doederlin) is experimenting on a parasite that loosens people's inhibitions once it is introduced into their bodies, then spreads like an STD when people come into contact with each other. Unfortunately, it loosens people's inhibitions maybe a little more than the doctor intended, turning people into murderous, sex-crazed maniacs, so as the film opens, the doctor is putting his first patient (his lover, Barbara Steele) out of her misery.

Unfortunately for everyone involved, this patient has slept with half the building and now we have a bunch of other infected people just waiting to infect each other, notably the male half of a young married couple (Alan Migicovsky) who has weird creatures visibly crawling around under his skin. He hacks up a couple of these parasites which then crawl around the building's pipes and ducts and jump out at people when they least expect it.

Also unfortunately for everyone involved, the only kind of hero we have on hand is the building's on-site doctor (Paul Hampton), a guy who seems to ooze laziness, who sees what's going on but is a little too slow to stop it. He's sleeping with his hot nurse (Lynn Lowry) who tries to help as well, but it's not long before there's a full on outbreak of zombie-like proportions and implications.

SHIVERS works best in the first half when all of the icky goings on are being set up. When they pay off, an otherwise interesting premise devolves into a retread of your usual zombie stuff. Still, it's cool to see Cronenberg basically arrived ready to go right from the beginning and never looked back.

Horrorfest 2014: The Girl Who Knew Too Much

How about some back-to-back Bava? That makes 3 Mario Bava flicks this Horrorfest alone. That might be the most movies by one director in one Horrorfest ever, but I haven't been keeping track, so who knows.

Anyway, 1963's THE GIRL WHO KNEW TOO MUCH is more like the Bava I know and love. Instead of the gory mayhem we got with the last movie, this flick has beautiful black and white cinematography and makes great use of real locations in Rome. It's almost like Bava's take on Hitchcock.

Leticia Roman stars as a young American girl visiting Rome to see her Aunt. Unfortunately her Aunt dies, the girl's mugged on her way to the hospital and she witnesses a murder – all on her first night in town.

At first no one believes her about the murder – maybe she hallucinated after the stress filled events previous in the night. In any case, she quickly befriends her aunt's doctor (John Saxon of ENTER THE DRAGON fame!) who is happy to show her around town and her aunt's neighbor (Valentina Cortese) who lives right next to the scene of the murder.

Our heroine's a fan of detective novels, so she sets about trying to figure out the mystery of the murder herself. She's a plucky girl, as afraid as she is curious, resourceful as she is clumsy.

Even though this movie has some scary parts and some suspenseful ones, it also has plenty of humor and stays light hearted. Even if the murder plot takes back seat to some of the movie's other digressions, it's no big deal, because it's fun to see all the sights around Rome.

Horrorfest 2014: Twitch of the Death Nerve

Now it's time for some more Mario Bava with 1971's TWITCH OF THE DEATH NERVE. I always get excited when I see Bava's name at the beginning of a flick because he rarely lets me down. I've watched many of his movies for Horrorfest, including one earlier this month, and enjoyed them all. This one's the first one I wasn't thrilled with.

Pretty much all of Bava's flicks are about murder in one way or another, and he takes it to the next level with this one: it's as if he wanted to make the murdery-est murder movie he possibly could. It's like the "Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" of murder movies. Everyone wants to murder everyone else and pretty much does.

The simultaneously convoluted and simple plot revolves around a piece of land (a mansion on the edge of a bay) that comes under dispute when a countess (Isa Miranda) is murdered by her husband (Giovanni Nuvoletti). Her husband is murdered immediately after the crime by a mysterious assailant.

Without giving too much awawy, it turns out a couple who wanted to buy the property (Chris Avram and Anna Maria Rosati) plotted to have the countess killed in an attempt to get her husband to sign the place over to them. Now that the husband's dead they're plotting with the countess' illegitimate son (Claudio Volonte).

Meanwhile, the countess' daughter and her husband (Claudine Auger and Luigi Pistilli) also want the place and are willing to murder to get it.

Unconnected to all of this, a bunch of partying youngsters show up and end up in the crosshairs of killers as well.

So, see what I mean? Everyone wants to kill everyone and pretty much does.

The movie sounds over the top and out of control, but it's strangely boring. I guess it suffers from the same thing all of the slasher movies it undoubtedly inspired suffer from: it's only so interesting to watch the body count rise. Before too long, you're just watching people go through the motions.

The movie is notable for its level of violence, and the gore effects are done really well. But it lacks the extra touch of beauty Bava usually gives to his flicks. I guess on one hand that makes sense since there is nothing beautiful about this subject matter. On the other, though, it was sad to see Bava's usual style go out the window in favor of ultra violence. Granted – the ultra violence is a style unto itself, especially since this is a pioneering film, but still. Where's the Bava cinematography when you need it?

This is the second Horrorfest flick in a row with a twist ending. THE BABY blindsided me with its macabre twist but I saw TWITCH OF THE DEATH NERVE's hackneyed and heavy handed ending coming a mile away.

Horrorfest 2014: The Baby

As soon as I read the premise for 1973's THE BABY on Netflix I knew I had to watch it. Check this out: it's about a social worker (Anjanette Comer) who is assigned to a family who has a 20-year-old man living like a baby – crawling around, in a crib, in baby clothes, drinking out of a bottle, not talking, everything. How can you not watch?

Even though it seems like pretty straight forward exploitation, THE BABY has some surprises. First of all, the titular Baby (David Mooney) is not the source of the horror – he's not some misshapen beast languishing in a crib. He's just a regular looking young guy who happens to act like a baby all the time.

Also, the house the family lives in isn't some gross place that's falling apart in the middle of nowhere. It's just a big southern California house. I was picturing a freak show of the TEXAS CHAINSAW variety, but that's not quite what this is.

Ruth Roman stars as Baby's domineering mother, a chain smoking non-too-classy, brassy broad who doesn't want anyone to take Baby away or help him develop into a normal dude. Also living in the house, Baby's two hot to trot sisters played by Marianna Hill and Suzanne Zenor.

Comer is good as the social worker, wholesome and concerned, ready to go the extra mile to get Baby out of the house, not willing to give up (or disappear) like some previous social workers have.

One of the creepiest things about the movie is that Baby's voice is dubbed over with real baby sounds – so he does not sound like a grown man acting like a baby, but like an actual baby. Reading up on this flick I learned that the original film's soundtrack had real vocalizations by the grown actor and these baby noises were dubbed in at some later date. So, this is creepy by accident instead of design.

I wouldn't dare give away the surprise ending of this flick. I'll tell you it's totally earned, totally set up and I still didn't see it coming. It's to this movie's credit they even bothered with the twist ending at all – a lesser flick would have just rested on the absurdity of the premise. Not this one!

Horrorfest 2014: Fright Night

On the more light hearted side we've got 1985's FRIGHT NIGHT, a movie you can file under "I can't believe you've never seen this one before!" Well, now I've seen it, so get off my ass.

A suburban teenager (William Ragsdale) begins to suspect his new neighbor (Chris Sarandon) is a vampire after he sees his new neighbor doing clearly vampire-type-stuff right in front of the window. His girlfriend (Amanda Bearse) doesn't believe him, his mom (Dorothy Fielding) wants to invite the vampire over, and the only guy the teen can turn to is B-movie horror icon turned local creature feature host turned recently unemployed actor, Peter Vincent (Roddy McDowall).

Of course, McDowall doesn't believe the teen either, but it isn't long before the vampire stuff starts piling up so much that he's forced to become a real-life vampire hunter, anyway.

The first half of the film is a nice little comedy with likable characters. Even the vampire's pretty likable. The second half transforms into a real special effects spectacular with some genuinely inventive scenes. All throughout, the movie sticks to its vampire mythology and walks us through all the usual rules – crosses, mirrors, holy water, stakes, etc.

Much of the film's humor comes from the matter of fact way the characters approach these things. In too many movies like this characters are made to act in ways that no human would act because the writers want them to do contrived things. In this one, the teenage hero just flat out tells the cops what's going on, right in front of the bad guys. None of that weird secret-keeping that people do in movies like this. So, that's funny, plus the look on the villain's face when he sees that the kid is ratting on him is funny, plus the incredulity of the cop is funny, and so on.

One of the greatest conceits of the film is that McDowall (and the others) are actually frightened of the vampires. In too many films like this regular people just transform into badasses at a moments notice, as the screenplay needs them to. Not in this one. In this one, our heroes are actually scared of the fact that the vampire could destroy them as easily as a person could squash a fly. There's humor in that, but also pathos, as you actually believe these characters are three-dimensional. That's the greatest trick you can play – work three-dimensional characters into a genre picture.

Of special note here is Chris Sarandon's great vampire performance, giving us both what we expect from a vampire and keeping a unique little human twist in there as well. He has a great way of seeming simply annoyed by his human foes, the way a real vampire might. He views the hero of the movie as a pesky kid, not his arch nemesis, and that's a big reason the movie works as well as it does.

Horrorfest 2014: Possession

Now let's check out another kind of horror entirely – relationship horror! 1981's POSSESSION starts with the crumbling of a marriage between an international spy (Sam Neill) and his wife (Isabelle Adjani) and ends with… well, I'm not sure. Maybe the apocalypse?

This French/West German production starts off like a psychological thriller, as Neill and Adjani tear apart their apartment and local restaurants arguing – she wants to leave, he wants her to stay, she insists it's not another man but won't say why, he insists she's neglecting their kid (Michael Hogben), and on and on. But, eventually, the supernatural stuff starts to creep in, and boy is it gross.

The prolonged scenes of the couple screaming at each other (and Adjani screaming all by herself) start to become a little too much about halfway through the film, but if you can stick with it you'll get to the inexplicable and unpredictable ending, involving doppelgangers, tentacle creatures and maybe an invasion. Not sure on that one.

Shot in Berlin when the wall was still up, POSSESSION gets a lot of mileage out of its locations, using the divided city as a perfect backdrop for the divided relationship. It's almost as if the entire city is a prison, the couple's apartment is a prison, the relationship is a prison. The whole movie is claustrophobic. It's kind of like THE SHINING, right down to Neill's Jack Nicholson-esque performance.

Speaking of Sam Neill, it's usually Adjani who gets the acclaim for this flick, and she does deserve it, but as a JURASSIC PARK fan, it's cool to see Neill really flex his acting muscles in a role that requires complete insanity.

The film has a couple darkly comic moments, but is mostly fairly unpleasant, what with all of the characters fighting all of the time. You also get the impression that rather than simply being a mystery, there's a possibility the filmmakers themselves might not know exactly what's going on at all times. Still, you've never seen a flick like this one before and you'll probably never see one again, so it's worth checking out.

Horrorfest 2014: Something Evil

Now, for a fun one (finally). SOMETHING EVIL isn't on Netflix Watch Instantly and it wasn't on Time Out's list, but we're taking a break from those sources for a special occasion. The other day the Hollywood Theater showed a 16mm print of this rare made-for-TV horror flick, notable because it was directed by a young pre-JAWS Steven Spielberg!

SOMETHING EVIL stars Sandy Dennis and Darren McGavin as a happy couple who buy a house in the country and move in with their young kids, a son (Johnny Whitaker) and a younger daughter (Debbie and Sandy Lempert).

They're not there long before Dennis hears unsettling moaning and crying in the middle of the night. She tracks it to the barn but once she gets there it suddenly sounds like it's coming from the house. More weird stuff like this starts building up until Dennis is convinced there's – you guessed it – something evil in the house!

A lot of this stuff seems familiar, featured in similar movies like THE AMITYVILLE HORROR and THE EXORCIST, except for one important part: both of those came after this movie! So, Spielberg was ahead of his time, as usual.

Speaking of Spielberg, can you really tell this is a Spielberg flick? Well, it has its limitations, since he was basically a hired hand on a low budget made for TV flick. But, the movie does seem to have some of his trademarks, including a family that feels more real than your average screen family, a sense of humor, and lots of shots of characters with flash lights wandering around.

Most of SOMETHING EVIL is a slow build to a pretty quick climax, but it's very economical and definitely has some good scares in it. Dennis is great as the mother, the kids are suitably creepy but the movie doesn't rely on that too much, and the McGavin is good as a sympathetic but not dopey husband and father.

Horrorfest 2014: Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom

Well, to continue our tour of suffering, let's check out SALO, OR THE 120 DAYS OF SODOM. This 1976 flick from Italy is well known for how explicitly violent and depraved it is, but is also generally well regarded by smart pants film buffs. It's always hard to tell with these flicks, before you see them, if they're only well regarded as a badge of honor like, "I'm a bigger film buff than you because I was able to sit through that crap" or if it's legitimately good and also happens to be gross.

Even though I've seen SALO, now, I still feel like I'm kind of on the fence. It's definitely well made and it definitely has a point to make, so it's not just exploitation. But, it is gross. Super gross.

The movie's about 4 depraved fascists in WW2 Italy (Paolo Bonacelli, Giorgio Cataldi, Umberto P. Quintavalle and Aldo Valletti) who capture a group of teenagers, bring them to a large house, and use them to proceed to live out all of their torturous and perverted fantasies of total control and sado-masochism.

Like I said before, to the movie's credit, for subject matter as depraved as this, the film shows restraint. It's not a gritty splatterfest and you don't feel like you've dug something up from the depths when you watch it. It looks and feels like a real film made by a real filmmaker, which it is.

Director Pier Paolo Pasolini stays pretty detached from the material, not really lingering on anything to the point where we get the feeling the filmmakers have prurient interests. If anything, the camera regards the goings on passively. That's not to say the whole thing seems improvised. No, there is definitely technical precision here.

This cold approach actually serves to underline and amplify the unpleasant subject matter rather than diminish it. It's like stumbling across an immaculately kept, clean, disinfected torture chamber – it's almost worse that whoever's in charge is taking care of things, knowing what goes on there.

It seems this year's Horrorfest has more of the torture type stuff than previous years and I guess that is mostly due to the fact that I'm working off of the films on Time Out's list that I haven't seen yet. Turns out lots of them are this type of movie. Oh well.

Horrorfest 2014: Come and See

Now we head to Russia for COME AND SEE. This WW2 film from 1985 is a coming-of-age tragedy that most would probably not call a traditional horror film. But, it's full of horror.

Aleksey Kravchenko stars as a young boy from a small village who wants to join the Russian partisans and fight back against the Nazis. He digs up a gun, lost from some other fallen soldier, and leaves his protesting mother behind to join a band of warriors hiding out in the woods.

It isn't long before the Partisans decide to leave him behind as they move forward. The boy is left with a young girl (Olga Mironova) who has been through a lot – first as a prisoner of the Nazis and now as refugee with the Partisans.

The two travel the war-torn Russian landscape in an attempt to survive. The young boy is deafened by an explosion, they find his family home abandoned (and bodies of the entire village piled up outside of it) and he ends up in the thick of a Nazi attack on another nearby village, in which all of the villagers are herded into a barn and then burnt alive.

COME AND SEE is unforgiving in its portrayal of the inhumanity and destruction of war, more so than any other fictionalized film I've ever seen. It was co-written by the director, Elem Klimov, and a real-life survivor of these atrocities, Ales Adamovich.

The film all but wallows in despair, but does not exist in a totally, gritty, realistic world, either. It still has artistic and cinematic strokes, including cinematography by Aleksei Rodionov that makes it seem like the camera is floating effortlessly above and through the carnage like we might float through a nightmare.

There is no happy ending here, but there is an interesting climax where the boy fires his gun at a portrait of Hitler he finds in a puddle. What follows is a very powerful fantasy montage that must be seen to be believed, ending on a note that is fittingly as heart breaking as the rest of the film.

I can see why Time Out would consider this one of the best horror films ever made, but it’s also probably one of the best films ever made, period.