Horrorfest 2023: Cobweb

Cobweb

Written by Chris Thomas Devlin

Directed by Samuel Bodin

Starring Lizzy Caplan, Woody Norman, Cleopatra Coleman and Antony Starr

USA, 2023

Let's end Horrorfest 2023 on a high note with COBWEB, a movie the guys at Red Letter Media said they liked, so when it popped up on streaming, I checked it out right away -- because those hack frauds never like anything.

It will be difficult to talk about COBWEB without giving too much away because part of what makes it so great is that you never know exactly where it's going. As it starts out, it is apparent that it is about a lonely elementary-school-aged boy (Woody Norman) who is picked on at school and over-protected at home. One evening, he hears noises in the wall of his bedroom, including a voice, and it scares him. His parents (Lizzy Caplan and Antony Starr) reassure him it's nothing, but he keeps hearing it.

The smart thing is, in these early passages, the parents seem reasonable. There are a couple shots or moments where you might think they're slightly off, but nothing that's a huge red flag. And then the movie swiftly pulls the rug out from under you and moves in a direction you weren't expecting. At least, it was one that I wasn't expecting. And it keeps doing that, throughout.

The young boy his a little bit of an ally in his kind substitute teacher (Cleopatra Coleman) who can tell he is sensitive and needs special attention, and intuits that there might be something worse going on behind the scenes than meets the eye. At first you're not sure if she's overreacting or if the parents are or what. Hell, early on, it's not even clear if this movie is going to be about something supernatural or something... else.

Anyway, it gets pretty much everything right -- the performances are great, including the child in the lead role who has a big job ahead of him, holding almost the entire movie on his shoulders. The atmosphere is also great, not in an over-produced, big budget way where it takes away from the scares (like MALIGNANT) but more in a classic Universal horror kind of way, where there's a sense of moody foreboding in every shot. And, the screenplay is endlessly inventive. This isn't a "big premise" movie where you go in for the premise and then that's all you get. This one seems to have a new premise every ten minutes or so, and that works to its advantage.

I'm probably not doing the movie justice for how good it is, so I'll just say it's definitely worth checking out, especially on Halloween, which reminds me -- Happy Halloween!

Horrorfest 2023: Five Nights at Freddy's

Five Nights at Freddy's

Written by Scott Cawthon, Seth Cuddeback and Emma Tammi

Based on the video game by Scott Cawthon

Directed by Emma Tammi

Starring Josh Hutcherson, Elizabeth Lail, Piper Rubio, Mary Stuart Masterson and Matthew Lillard

USA, 2023

When I first heard of the game FIVE NIGHTS AT FREDDY'S and saw images from it, I thought it seemed like a pretty good idea -- basically, set a survival horror video game in a restaurant like a Chuck E. Cheese's where the animatronic mascots are out to get you.

So, when the movie came around I was interested to check it out. I figured it'd be creepy and funny at the same time and deliver on the promise of its premise. Unfortunately I was wrong about all that stuff.

The movie's not scary, the movie's not funny and it doesn't even deliver on its premise. I mean, sure, yes, technically there's a Chuck E. Cheese style restaurant and technically the animatronic mascots are out to get people, but there's so little of that and it's done so poorly that it may as well not even be in the movie.

The movie is REALLY about this unemployed dude (Josh Hutcherson) who is trying to keep custody of his kid sister (Piper Rubio) as his greedy aunt (Mary Stuart Masterson) tries to get the kid sister all to herself. Problem is, this dude can't hold down a job because he is traumatized by witnessing the kidnapping of his younger brother as a child. Still, when push comes to shove, he accepts the night shift at a long-closed arcade/pizzeria.

After typing that out I realize I'm getting too into the weeds here, but the weeds are where this movie falls apart, so it's hard not to get into them. Notice I've said so much without getting to the evil animatronics yet? Yeah, I know. So, like... this dude also falls asleep all the time and has nightmare visions of children who apparently witnessed the kidnapping and he attempts to talk to them in his dream to figure out who kidnapped his brother. And meanwhile his aunt wants to ruin his life so much she hires a gang of youths (including the guy's own babysitter!) to trash the pizzeria and make him lose his job.

Only, this gang shows up at the pizzeria in the middle of the day when the guy's not on duty. So how this is going to get him into trouble is beyond me. Anyway, all the animatronics, including the titular Freddy (a bear) come to life and murder the vandals.

Later, when the guy can't get a babysitter to watch his kid sister, and after being warned to stop bringing her to the pizzeria, where she becomes best friends with the animatronics and builds a fort with them (seriously), he simply has his aunt watch her. You know, the same aunt who hired the babysitter to mess up the pizzeria and get him fired in the first place? The same one who wants full custody of the kid sister and to effectively ruin this guy's life? That lady. It's not so much that I can't come up with scenarios in my mind that might explain this. It's more that the movie doesn't seem to notice its own internal inconsistencies. It drives me to distraction.

So anyway, if you guessed this guy's missing brother is somehow tied to the pizzeria and the animatronics and all that stuff, you guessed right, though why and how I don't know. I mean, I do know, because the movie eventually explains it, sort of, but the explanation itself leaves a lot to be desired. I'd tell you what it is here but I'm getting sick of thinking about it. Suffice to say that it's all totally superfluous to the basically good concept of creepy mascots going on the rampage.

Horrorfest 2023: Host

Host

Written by Gemma Hurley, Rob Savage and Jed Shepherd

Directed by Rob Savage

Starring Haley Bishop, Jemma Moore, Emma Louise Webb, Radina Drandova, Caroline Ward, Edward Linard, Seyland Baxter, Jinny Lofthouse, Alan Emrys, Patrick Ward and James Swanton

UK, 2020

HOST is an interesting modern horror flick to watch right after UNFRIENDED because they both take place on a computer screen and although they're only five years apart from each other, they represent a huge gulf in not only technology but also culture. The world changed a lot in those five years.

I say HOST takes place all on a computer screen, but really, more specifically, it's all during a Zoom call, something few of us had heard of or participated in before 2020 and which almost all of us know about now. Just like in the real world, HOST takes place during the COVID lockdown, and features characters split up not just be geography but also by the pandemic, coming together online for companionship and... a seance! Ooooh.

Where in UNFRIENDED I thought to myself, "Did teens really hang out on Skype in 2015?" with HOST I had no such reservations, not only because I lived through lockdown, but also because the nature of the film's setting makes meeting online a necessity as opposed to just a decision.

While UNFRIENDED wins points for the authenticity of its representation of an online experience, HOST goes a step further by actually exploiting the quirks of Zoom and using them as both moments of humor but also as moments of suspense. My favorite part was towards the end as the terror was ramping up and a message popped up to alert everyone that since they were using the free version of Zoom, their session is about to expire... and then we watch it count down in real time until... well, that'd be a spoiler.

I'd say director Rob Savage has a promising career ahead of him except I don't have to -- he's already made THE BOOGEY MAN, which I reviewed earlier this month, and found surprisingly satisfying. So good on him!

Horrorfest 2023: The Raven

The Raven

Screenplay by Richard Matheson

Based on the poem by Edgar Allan Poe

Directed by Roger Corman

Starring Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, Boris Karloff, Hazel Court, Olive Sturgess and Jack Nicholson

USA, 1963

I try not to go an entire October without at least one Vincent Price movie, so this year it's THE RAVEN, which I've sort of seen parts of before but never really sat down to appreciate from beginning to end. As a bonus, it also stars horror heroes Peter Lorre and Boris Karloff, as well as Jack Nicholson. And as a bonus bonus, it's a Roger Corman flick!

Not to be confused with the other THE RAVEN also starring Boris Karloff (and Bela Lugosi!) that I checked out in the very first Horrorfest way back in 2009, this one is also "based" on the Edgar Allan Poe poem in only the loosest sense. This time around Peter Lorre has been transformed into the titular bird by an evil wizard (Boris Karloff) and enlists the help of another wizard (Vincent Price) to not only return to human form but also exact his revenge. Price is reluctant to help (even is dead father's corpse warns him not to) but ends up coming along when he finds out his beloved Lenore (from the poem! get it?) (Hazel Court) is not dead but instead inexplicably in the clutches of Karloff. Jack Nicholson and Olive Sturgess round out the cast as Lorre and Price's kids, respectively.

THE RAVEN is only a horror movie in its trappings: big cobweb-filled houses, old imposing castles, crypts, laboratories, dead bodies, axe-wielding henchmen, thunder and lightning crashes... all that stuff is here, and more, but it's all in the service of what turns out to be a farcical comedy. That's to the movie's strength because, played straight, I don't think there's enough going on here to keep anyone's attention. But played for laughs, it's an amusing distraction.

All the leads are great as always with Price standing out specifically as an ultra-polite gentleman with a distaste for mixing macabre elixirs, but who does it anyway, in a pinch. Lorre's in full harassed mode, which his his best mode, and Karloff is aloof and above everything, playing it as straight as he can as a passive aggressively evil wizard. Really, just having the chance to see all three of these guys on screen playing off of each other is worth it. 

Horrorfest 2023: Unfriended

Unfriended

Written by Nelson Greaves

Directed by Leo Gabriadze

Starring Shelley Hennig, Moses Storm, Renee Olstead, Will Petz, Jaco Wysocki, Courtney Halverson and Heather Sossaman

USA, 2015

One of many internet-based horror movies that have come out over the last couple decades, the entirety of UNFRIENDED takes place on the computer desktop of a high school girl (Shelley Hennig). As the movie opens she's having an intimate video chat via Skype (remember Skype?) with her boyfriend (Moses Storm), but it isn't long before her friends, another couple (Renee Olstead and Will Peltz) and a tech savvy third wheel (Jacob Wysocki) interrupt and join the call.

Strangely, another user who does not have their camera on and does not have a photograph for an avatar is also on the call -- and no one knows who it is. They also don't seem to be able to kick the unknown user off of the call, and now matter how many times they end and re-start the call, or who ends it and re-starts it, the unknown user seems to come along.

If you're guessing this unknown user is the vengeful spirit of their high school friend (Heather Sossaman) who killed herself shortly after being humiliated both at a party and online -- you guessed right!

A movie like this is made or broken in large part on the believability of the on-screen experience -- is this what computers actually look like and how they behave? And by this metric I'd say UNFRIENDED passes with flying colors. Nothing looks glaringly like a made-for-movies operating system or program. It all seems like the real deal. And, aside from a few things that could be waved away as the main character's quirks, the people in the movie interact with the technology the same way a real person would.

There's also, of course, the way the script uses the technology, and again, here, everything remains fairly non-convoluted -- the filmmakers do not bend over backwards attempting to shove their square premise into a round hole. They find clever ways to make it work seamlessly. Really the only big question I had was whether or not teenagers in 2015 commonly hopped on Skype calls together, but since I was an old man by then, I do not know from firsthand experience and am willing to meet the movie halfway.

The best (and most chilling) sequence is one in which one of the characters realizes he's being watched by a camera in his own room. Like, a camera other than the one he is using. Creepy, huh?

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention he performances, however, which must have been difficult to pull off sitting in front of webcams and interacting via screens. By the end of the movie most of the cast has basically gone into freak out mode, but there's a nice build up to that, and they do a good job of getting their characters and motivations across without a lot to work with.

Horrorfest 2023: The Red House

The Red House

Written and directed by Delmer Daves

Based on the novel by George Agnew Chamberlain

Starring Edward G. Robinson, Lon McCallister, Judith Anderson, Rory Calhoun, Allene Roberts, Julie London, Ona Munson and Harry Shannon

USA, 1947

When a reclusive farmer's (Edward G. Robinson) teenage adopted daughter (Allene Roberts) gets her high school friend (Lon McCallister) a job as a farmhand on the family farm, the duo become increasingly obsessed with finding out what exactly is hiding in the nearby woods. On a dark and stormy night, when the farmhand wants to take a shortcut through the woods, the farmer warns him off with tales of a red house in the woods where mysterious screams can be heard and accidents befall those who dare go near it. 

I'd never heard of this little human drama with some mystery and horror thrown in before and it'd fit just as well among the ranks of famous noir films as it does alongside horror movies. Perhaps I say noir because I'm used to seeing Edward G. Robinson as either a hard-bitten gangster or other similarly cynical characters in crime and detective movies, and not so used to seeing him as a humble farmer.

Of course, as the movie unfolds, Robinson gets many chances to flex his tough guy chops, because it turns out his character's directly embroiled in the mysterious tragedy that took place in the elusive red house in the woods. It's not just a tough guy turn, though. Robinson gets a great role to play here as he gets to be paranoid, delusional, manic and murderous, all in turn. No one else in the cast quite lives up to this performance, and the direction and cinematography are pretty rote, but Robinson's performance and the intriguing story are enough to warrant a watch.

Horrorfest 2023: Terrifier 2

Terrifier 2

Written and directed by Damien Leone

Starring Lauren LaVera, Elliot Fullam, Sarah Voigt, Kailey Hyman, Casey Hartnett and David Howard Thornton

USA, 2022

Are the rumors true -- is TERRIFIER 2 really better than TERRIFIER?

Well, it is and it isn't.

It's better in the sense that there's more going on in the way of plot and character development. Instead of just getting bodies to hack 'n stack, we get a couple fairly sympathetic characters, a teenage sister and brother duo (Lauren LaVera and Elliot Fullam) who are adjusting to life after their father's tragic death. Right there, we've got one up on the original TERRIFIER as we can begin to care about Art the Clown's potential victims.

That's about where the improvements stop, though. All the other possible improvements are sort of backhanded -- like, the movie's more ambitious in the sense that it includes fantasy and dream sequences, but once those are included it opens the door to asking, "Why?" That's something we didn't have to ask with the first TERRIFIER which was just content to be what it was. I might sound like I'm trying to have my slasher cake and eat it too, here, but I guess what I'm trying to say is that my perfect TERRIFIER movie would be a hybrid of parts one and two -- it'd have the interesting characters of part two, and the no frills, straight-forward nature of part one.

I feel this way in no small part to the movie's ludicrous running time, which is two hours and eighteen minutes. That's far, far too long for a movie about a clown who murders people. And I say this with the realization that both previous versions of IT are also very long. You're all too long, movies. Stop it.

Part of the problem is that a large part of the run time is made up of elaborate torture and kill scenes. The first movie had one big torture/kill sequence that stole the movie, and was content with that. This one has multiple, one longer than the other, and it gets to the point where, when you get to the end of the movie, you know the last ones alive are gonna like... live... so you know all the "cool" parts are behind you, right? So why keep watching, especially if a quarter of your way through the third hour?

Still, at the center, we have a well designed and effective slasher villain in Art the Clown, who is still played to perfection by David Howard Thornton. So now the TERRIFIER series has two good things going for -- good heroes and good villains. Maybe part three will have a good story? And be less than two hours long?

Horrorfest 2023: Uninvited

Uninvited

Written and directed by Greydon Clark

Starring George Kennedy, Alex Cord, Clu Gulager, Toni Hudson and Eric Larson

USA, 1987

The final film of the Hollywood Theater's 2023 edition of the All Night Horror Movie Marathon was UNINVITED, which is ostensibly about an evil mutant cat that stows away aboard a luxury yacht and kills its passengers one by one. But it's also about so much more. Like what, you ask? Well...

It's about two blonde babes who don't have a place to stay during spring break in Ft. Lauderdale.

It's about a trio of dudes who want to get laid -- the jock, the prep and the brain.

It's about a multimillionaire and his gang attempting to flee prosecution in the US by sailing to the Cayman Islands, where they can deposit three suitcases of cash and live out the rest of their lives in luxury.

It's about the daughter of a dead boat captain who is forced to work on her father's boat for the afore-mentioned multimillionaire who...

But seriously, who cares, right? All this movie had to do was give us the mutant cat killing people and it would have been more than enough, but instead it comes loaded to bear with two barrels full of boring subplots that go nowhere.

Partway through the movie I started to feel like I'd seen it before and couldn't figure out where. Eventually I realized I had seen highlights of it through Red Letter Media's show BEST OF THE WORST. And that's all you really need. If you're curious about it, check out that episode, because you don't want to have to sit through the whole thing.

Honestly, of the movies shown at the marathon, UNINVITED is the one that comes the closest to being "so bad it's good." The problem was we watched it after three other movies at 3:00 in the morning. If this had been first on the list, I would have likely been laughing my ass off: the movie makes no sense, has terrible special effects, and even though it doesn't start out great, at a certain point partway through it's as if everyone lost interest and gave up even more than they already had at the beginning.

By the way, this is not to be confused with Horrorfest alum THE UNINVITED (note the "the") which is a legitimately good ghost movie.

Horrorfest 2023: Terrifier

Terrifier

Written and directed by Damien Leone

Starring Jenna Kanell, Samantha Scaffidi, David Howard Thornton and Catherine Corcoran

USA, 2018

I've finally seen the much buzzed about modern cult classic TERRIFIER! I steered clear for a while because it appeared to be a case of mean spirited edginess for edginess' sake, which is not something I'm really interested in now that I'm an old man, but it's Horrorfest, so what the hell.

TERRIFIER is a throwback to slashers of yore, featuring a villain dressed as a clown who embarks on a murder spree one Halloween night. The movie's not reinventing the wheel, here, but it has a few things going for it, and a few going against it.

It's kind of refreshing to have a nice, simple, straight forward slasher where you don't have to sit through a bunch of bad plot and worse character development. However it might have been nice to have some plot or some character development instead of none at all.

Secondly, the gore effects are impressive and inventive for such a low budget indie flick. Unfortunately they push the boundaries of good taste... like, push right past the boundaries.

The movie's greatest strength is that it has a memorable slasher villain in Art the Clown, something which has been lacking in all movies since... I dunno... SCREAM? Has it been that long? Well, in any case, Art's not just a triumph of makeup, costume and... well... art design... he's also played well by David Howard Thornton who puts a lot of physicality into the silent performance. Honestly, the movie would be nothing without him.

Which brings us to the movie's greatest weakness. It'd be nothing without Art the Clown. Which, I dunno, I guess is okay... but it's kind of sad to have such a great villain in such an otherwise middle-of-the-road movie. It's almost universally agreed upon that TERRIFIER 2 is an improvement, so we'll see.

Horrorfest 2023: Insect!

Insect!

Written by George Goldsmith

Directed by William Fruet

Starring Steve Railsback, Gwynyth Walsh, Don Lake, Sandy Webster and Helen Slayton-Hughes

Canada, 1987

The second film of the Hollywood Theater's 2023 All night Horror Movie Marathon was INSECT! (also known as BLUE MONKEY). You've gotta admire a movie with an exclamation point in the title, right? Turns out, not always.

INSECT! is a creature feature that takes place mostly in a hospital where an elderly handyman is admitted with an injury on his finger from touching an exotic plant. Somewhat inexplicably these leads directly to him vomiting up an insect larva which, after being dosed with some growth hormone by a gang of abandoned child patients (one of whom is future Oscar winner Sarah Polley!) roaming freely in the hospital, grows to enormous size and starts killing people. 

Luckily, there's a hardboiled cop in the hospital who's keen to figure this whole thing out. Double luckily the hospital also houses a giant laser.  I'll give you one guess what they're gonna end up using the kill the giant bug. It's Chekhov's laser, you guys.

There's a race against time as the authorities outside the hospital weigh the pros and cons of just blowing up the whole place as a solution. It's a weird movie.

The question is not whether or not INSECT! is good -- it's not. The question is, is it so bad it's good? Hard to say. It definitely has plenty of head scratching moments, and Steve Railsback as a grumpy detective with a heart of gold is pretty great, but the monster effects are so bad they're bad and the movie's worst sin is that ultimately, it's pretty boring.

Horrorfest 2023: Haunted Mansion

Haunted Mansion

Written by Katie Dippold

Directed by Justin Simien

Starring LaKeith Stanfield, Tiffany Haddish, Owen Wilson, Danny DeVito, Rosario Dawson, Dan Levy, Jamie Lee Curtis and Jared Leto

USA, 2023

I didn't really feel like watching HAUNTED MANSION in the hot and sunny days of July, when it came out, and I guess a lot of other filmgoers felt the same way because it didn't make much of a splash. Things have changed now that it's gray and blustery outside, though, and Disney was wise to make it available for streaming just in time for Halloween -- some might say, the season it should have had its theatrical release in the first place.

I'm not very familiar with the theme park ride the movie is based on, and I never saw the 2003 version starring Eddie Murphy, but I can say I was pleasantly surprised with HAUNTED MANSION's mix of comedy and special effects. It wasn't quite the soulless cash grab that the trailers had me expecting. Similarly, despite what the trailers would have you think, Rosario Dawson is not the star of the film (she's FIFTH billed!), which would normally be a travesty, since she's a delight, but this time it's okay because it turns out LaKeith Stanfield is the star! You'd never know from the marketing.

Stanfield's endlessly watchable and sympathetic as an atypical choice to frontline a movie based on a Disney ride. And the rest of the casting is pretty good, too -- you've got Tiffany Haddish, Owen Wilson, Danny DeVito and Jamie Lee Curtis on hand, each ready to steal a scene or two. The only misstep is Jared Leto as the big bad villain, whose appearance and voice is so CGI'd up it might as well be anyone.

But what's it about, you ask? Well, an increasingly eclectic group of misfits end up trapped in a haunted mansion, forced to solve the mystery of the house's tragic past in order to survive. It gets a little more convoluted than that, but everything moves along so breezily it hardly seems to matter. I won't bore you with it here.

I will bore you with the reasons I liked it, though. I've already sung the praises of the cast, but I will add that the screenplay is uncommonly well written, giving us a wide variety of underdog characters to root for, each with their own problems in life to overcome. They all come together and are greater than the sum of their parts, forming a little family unit that thrives from helping each other. That kinda stuff is inspiring and positive, two feelings I didn't expect a HAUNTED MANSION movie to give me. You might say that's the kinda stuff Disney's good at, but I think they drop the ball about as often as they get it right, and I wasn't convinced this one would be able to get it right amongst all the sound and fury -- but it does!

Horrorfest 2023: My Bloody Valentine

My Bloody Valentine

Screenplay by John Beaird

Directed by George Mihalka

Starring Paul Kelman, Lori Hallier, Neil Affleck, Don Francks, Cynthia Dale, Alf Humphreys, Keith Knight and Patricia Hamilton

Canada, 1981

For the fifth year in a row now I've attended the Hollywood Theater's All Night Horror Movie Marathon. Each year in advance of Halloween they show four movies from 9:00 Saturday evening until about 5:00 Sunday morning. You never know what four movies they're going to be until they start. Sometimes they're good, sometimes they're so bad they're good and sometimes they're just plain bad. Needless to say, I love it.

This year, they started off with MY BLOODY VALENTINE, a slasher I've never seen before. This is one in a long line of HALLOWEEN imitators, picking a holiday or significant date and plotting a horror movie around it. Of course, none of HALLOWEEN's imitators were as good as the real thing, but some were better than others. I'd say MY BLOODY VALENTINE isn't the worst of the lot but it's not great, either.

The movie makes lousy use of Valentine's Day as a setting. The film takes place in a mining town called Valentine Bluffs. So, because of the name, their annual Valentine's Day dance is a big deal. Only they haven't held the dance for twenty years because the last time they did, the only survivor of a mining accident went on a kill-crazy rampage and left a warning for the town never to hold another dance again -- OR ELSE. Twenty years later and the town decides, what the hell, let's have a dance after all, and the bodies start piling up as a killer wearing mining gear stalks the town. It's immediately assumed this is the same killer from decades before, freshly escaped from the mental institution.

What screams Valentine's Day more than a killer in mining gear, right? Right. Well, the grown adults of the town want a Valentine's Day dance so much that they decide to hold their own party, at the mine. Here I thought, "A party in a mine? Are you crazy?" But, the characters went on to say the mine is great -- it has a snack bar and a gaming table and all this stuff. So I think, "All that stuff... in a mine?" Turns out what they mean is that all that stuff is on the surface of the Earth, near the mine. So I breathed a sigh of relief, until about halfway through the party when everyone gets bored and decides to go into the mine, anyway.

The whole time I was wondering why they didn't just do the obvious thing and make it like, say, a high school Valentine's Day dance, and have some incel who was jilted or bullied or both with a vendetta against young high schoolers in love, or something like that. You know, something other than blue collar mine workers.

Now, you might say, well, that high school idea is actually more of a rip off of HALLOWEEN and other slashers than this one is, so you should be happy it's more original. I guess. I just wish it had more to do with its own premise. If you call a movie MY BLOODY VALENTINE, you gotta have wall-to-wall Valentine's Day action. Not miners.

Horrorfest 2023: Beast

Beast

Written by Ryan Engle

Directed by Baltasar Kormákur

Starring Idris Elba, Sharlto Copley, Iyana Halley and Leah Jeffries

Iceland/South Africa/USA, 2022

On a family trip to South Africa, a widowed father (Idris Elba) must protect his two daughters (Iyana Halley and Leah Savanas Jeffries) when they run afoul of a deadly lion. The family's not on the best of terms, as the father left the mother shortly before it turned out she had cancer and died. So he has to not only fight lions but also make his daughters love him again. Luckily he's got a family friend on his side who is also an expert on all things South Africa (Sharlto Copley). Unluckily, the lions kill him.

The pros: the movie is refreshingly simple, straight forward, to the point and mercifully short. That's a lot more than can be said for a lot of what passes for multiplex entertainment today, so I appreciated it for that. Elba's great as always and so is Copley, though I wish he would have popped up Richard Dreyfuss-in-JAWS-style at the end to tell everyone he was okay.

The cons: the special effects leave a little to be desired. JURASSIC PARK with lions, this is not. I don't know if more practical effects would have helped or if mixing in more footage of real lions might have done the trick, or maybe even if they just spent more time on the CGI. Not sure. It's not laughably bad or anything, it's just less suspenseful when you can tell they're fighting a computer generated lion.

The movie pits poachers against regular people against lions, and at one point it had me thinking maybe the poachers had it right. I mean if the lion's going to eat this family, isn't it good to shoot it? But then I remembered it only wants to kill everyone because the poachers killed its family in the first place. So, I guess the poachers drew first blood. Although, now that I think of it, even if they hadn't, isn't a lion just being a lion? It's not the lion's fault if he happens to eat the main characters of a movie, is it? How's he supposed to know? He's a lion.

Well, these deep philosophical questions are never answered, but Elba does take the lion on in a one-on-one wrestling match in the end, so there's that, at least.

Horrorfest 2023: The Mystery of the Wax Museum

The Mystery of the Wax Museum

Screenplay by Don Mullaly and Carl Erickson

Based on the story by Charles S. Belden

Directed by Michael Curtiz

Starring Lionel Atwill, Fay Wray, Glenda Farrell and Frank McHugh

USA, 1933

THE MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM makes a good double feature with DOCTOR X -- they have a lot in common. They're both shot in the weird but cool two-strip Technicolor process, they both star horror greats Lionel Atwill and Fay Wray, and, though I failed to note it on DOCTOR X, they were both directed by Michael Curtiz, who later went on to make such obscure hidden gems as CASABLANCA. You've probably never heard of it.

Once again I thought maybe I had already seen this film, but I was thinking of its remake, 1953's HOUSE OF WAX, a Horrorfest alum starring Vincent Price. Both films follow the same basic plot, though this one takes place in the then-contemporary 1930s while the Vincent Price version is a period piece. Also, being a pre-code movie, this one dabbles in a little more of the lurid stuff like bootlegging, drug addiction and Fay Wray putting on stockings.

Atwill stars as a sculptor who loves his wax figures. Unfortunately his London wax museum is not pulling in the dough so the sculptor's business partner (Edwin Maxwell) hatches a plot to burn the place down for insurance money. Unfortunately, Atwill is not only traumatized by the destruction of his creations but also injured in the fire himself. He resurfaces in New York ten years later with a new wax museum, mysteriously coinciding with bodies disappearing from the morgue. An intrepid reporter (Glenda Farrell) is snooping around, and her roommate (Fay Wray) happens to be dating one of Atwill's assistants (Allen Vincent). Atwill develops a fascination with Wray because she looks just like his favorite sculpture destroyed in the fire, Mario Antoinette.

This movie has all the strengths of DOCTOR X -- the color is cool, the set design is cool, it's never boring with one damn thing after another and the performances are great. 

The ending is a bit of a head scratcher as our fearless reporter decides to marry her jerk of an editor (Frank McHugh) seemingly out of nowhere, when she has developed a perfectly good relationship with a raffish n'er-do-well (Gavin Gordon) who has become her de facto crime-solving sidekick. Maybe you have to be from 1933 to get it?

Horrorfest 2023: Skinamarink

Skinamarink

Written and directed by Kyle Edward Ball

Starring Lucas Paul, Dali Rose Tetreault, Ross Paul and Jaime Hill

Canada, 2023

Now we've got the opposite case with these modern films -- a movie I wanted to see and thought looked good that turned out not being so great. A friend of mine told me it was slow moving and I thought to myself, "So what? Some of my favorite movies are slow!"

As far as I can tell from having watched the movie, SKINAMARINK is the tale of a couple kids lost in a house where their parents have either disappeared or reappeared as untrustworthy monsters, only to disappear again. Also the doors, windows and toilet disappear, but also reappear. There's a disembodied voice that talks to the kids, one kid eventually disappears and then it's over. We're told at the outset that this takes place in the 90s, though that has no bearing on anything that happens, and the film is presented via footage that has been digitally altered to appear grainy. All of the shots are off-center half-shots of parts of the house, avoiding ever focusing on the children or centering anything in the frame, except a toy phone or cartoons on the television.

That's what I got from watching it. If you go online and read about it I guess others understand exactly what happened in great detail and will list it out for you, but I don't know where they're getting all that. Maybe they read a press book.

As the 100-minute movie unfolded before me I began to think that, actually, if I had come across this movie in some other way, I might enjoy it and find it scary. As an example, if it was just some weird video on YouTube and no one knew where it came from or why it was there, and I clicked to watch it, I'd probably sit there in rapt suspense wondering what was up, even if I suspected it was a put-on. But, knowing this is a feature length theatrical release and I'm just watching it on Hulu really puts a damper on things for a movie of this style. Instead of being intrigued by its weirdness, I sat there wondering about all the choices. For instance, there's no in-movie explanation as to why it is shot this way -- it's not a found footage movie, so the fact that it plays out as if it's someone scrolling through poorly aimed security cameras has no reason for existing other than style, and that makes me sit there wondering what the director was getting at instead of enjoying the movie.

I was not shocked to learn that the director started by making spooky videos on YouTube. Suddenly it all made sense. That's why this plays as an overly long weird internet video. Unfortunately. the weird internet videos that work mostly work because they're mercifully short. That's why they're not movies.

As I watched the movie it began to remind me of a Horrorfest alum, ALICE -- a strange blend of live action and stop motion from Czechoslovakia that retells the tale of ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND in a dirty abandoned house with lots of creaky, unsettling sound effects and one lone girl (Alice, as played by Kristyna Kohoutova) making her lonely way through all of it. At the time I said the movie was not so much scary as it is weird and unexplained and that the images and sounds stick with you after a viewing. If I had seen it when I was 8, I reasoned, it would have disturbed me.

SKINAMARINK almost gets to that point, but its familiarity as a visual form of "creepy pasta" holds it back. ALICE has the distinction of being unlike anything that came before or since, which makes its strange and unexplained nature work, and makes you say "How and why did this get made?" With SKINAMARINK you just think, "Oh yeah, I've seen stuff like this on the internet. They're being weird and unexplained on purpose as a shorthand for being creepy."

Part of this might be jealousy. As a youngster who wanted to make movies and was wowed with the indie successes of the likes of Kevin Smith and Robert Rodriguez, I always hoped I'd stumble on a simple, easy-to-produce, cheap idea that would catapult me to success. However, I guarantee you if I had simply set my camera up in various rooms of my childhood home and made creepy off-screen noises for 100 minutes, absolutely no one would have considered it a work worthy of watching for free, let alone paying to watch in a movie theater. So what's special about this one that captures people? Right place, right time? Or, is it like BLAIR WITCH and I'm just on the other side of it -- back when that came out, I echoed its praises while others said it sucked.

To be fair, I wouldn't say this movie sucks. If anything, it shows the filmmaker has a ton of promise and whatever they make next is likely to be at least interesting, which is more than can be said about most movies. 

Horrorfest 2023: Doctor X

DOCTOR X

Screenplay by Robert Tasker and Earl Baldwin

Based on the play by Howard W. Comstock and Allen C. Miller

Directed by Michael Curtiz

Starring Lionel Atwill, Fay Wray, Lee Tracy and Preston Foster

USA, 1932

I almost didn't watch DOCTOR X this year because I wrongfully assumed I had already seen it. I'm glad I didn't make this mistake, because not only did it turn out I hadn't seen it before, but it also turned out to be great.

This two-strip Technicolor mad scientist film tells the tale of a Dr. Xavier (Lionel Atwill) who comes under suspicion of being a serial killer when it appears the ritualistic murders are being carried out with a special scalpel specific to his institution. The killer only kills by the full moon and cannibalizes the corpses. Not only is Atwill under suspicion, but so are there rest of the weird crew of seemingly mad doctors at his institution (Preston Foster, John Wray, Harry Beresford and Arthur Edmund Carewe, all in memorable performances). The cops give Atwill 48 hours to figure out who the killer is, so he takes the whole crew to his isolated cliff-side manor to perform a bizarre experiment intended to expose the murderer.

Also along for the ride is the comic relief, a nosy report (Lee Tracy) who has his eyes on Dr. Xavier's daughter (Fay Wray). I've always liked Fay Wray, ever since childhood, when I was obsessed with the original KING KONG. Aside from Carrie Fisher, she must have been one of the first actresses I actually paid attention to and knew who she was. Probably the only first-grader in 1987 who was a Fay Wray fan. In any case, any time she shows up in a movie, it's a treat for me, and this movie's no different.

I mentioned the two-strip Technicolor earlier -- this is an earlier (and more rare) version of color photography than most audiences of today will be used to. When you hear Technicolor, you think the full rainbow of saturated colors in films like THE WIZARD OF OZ and GONE WITH THE WIND. These movies use the more modern, much more popular THREE-strip process, where red, green and blue are combined to make all the colors you can imagine. With the two-strip method, cameras only had red and green to mix together, so you got some color, but it looks way different -- sort of muted and pastel, in a way. In some ways, it made the flesh tones look more like modern photography, oddly enough. Whatever it is, it makes every frame of the film fascinating to watch, because the film looks unlike most others anyone's seen.

Add to this the fact we've got some pretty sweet mad scientist laboratory sets with lots of weird electrical machines that go buzz and lots of levers to pull and throw, and the whole thing is a pretty satisfying experience and an efficient little thriller that's never boring.

Horrorfest 2023: Smile

SMILE

Written and directed by Parker Finn

Starring Sosie Bacon, Jessie T. Usher, Kyle Gallner, Kal Penn and Rob Morgan

USA, 2022

This Horrorfest is making me realize what a broken record I am -- yet again, here's a modern movie where I saw the trailer and dismissed it as looking stupid, only later to hear it was actually good, give it a chance, and realize my initial assessment was totally wrong.

On one hand I'd rather be wrong than right in this case -- if only every movie was good, what a world that would be. On the other what's wrong with me that I keep assuming things suck and then find out later they don't? I guess I am a pessimist, after all. That's depressing.

This time around we've got a horror entity that's passed from one person to the other, forcing its current "host" (I guess you could say) to eventually kill themselves. Whoever sees them kill themselves inherits the entity and continues on. The entity makes itself known by causing visions of people with ghastly unwavering grins. But the smile is really a red herring -- the reason I assumed the movie would be dumb is because I assumed it would literally 100% rely on the creepiness of weird smiles for all the scares. Instead, this is just a mere symptom of a bigger problem where the afflicted cannot be sure what is real, what is fake, and commits atrocities without even really knowing it, as in a scene where a seemingly totally normal, if sleep deprived, therapist (Sosie Bacon) gives a grisly gift to her little nephew for his birthday.

The great thing about this movie is that therapist begins to lose it, everyone becomes appropriately concerned for her well being in a real-world kind of way. They don't go looking for a supernatural medium or anything like that, they just assume she has psychological problems and needs help. This drives her crazy because she know there's something evil going on. Even when she amasses a bunch of evidence in the form of a string of mysteriously connected suicides, documented in police files, which she waves desperately in her friends and family's faces, rather than going, "Oh there might be something here" the other characters say stuff like, "I don't think I can have you around my family right now" which is a totally reasonable thing to say.

Another nice thing about this movie is how quickly it gets to the meat of the problem with the main character. We don't really get a half hour of set up in the same way that we do in other similar movies. There is definitely set up and character development and pay off and all that good stuff, but it moves fairly quickly into the supernatural story line without a lot of build up, so it's almost as if we don't really get to know the "normal" therapist before she goes "crazy," which is a fun choice because then you're kind of locked into an unreliable narrator's perspective, and sympathetic to the other characters around her -- even though you know something supernatural is going on!

I guess the biggest weakness of the movie might be the ending, but the rest of the movie leading up to it is so satisfying that it doesn't even really matter. It has become pretty standard these days that whatever evil is plaguing characters of modern horror movies probably will end up being somehow intrinsically connected to their own past trauma, usually involving a dead parent or family member of some kind, so this kind of ending is not totally satisfying because it is totally expected, and the rest of the movie is not quite as obvious.

Horrorfest 2023: The Monster

THE MONSTER

Screenplay by Willard Mack and Albert Kenyon

Based on the play by Crane Wilbur

Directed by Roland West

Starring Lon Chaney, Johnny Arthur and Gertrude Olmstead

USA, 1925

Here's a little silent movie I'd never heard of before, THE MONSTER, starring Lon Chaney, probably the biggest horror star of the silent error. It's not as fascinating as the other Chaney movies I've seen, but with a short running time and some cool sets, weird characters and crazy stunts, it was worth a watch.

Two romantic rivals (Johnny Arthur and Hallam Cooley) investigate a seemingly abandoned sanitarium when local travelers go missing. Before they know it, they, and the girl they're fighting over (Gertrude Olmstead) end up prisoners of the mad doctor (Lon Chaney) who has taken over the sanitarium and is kidnapping people for his unorthodox experiments with the help of his three insane henchmen (Walter James, Knute Erickson and George Austin).

Turns out, the mad doctor has captured the sane doctors who once ran the sanitarium and is holding them in a hidden dungeon while he carries out his experiments. The sanitarium is a classic "old dark house," possibly one of the first of its kind on film, with lots of hidden passage ways and traps. This is only one of the firsts, however, as Chaney's mad doctor and his mad henchmen mark one of the earliest appearances of the mad scientist in cinema as we know it today (allowing of course for Dr. Caligari from THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI and Rotwang from METROPOLIS).

Although he's the biggest star here, Lon Chaney sort of plays second fiddle to the madcap antics of the bumbling heroes and equally bumbling henchmen surrounding him. Although this is Horrorfest, this movie is as much a comedy as it is anything else, and much of the run-time is taken up with Johnny Arthur's pratfalls as an amateur detective who solves the case and gets the girl in the end, in spite of himself.

Horrorfest 2023: Totally Killer

Totally Killer

Written by David Matalon, Sasha Perl-Raver and Jen D'Angelo

Directed by Nahnatchka Khan

Starring Kiernan Shipka, Olivia Holt and Greg Gilreath

USA, 2023

TOTALLY KILLER has a premise that had me interested from the get-go -- it's basically BACK TO THE FUTURE if Marty had to go back in time to stop a serial killer rather than getting his parents to fall in love. Also, in this one, it's someone from today going back to the 80s, and that someone is a teenage girl played by Kiernan Shipka, who used to be the little girl on MAD MEN.

The movie has a lot of fun with this premise, focusing more on the cultural differences between present-day and the late 80s than on the technology or lack thereof. BACK TO THE FUTURE was made at an interesting time when there wasn't that huge of a difference between 1955 and 1985 -- sure, back then we thought there was, but with the benefit of hindsight and knowing how exponentially quickly the world continues to change, there's a much bigger gulf between 1987 and 2023.

Now that I've written that I'm beginning to waffle. I guess it's all relative, and since I lived through the last 30 years I'd be more likely to be sympathetic to the way times have changed than I would be to several decades before I was born. But, I do think the attitudes are different -- this movie has a lot of fun with the way kids are more in touch with their feelings, less prone to bullying, and more inclusive than they were in the 80s. Shipka's character isn't baffled by the lack of the internet, for example, so much as she is by the fact that the high school has absolutely no security standards and the students and teachers are all openly awful to each other.

Going into the movie, I assumed the time travel would be magic or fantasy based, or maybe even unexplained, but no, there's a teenage whiz kid (Kelsey Mawema) who has built a time machine out of a photo booth for a class science project. When the Sweet 16 Killer appears after a 30-year hiatus, the whiz kid's best pal (Shipka) is accidentally sent back in time, where she realizes armed with the knowledge of the future, she might be able o put a stop to the Sweet 16 Killer's reign of terror before it begins, and in the process, save her own mother's life (Olivia Holt as a teen, Julie Bowen as an adult).

The time travel stuff is the silliest stuff and is really only there to get the premise going, so once we hand wave it away we have a way-more-inventive-than-usual slasher whodunnit with lots of great "then vs. now" jokes. The movie also has a lot of fun with the younger versions of characters vs. the older versions of characters, and in the end, a funny epilogue showing how the events of the movie have changed the fates of several characters. On top of all that, it tends to take turns you don't expect, rather than just playing out the way you assume it will, which is a nice added layer and a sign the filmmakers here weren't content to just do the bare minimum.

Horrorfest 2023: Svengali

Svengali

Screenplay by J. Grubb Alexander

Based on the novel by George du Maurier

Directed by Archie Mayo

Starring John Barrymore, Marian Marsh, Bramwell Fletcher, Donald Crisp and Carmel Myers

USA, 1931

"Svengali" is one of those terms I've always heard but never really knew the story behind. All I knew was it was a guy who could control people. After all, his name was the inspiration for horror host Svengoolie, who has the power to control me, by getting me to sit in front of the TV every Saturday at 8:00.

Turns out Svengali was the villain of George du Maurier's novel, TRILBY, which is one of those stories that has been adapted many times, most notably as a play called SVENGALI, which, in turn, has been filmed several times.

This 1931 version stars Horrorfest alum and Drew's grandfather, John Barrymore. He graced us with his sinister presence all the way back in the very first Horrorfest in 2009, where he starred in a silent version of DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE. So, it was interesting to hear him in a talkie this time.

Yes, Svengali can control people through hypnotism, and in this case, he uses hypnotism to turn the beautiful milkmaid Trilby (Marian Marsh) into his opera-singing protege. See, Svengali's a pianist and composer, and at the outset of the film is a struggling, starving artist, attempting to take advantage of his students and fellow artists in order to survive. But, once he sets his sites on Trilby, he steals her away for the big time, only to eventually end in tragedy.

Apparently there is some controversy over whether SVENGALI is even a horror film. I can see why. Much of it is intended to be funny, oddly enough, given the subject matter, and much of the rest of it is the stuff of melodrama. However, I'd say the sinister look and presence of Svengali himself, as well as his powers and the way he uses them to manipulate women, put him firmly in the camp of "horror villain." Add to that the fact that many of the sets, especially early in the movie, take strong influence from German expressionist filmmaking, which is synonymous with horror. And, one dream-like sequence in which Svengali stares out his window and we fly over the roof tops of town to where Trilby is sleeping, is quite impressive, if not horrific.

As the film unfolded I began to wonder if Svengali was an unfortunate antisemitic character, so I paused and Googled and guess what? Sure enough, he is. Apparently after the initial novel, references to the character's Jewish heritage were lessened in later re-tellings, but one has to assume antisemitic stereotypes influenced the look of the character, and maybe even Barrymore's performance, which is a bummer, because it's quite memorable.

Unfortunately, the movie as a whole is not. It's mostly just boring. But, it was nominated for two Academy Awards -- Production Design and Cinematography, both of which it deserved.

Horrorfest 2023: Talk to Me

Talk to Me

Screenplay by Danny Philippou and Bill Hinzman

Based on a concept by Daley Pearson

Directed by Danny Philippou and Michael Philippou

Starring Sophie Wilde, Alexandra Jensen, Joe Bird, Otis Dhanji, Miranda Otto, Zoe Terakes, Chris Alosio, Marcus Johnson and Alexandria Steffensen

Australia, 2023

Some Australian teens come across a disembodied, mummified hand and use its super natural powers of possession as a party game in TALK TO ME. Needless to say, all hell breaks loose.

The rules are, you light a candle, hold the disembodied hand, and say, "Talk to me." A disturbing spirit will appear to you, and then you say, "I let you in." The spirit possesses you. At this point, all the other teens at the party get excitement, thrills and laughs from the weird stuff you do and say while you're possessed, all with their smart phones out, recording. You might wonder why anyone would do this when it makes you the center of possibly unwanted attention and the answer is because apparently the possession causes a euphoric, addictive sensation within the possessed. 

The catch? Don't stay possessed passed the time limit! And blow the candle out when you're done. In the grand tradition of all these kinds of movies, these rules are ignored, and the aforementioned hell breaks loose.

But now I've talked in a circle! Is the movie any good? Yeah. It's very good. And you wouldn't expect any less from A24, an indie distributor turned studio who seems to have an uncanny knack for picking winners. Yes, there have been some clunkers here and there, but this is not one of them, and so far, A24 has remained a mark of quality for discerning cineasts.

Sophie Wilde is great in the lead as a normal girl, dealing with the death of her mother and her now-difficult relationship with her father by inserting herself into her best friend's (Alexandra Jensen) family, particularly reaching out to her best friend's little brother (Joe Bird), also a teen. This creates an interesting relationship you don't see very often in movies -- the older sister's cool friend thinks the younger brother is cool, and gives him the time of day. Likewise, the younger brother thinks the older sister's friend is cool, and appreciates it. 

Once the possessions begin, the lines between reality and fantasies caused by the possessions begin to blur and the movie keeps you guessing how things are (or aren't) going to eventually work out. Is our lead going to trick the demons plaguing her, or are they going to trick her? Of course I'm not going to tell, but I will tell you the movie ends with a deliciously sick twist.

Horrorfest 2023: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

Screenplay by Erdman Penner, Joe Rinaldi and Winston Hibler

Based on the story by Washington Irving

Directed by Clyde Geronimi and Jack Kinney

Starring Bing Crosby

USA, 1949

Now, you'd think I would have seen this famous cartoon short before now, and truth be told, maybe I have. It's one of those things where the images and key scenes are so recognizable and stretch back longer than I can remember that I don't know if I actually watched this movie, read a storybook with images from it, saw clips on TV, listened to a record about it, or what. Point is, if I ever sat down and watched it from beginning to end, I don't remember doing it, so this year, I did it.

I actually watched the entirety of THE ADVENTURES OF ICHABOD AND MR. TOAD, the feature length anthology film this short comes from, but only THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW lends itself to spooky season in general and Horrorfest specifically, so that's the one we're talking about today.

First off, I had no idea Bing Crosby did most of the vocals, singing or not, in the film. That was a welcome surprise. He's already the voice of Christmas, now he can be the voice of Halloween, too. Just kidding. That's Vincent Price or Orson Welles or someone. But Bing does do a bang up job, here.

Secondly, while I'm familiar with the broad strokes of the tale I'd forgotten the Disney cartoon version focuses so much on Ichabod Crane's appetite, so much so that I got out Washington Irving's original story and checked it to see if that was part of the lore. It's not, really, though there is a brief section where Crane sees the bountiful farm the woman of his dreams lives on, one that he'd inherit if he married her, and dreams about all the food that would come out of it. Which brings me to another thing -- I had forgotten, or maybe never knew, Crane was motivated by greed to a certain extent.

I always remembered it as the tale of a nerdy guy who gets bullied over his crush and ran out of town by the local Chad. As told by the guys at Disney, Crane's kind of an a-hole himself, in his own way, though he doesn't deserve what he gets.

Which brings us to the moment we've all been waiting for. The entire short is basically a long wind up to the show-stopping scene where the Headless Horseman himself shows up, a demonic figure clad all in black, missing a head, and carrying an evil-looking, flaming Jack-o-lantern. Even his horse looks like it's straight out of the depths of hell. The autumnal settings (by turns bright and colorful and dark and foreboding) and the animation in general has all been up to the usual great Disney standards right up until the Horseman's grand entrance, and here it goes into overdrive in what must be one of the most stunning and memorable sequences the studio has ever produced.

Is this horror? Naw. But it is kinda scary. And even if it wasn't, it's still the perfect tale to watch unfold on a blustery fall evening. When Christmas rolls around you can watch THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS, starring Mr. Toad, who is awesome.

Horrorfest 2023: The Blackening

The Blackening

Screenplay by Tracy Oliver and Dewayne Perkins

Based on the sketch by 3Peat

Directed by Tim Story

Starring Grace Byers, Jermaine Fowler, Melvin Gregg, X Mayo, Dewayne Perkins, Antoinette Robertson, Sinqua Walls, Jay Pharaoh and Yvonne Orji

USA, 2023

THE BLACKENING first caught my eye as a movie poster -- an all-Black ensemble cast under the tagline: "We can't all die first." Now THAT'S a poster, I said to myself.

Black roles in the realm of horror have been explored before from various angles, as far back as NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. Later, SCREAM 2 did a poor job of attempting to discuss racist horror cliches, and the Wayans' SCARY MOVIE series kinda/sorta addressed some stuff. Then of course you have Jordan Peele's genius string of hits, GET OUT, US and NOPE. THE BLACKENING may be more Wayans than Peele, but it puts racist horror cliches on the front burner and roasts them pretty well, up to and including racist attitudes between Black people about Black people. Granted, I'm probably the wrong guy to write about this. But I guess I'm doing it anyway.

The story concerns a group of old college buddies getting together at an isolated cabin for the 10th anniversary of a Juneteenth party they had back in the day. They're made up of various "types" -- some more subtle than others -- and part of the fun is seeing the characters live up to, or subvert, these types.

The Alpha couple of the group seems to be missing and as the night unfolds without them, the group finds a troubling board game in a hidden game room. The board game is called "The Blackening" and, even at a glance, it appears problematic. Let's put it this way: it's as if the pop-o-matic bubble in TROUBLE was replaced with the most repugnant symbol of racism against Blacks you can think of. Yuck, huh?

Well, that's what these characters think, too, but they get roped into playing it, at first out of curiosity, and eventually at the whims of a mysterious killer (or killers?) who is in the house, apparently able to see them at all times, pulling the strings of their impending doom. 

So, the rest of the movie is, how do these people get out of it? Since this is a comedy, hilarity ensues. Since it's a slasher, so does slashing. 

The mysterious identity of the killer is not-so-mysterious, but I guess that's sort of beside the point. The point is to skewer and acknowledge stereotypes, and this movie does that well -- while also being legitimately funny.

Horrorfest 2023: Murders in the Zoo

Murders in the Zoo

Written by Philip Wylie and Seton I. Miller

Directed by A. Edward Sutherland

Starring Charlie Ruggles, Lionel Atwill, Kathleen Burke and Gail Patrick

USA, 1933

One of the joys of working on Horrorfest over the years has been coming around to loving actor Lionel Atwill. In the olden days, I pretty much shrugged him off as a second-strong horror star who Universal only called in when the heavy hitters like Karloff, Lugosi and Chaney weren't available. Sure, he was great as the inspector in SON OF FRANKENSTEIN, going toe-to-toe with none other than Basil Rathbone, but that seemed to me to be an anomaly in an otherwise forgettable career playing mad scientists who I wished were played by someone else.

But not anymore. Now, I see his name in the credits and get excited. Now that I've paid attention to his various starring roles as villains, I've come to realize he's just as good as the greats, and in some ways, more worthy of having his praises sung, since he's a somewhat forgotten underdog in the realm of horror to anyone except real film buffs.

All this is to say, I was excited to see that MURDERS IN THE ZOO, a weird 1933 pre-code horror movie, stars Lionel Atwill, and went in with great anticipation. At first the movie threw me for a loop -- the credits featured shots of the film's stars cross-faded with shots of zoo animals, in an attempt at a playful opening credits sequence. No sooner had this ended than we fade up on Lionel Atwill getting right down to the horrific business of... sewing a guy's mouth shut! Seems Atwill's a jealous game hunter who can't stand it any time anyone so much as looks at his wife, and this guy had the misfortune of actually speaking to her. Shockingly, we're treated to a full closeup shot of the poor guy's mouth, post-sewing, and it's pretty unsettling, even by today's standards.

So right away, the movie's got a weird tone yo-yo-ing back and forth between these quirky animal-filled opening credits, and a horrific opening scene. The roller coast ride continues as we're introduced to famous comic actor Charlie Ruggles as an alcoholic, but otherwise harmless, publicity guy for the titular zoo. Much of the movie's very brief running time is taken up with his supposedly comedic antics, which result in a couple honest chuckles but otherwise leave you wondering what the punch line is supposed to be, if any. It almost plays as if they hoped Ruggles' mere presence would do the trick. Unfortunately, while he's charming and cute, it mostly falls flat.

The plot concerns the jealous big game hunter (Atwill) and a string of murders he stages using various zoo animals to dispatch first a man who's stealing his wife from him, then his wife, and ultimately anyone who starts to figure out what's going on. So, the weird comedy with Ruggles is oddly balanced with the grisly animal-based murders with Atwill, and, since this is 1933, some of the animal footage is a little more rough than what we'd settle for today, meaning, I sorta wonder if some of the animals got hurt, which is not a great thing to worry about when you're trying to enjoy a horror movie. 

I said the comedy and horror is balanced, above, but balance is the wrong word, because the movie's tone is all over the place and they never quite figure it out. It's worth a watch for how insane Atwill is as the villain. I'd say you could fast forward all the Ruggles scenes, except the movie's gloriously short, so why bother.

Horrorfest 2023: The Boogeyman

The Boogeyman

Screenplay by Scott Beck, Bryan Woods and Mark Heyman

Based on the story by Stephen King

Directed by Rob Savage

Starring Sophie Thatcher, Chris Messina, Vivien Lyra Blair and David Dastmalchian

USA, 2023

This is yet another modern horror movie where the trailer made me not want to watch it. Thankfully, I watched it anyway. Turns out I have a terrible track record judging movies by their trailers, especially horror movies from the last couple years. If you recall, the trail to this one says stuff like "from the mind of Stephen King" which, to me, is code for, "Stephen King was barely involved in this at all." Then, most of it centers on a therapy session where a red glowing cube is used to help a kid get used to the dark, and we're all supposed to be scared by this. Needless to say I was rolling my eyes pretty hard in the theater, impatient for whatever Paul Schrader non-Blockbuster I had gone to see.

But, like I said, the joke's on me, because THE BOOGEYMAN is a solid flick -- legitimately freaky while also having a real story and characters you care about. Sophie Thatcher stars as a teen who is still mourning her mother's sudden death. You'd think it'd help that her dad's (Chris Messina) a therapist, and although he tries, not really. Thing is, he's still mourning, too. Then you've got the littlest sister (Vivien Lyra Blair) who spots an evil monster lurking under her bed.

It seems there's an evil entity of some kind that latches onto families, kills their kids, then moves on to the next family. It feeds on fear and is afraid of the light, and its next stop is, you guessed it, the mom-mourning-family's crib. Pretty soon it's up to big sister to figure things out and get rid of the "boogeyman" for good.

As usual, for most scary movies that work, this one takes advantage of stuff that scares pretty much anyone -- things in the closet, things under the bed, things in the dark corners or at the end of dark hallways or in rooms you haven't gone into in a while. The movie also benefits from very believable performances from the lead sisters, who act like real people and not horror movie stars, and a screenplay smart enough to treat the therapist dad as a three dimensional character with strengths and weaknesses, and not some kind of ineffectual loser or outright monster. This way, the family can be empowered but it's not at the expense of any of the characters -- they're all empowered together.

Horrorfest 2023: Thirteen Women

Thirteen Women

Screenplay by Bartlett Cormack and Samuel Ornitz

Based on the novel by Tiffany Thayer 

Directed by George Archainbaud

Starring Irene Dunne, Ricardo Cortez, Jill Esmond, Myrna Loy and Florence Eldridge

USA, 1932

Although she gets fourth billing, Myrna Loy is the real star of THIRTEEN WOMEN, a pre-code horror flick with a mostly-female ensemble cast. It's the story of the grown-up members of a college sorority who have each written to a "swami" for their horoscopes. They each get back an unfortunate letter describing their impending doom. Some laugh it off, others are afraid, but everyone freaks out when tragedies, including death, begin to befall the women.

Irene Dunne plays one of the last on the list, who has a letter warning her something bad is going to happen to her little kid and you'd think Myrna Loy is one of the sorority sisters, too, but no -- she's the villain!

Turns out Loy is the assistant to the "swami" (C. Henry Gordon), and is actually either controlling him through manipulation or straight up super natural means -- it's never quite explained. But, she's altering the horoscopes to the sisters, seemingly causing them each to die or experience tragedy just through the act of suggestion. As in, once it's in their heads, it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Or, maybe, there is mind control going on here. It's hard to say.

I'm used to seeing Myrna Loy mostly as the wise-cracking lush Norah Charles, so it's interesting to see her here as a dramatic heavy. Honestly, even though she commands the screen and steals the movie, it's clear that she's not a natural villain. Maybe this is more of an indictment of the rest of the movie than it is praise for Loy, but either way it's worth a watch for her.

A word of warning, though. As the movie progressed, race increasingly became a part of it. First, I was surprised to find out Myrna Loy was playing someone of at least partial Eastern descent -- I guess I should have known, but I just accepted her for what she is (a white lady) and didn't think twice about it, until the movie itself brought it up. 

Part-way through other characters start to make sure to mention that she's "Hindu" (the movie's term), and when we reach the climax, her ethnicity turns out to be a huge part of her motive. So, if this kind of stuff doesn't sit well with you, don't watch it, but it is an interesting artifact of its time when you unpack the motive behind her plot: as someone of mixed ethnicity, she thought the only way for her to survive in the world was to pass as white, and when the sorority sisters at her school made that impossible, she marked them for murder. This is a product of its time in more ways than one -- it's not just the racist attitudes, it's also the fact that they're discussed openly -- something that would not have happened in a post-code genre picture.

Horrorfest 2023: Malignant

Malignant

Written by Akela Cooper

Directed by James Wan

Starring Annabelle Wallis, Maddie Hasson, George Young and Michola Briana White

USA, 2021

As soon as I heard Paul Scheer and co. discussing MALIGNANT on their podcast "How Did This Get Made," I knew I had to see it. Without that, I would have probably passed on it as just another of those modern one-vocab-word-titled horror movies that get pretty good reviews and audiences like even though I don't end up being into them. You know like SINISTER and INSIDIOUS and uh... those other ones. You know the ones.

But, the "How Did This Get Made" crew did me a favor and filled me in on the plot secrets of MALIGNANT, and they were so insane, I knew the movie must be for me. Now, some people probably prefer it the other way around -- they don't want anything spoiled going into the movie. And I can be that way, sometimes. Then again, you might catch me blowing hard about how, "If the movie is any good no spoiler can ruin it," like I did when I went to see THE SIXTH SENSE with a buddy who had seen it before and told him to reveal the ending to me before I went in.

The spoiler-free version of this movie's premise is that a young woman, after suffering several miscarriages and waking up to find her abusive husband murdered, has murderous visions that seem to match actual murders happening at the same time, elsewhere in the city. Who's doing the killing, why's she having visions, is she the murderer? Without spoiling anything, there are off-the-wall explanations for all of this, and while they may not be satisfying in al logical sense, they are extremely satisfying in a "I have literally never seen anything like this" sense, which is something I look for and admire in movies. Add to that the fact that the movie has generally memorable characters and scenes and deals with a little more in the way of character development than it really has to, and you've got a solid, if schlocky, time waster.

Now, if you don't want to hear the cool part, this is where you stop reading. If you do, check this out: turns out the woman having these visions was born with a parasitic twin. And we're not talking about like a clump of cells that form a tumor with a tooth and some hair, we're talking about a toddler-sized half-formed person sticking out of the back of her head. For reasons unexplored, this parasitic twin is evil, and after being studied a few years in her childhood, this woman is surgically separated from the twin, with the remains of the twin that cannot be safely removed stuffed back into her skull and sewn up. She's adopted by a family we're supposed to think is normal (though they rename her at the age of seven or eight or something, which feels kind of messed up) and goes about the rest of her life forgetting all about this stuff. Until, of course, her parasitic twin (inexplicably named Gabriel) wakes up and goes on a vengeance-fueled killing spree.

If that's not weird enough, when Gabriel takes over the young woman's body, he basically turns it inside out. Well, that's not right, more like... backwards. Since Gabriel faces out the back of her body, he has her walk backwards and bend her limbs backwards and stuff. Gabriel also has super powered strength, so it's like John Wick or the Matrix every time he goes out to do some killing -- this is never explained, which is the movie's second-biggest flaw. Gabriel also has the powers to manipulate electricity and electrical devices, which is also sort of not explained, except that he and his host body have undergone electro-shock therapy before, so maybe that has something to do with it. Thing is, the movie would have been a perfectly fine horror movie without the super strength or electrical powers, so I'm not sure why they're even included. But, that's only a minor quibble.

Another minor quibble, and the first-biggest flaw of the movie, is that it suffers from being simply too slick. The production value is so high and the movie is so overly produced that it kinda takes away from the scares. Every set is huge and overdone and the lighting is very "look at me! I'm lit!" That's not to say James Wan is a bad director -- he's not. The movie just would have probably been a little more effective if it was a little more rough around the edges, or even just more plain. Like, make the police station look like a police station, not the set of a police station in a $300 million movie.

But, I digress. The point is this movie is crazy and you need to see it.

Horrorfest 2023: The Hands of Orlac

The Hands of Orlac

Based on the novel by Maurice Renard

Screenplay by Louis Nerz

Directed by Robert Wiene

Starring Conrad Veidt, Alexandra Sorina, Fritz Kortner, Carmen Cartellieri, Fritz Strassny and Paul Askonas

Austria, 1924

THE HANDS OF ORLAC reunites the star and director of THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI, Conrad Veidt and Robert Wiene, for another crack at the creation of modern horror. This time out Veidt stars as a famous concert pianist who loses his hands in a train accident, only to have them surgically replaced with the hands of a recently executed murderer. No sooner does he begin to recover than he also begins to have disturbing visions and murderous impulses, unable to play the piano or touch his wife (Alexandra Sorina), paranoid that he now has evil within him.

It's a pretty good setup but from here things get a little convoluted as the Orlacs hurt for money, attempt to get some from the pianist's father (Fritz Strassny) who hates him, and a mysterious caped criminal enters the picture, attempting to frame and blackmail the pianist. Eventually these things all sort themselves out, but a couple super natural elements are never quite explained and the story's denouement is not quite as satisfying as the setup has us hoping.

This plot might sound a little familiar and that's because it was later remade as MAD LOVE, featured all the way back in Horrorfest 2013, starring Peter Lorre. That one is at once more fleshed out and less convoluted than this one, which is quite a trick if you can pull it off. Still, you can see the influence of the original on horror flicks to come, and since it stands in the shadow of the great CALIGARI, ORLAC is often overlooked and forgotten, so it's nice to be reminded Wiene was not a one hit wonder.

This is the kind of movie I used to read about in library books when I was a kid, looking at the still images in the books and reading the descriptions, figuring there'd be no way I'd ever get to actually watch a silent horror film from 1924. Little did I know in the future I'd be able to pop open a laptop and be watching it within seconds of searching for it.