Horrorfest 2024: Evil Ed

Evil Ed
Written by Anders Jacobsson, Göran Lundström and Christer Ohlsson
Directed by Anders Jacobsson
Starring Johan Rudebeck, Per Löfberg and Olof Rhodin
Sweden, 1995

A mild-mannered film editor (Johan Rudebeck) used to working on boring, black and white art films is drafted by the “splatter and gore” department of a movie studio to edit the sex and violence out of a popular slasher film series to make it suitable for European consumption. Tasked with working in isolation night and day on this, witnessing brutal scene after brutal scene, the editor slowly starts to lose his mind until he’s transformed into a murderous slasher himself.

Great premise, right? This is a fun and energetic slasher from Swedish filmmakers who clearly idolize the EVIL DEAD films, and why wouldn’t they? They’re among the best. This is fun and inventively shot, just like the EVIL DEAD movies, though it does sort of run out of steam in the back stretch, unlike the EVIL DEAD movies. The promise of the premise and the set up is more fun than the editor’s actual crazy rampage turns out to be, and part of this might be due to the fact that I saw the “Special Ed-ition”, so it may have been padded out with extra, previously cut, scenes. But, I’ve never seen the original version, so I don’t know for sure.

In any case, it doesn’t matter, because it’s still worth checking out. It’s cool to realize there’s still fun, weird, crazy stuff out there you haven’t seen, no matter how many horror movies you watch. Even if you watch 31 every October for 16 years.

Horrorfest 2024: Sisters

Sisters
Written by Brian De Palma and Louisa Rose
Directed by Brian De Palma
Starring Margot Kidder, Jennifer Salt, Charles Durning, Billy Finley and Lisle Wilson
USA, 1972

Slowly but surely I’m checking off my list of Brian De Palma films I still have to see, and this most recent one, SISTERS, is a doozy. I’d like to say never before has De Palma’s hitchock obsession been so clearly on display, but I feel like that’s almost always on display, so nevermind.

I’m not sure where to start with this story without giving it away, but the opening deals with a one-night stand between two participants in a voyeuristic hidden camera show – the “victim” of a prank (Lisle Wilson) and the model who’s “in on it” (Margot Kidder). Upon awakening the next morning, it becomes clear the model has a twin sister (who she’s arguing with off screen) and it is their birthday… so the one-night-stander goes out to get a birthday cake and comes home to murder!

Here the movie spins in an entirely new direction as it turns out a news reporter (Jennifer Salt, sporting her best KLUTE haircut) has been REAR WINDOW-ing from across the way and saw the whole thing go down. Unfortunately, the cops don’t believe her when the murderous model’s doctor ex-husband (Billy Finley) helps her cover it up.

The reporter hires a private investigator (Charles Durning) and the two of them set about conducting their own investigation to figure out just what’s going on here. Spoiler: you’ll never guess. It’s wacky and insane and worth the price of admission.

Even though I grew up crushing on Margot Kidder as Lois Lane, I haven’t seen much of her other work, so it was fun to see her here as a French Canadian in sort of a dual role where she gets to do a lot of crazy stuff.

This flick’s a fine example of De Palma’s usual obsessions – voyeurism, sex, murder, spit-screens, long takes, Hitchcock – so it fits right in with his extensive filmography and doesn’t disappoint at all.

Horrorfest 2024: I Was a Teenage Zombie

I Was a Teenage Zombie
Written by James Aviles Martin and George Seminara
Directed by John Elias Michalakis
Starring Michael Rubin, Steve McCoy, George Seminara and Robert C. Sabin
USA, 1987

Here’s a fun little low budget indie horror… I WAS A TEENAGE ZOMBIE. This is the kind of movie where I’d like to see a documentary about the making of it. Who made it? Why? How? It certainly seems like everyone was having fun. At one point someone namedrops Lloyd Kaufman but it doesn’t seem be a Troma movie… just a Troma-inspired movie.

I guess I bagged on the sound quality of THE WIZARD OF GORE earlier and I’m about to excuse the same here. Turns out, if the movie’s working, I can look the other way. Sure, TEENAGE ZOMBIE is clumsy and cheap and weird but it is charming in its own way. In a way something like THE WIZARD OF GORE isn’t.

Perhaps it’s the likable cast. They’re also seemingly amateurs, just like the GORE troupe, but they seem more ernest, more fun, like they’re having a good time, excited to be there. And that’s infectious.

The story concerns a drug deal gone wrong that results in a drug dealer (Steve McCoy) being dumped in a radioactive lake and returning as a zombie to seek his revenge. If there’s any flaw in this movie it’s that this set up takes too long and we don’t get to the teenage zombie of the title (Michael Rubin) until a little too late in the film. Once we get there, though, it’s gold.

Would you believe me if I tell you this movie actually has some legit pathos in it? You wouldn’t think so, would you? But there’s a sequence, perhaps bolstered by the great soundtrack, that features the titular teenage zombie pining after his lost love (Cassie Madden) that actually gets the feelings going. Of course it’s punctuated by a crude joke, but that almost makes it even more endearing.

It’s even kind of bittersweet and heartwarming at the end when the teenage zombie’s pals have to say goodbye to him. At that point I kind of didn’t want to say goodbye to him, either.

Horrorfest 2024: Gerald's Game

Gerald’s Game
Written by Mike Flanagan and Jeff Howard
Based on the novel by Stephen King
Directed by Mike Flanagan
Starring Carla Gugino, Bruce Greenwood, Carel Struycken, Henry Thomas and Kate Siegel
USA, 2017

It wouldn’t be Horrorfest without Stephen King, so let’s check out GERALD’S GAME, another flick I’ve been meaning to watch for years and only just now finally got around to.

I was intrigued by the premise – the whole thing taking place in the space of time a person is left chained to their bed. I like seemingly limited stories like this, stories that have to find unique and creative ways to open up the narrative.

In this case, a little went a long way. The story concerns a husband (Bruce Greenwood, one of my faves) and wife (Carla Gugino) who go to a remote cabin to rekindle their love. Things go quickly sideways when handcuffs and a heart attack enter the picture, leaving Greenwood dead on the floor and Gugino chained to the bed. How’s she gonna get out of this one?

That predicament actually sort of takes a backseat to the psychological drama that then proceeds to play out, represented by Bruce Greenwood and Carla Gugino playing mental projections of the husband and wife, aided along by flashbacks to the wife’s childhood. There are frequent reminders, however, how she’s going to need water, food, etc. Seemingly overly alarming reminders, to my mind, since, while it sucks to be thirsty, it’d take you a long time to actually be mentally or physically enfeebled by lack of water, which had me wondering how long of a period is this taking place over? It seems like within a few hours she’s about to thirst to death.

There’s also a fairly convoluted bit tacked on at the end which brings a coincidental, tangential serial killer into things, and had me scratching my head a little, but I guess that’s Stephen King for you.

 

Horrorfest 2024: Woman of the Hour

Woman of the Hour
Written by Ian McDonald
Directed by Anna Kendrick
Starring Anna Kendrick, Daniel Zovatto, Nicolette Robinson and Tony Hale
USA, 2024

Now for the second “based-on-a-true-story” flick of Horrorfest 2024, WOMAN OF THE HOUR, directed by its star, Anna Kendrick. This is the tale of the so-called “Dating Game Killer” – a serial killer who, incidental to his crimes, once appeared on the 70s game show… and WON.

Going in, I figured the entire story would be limited to the circumstances surrounding the killer’s (Daniel Zovatto) appearance on the game show, but the movie declares how intense it’s really going to be with a disturbing opening sequence that approaches one of the crimes with the same level of mastery and suspense as a classic like ZODIAC.

This does cause a bit of a flip-flopping tone, because the movie cuts between the killer’s past, present and future crimes, all around the central thrust of a struggling actress (Anna Kendrick) appearing opposite him on the Dating Game. The Dating Game sequences, while suspenseful and disturbing in their own right, seem like they’re from a totally different kind of movie than the flashbacks and flash forwards to the killer’s crimes. As a result, the movie’s a little uneven, but you have to admire the attempt, I think. It would have been too easy just to treat this thing like a joke.

Horrorfest 2024: The First Omen

The First Omen
Written by Tim Smith, Arkasha Stevenson and Keith Thomas
Directed by Arkasha Stevenson
Starring Nell Tiger Free, Tawfeek Barhom, Sônia Braga, Ralph Ineson and Billy Nighy
USA, 2024

Perhaps it was not a great idea to watch THE FIRST OMEN and APARTMENT 7A in the same day. One’s about how the Catholic church wants to breed a woman in order to give birth to the antichrist and the other’s about a bunch of devil worshippers who want to do pretty much the same. Of course, the Catholic church is doing it because they think not enough people believe in God anymore so what better way to convince them than to bring about the antichrist, and the devil worshippers are just doing it because they love Satan. But still.

As evidenced by my Horrorfest 2010 review, I’ve never been a big fan of THE OMEN, and perhaps part of the reason is because I don’t buy this plot. I guess in real life there are plots all the time that don’t make any sense, but they don’t make for great fiction. Like, how convoluted can you get – not enough people believe in God therefore you want to bring about the antichrist to convince them? It doesn’t follow. I spent the whole movie distracted by how the plot doesn’t make sense to me.

Whatever. The point is, there’s this nun (Nell Tiger Free) who’s shipped from America to Italy to watch over this orphanage and she starts to think a disturbed girl there (Nicole Sorace) is in some way being mistreated and she begins to unravel this conspiracy. She wants to rescue this girl, but the whole time I was driven to distraction what exactly she’s going to do with someone presumably carrying the antichrist… rescue her from the conspiracy and then… kill her? Thus, not rescuing her? Rescue her from the conspiracy and then let her have her antichrist and then… kill it? I was never clear on what they planned to do to stop this conspiracy. Maybe they weren’t sure either. I mean, it’s the antichrist, the Bible itself, written by God himself, says the antichrist’s coming. Good luck stopping It.

Incidentally, in a bigger picture sense, this movie and APARTMENT 7A also had me driven to distraction wondering what these all-powerful supernatural beings even need with humans in the first place. Like, you can do magic, why do you need a human woman to have a human baby for you? Like, what’s the deal there? It’s just funny to think about these magical beings needing to meddle in human affairs in order to get anthing done. Like, they’re relying on all these priests and nuns and nosey elderly couples in apartment buildings to do stuff for them? Why?

Anyway, is it any good? I dunno. This is the kind of movie where there’s two plot-device “surprise” car crashes and both of them are telegraphed in advance. You tell me.

 

Horrorfest 2024: Apartment 7A

Apartment 7A
Written by Natalie Erika James, Christian White and Skylar James
Directed by Natalie Erika James
Starring Julia Garner, Dianne Wiest, Jim Sturgess and Kevin McNally
USA, 2024

Before watching this prequel to ROSEMARY’S BABY, I chuckled at a Paste headline about it, something along the lines of “APARTMENT 7A imagines what it would be like if ROSEMARY’S BABY was bad.”

While that’s a brilliant headline, it’s not 100% accurate, because APARTMENT 7A has a couple moments worth noting. But in general, yes, it does fall into the trap where I kept going, “Yeah but later they had to do this all over again with Rosemary, so who cares.”

Normally I’m not the kind of guy who’s like, “What’s the point of a prequel, we know what’s going to happen.” That’s the same guy who goes, “What’s the point of TITANIC, we know it sinks.” No shit. What’s the point of any movie ever? As Aerosmith once said, life’s a journey, not a destination. In theory, any story’s worth telling as long as it keeps you entertained in one way or another.

That’s the biggest failing of this one, the tale of the girl who came before Rosemary – it’s boring. We learn this one’s a struggling dancer (Julia Garner) trying to make it on Broadway. She’s injured and suffers a setback, and a seemingly-kindly (if busy-body-ish) old couple (Diane Wiest and Kevin McNally) give her a place to stay in a building that just so happens to also house the very guy she wants to get in good with in order to “make it” (Jim Sturgess). Turns out they’re all devil worshippers using her as a vessel to give birth to the son of satan, though. Whoops!

The movie assumed I had more familiarity with ROSEMARY’S BABY than I do, so if you plan to watch it, I recommend re-watching ROSEMARY’S BABY either right before it, or right after it, to refresh yourself. I haven’t seen it in like 20 years or something so I missed out on a bunch of the moments where I was supposed to go, “Ohhhh!” 

I said earlier there are a couple moments that are worth it and one of them is towards the end. Without giving too much away there's a moment where our heroine decides the only way to be the master of her own destiny and the last thing she's going to do with her life is to dance. That dance may have been conceived in an attempt to try for a M3GAN or WEDNESDAY meme, and if that's the case, the movie failed. But, if they wanted one, solid, memorable, unique scene: they succeeded.