Horrorfest 2010: Phantasm

I first heard of director Don Coscarelli in connection to the horror comedy vehicle for Bruce Campbell, BUBBA HO-TEP. That movie was well intentioned and good enough, but not the masterpiece many Bruce Campbell fans would have you believe it is.

Still, I remembered the name and saw it again when Showtime was running that anthology series, "Masters of Horror." I noticed I didn't recognize a lot of the names of the so-called "masters" but I did recognize Don Coscarelli.

So, it was only a matter of time before I saw his real claim to fame, the late 70s indie horror flick, PHANTASM. Told from the point of view of 13 year old Mike (A. Michael Baldwin), PHANTASM is the story of unexplained deaths in a small town that seem to be centered around a funeral home presided over by a creepy undertaker known only as The Tall Man (Angus Scrimm). Mike's also dealing with the recent deaths of his parents, and his worries that his brother and guardian, a musician in his mid-20s, Jody (Bill Thornbury) is on the verge of leaving town. Jody's band consists of ice cream man by day Reggie (Reggie Bannister) and the recently-found-dead Tommy (Bill Cone). This was apparently a suicide, but we, the audience, know a mysterious blonde woman (Kathy Lester) lured him out to the cemetery and killed him.

This is one of those flicks where young Mike runs around trying to convince everyone that something messed up is going on, but no one will listen. Eventually, the bodies start piling high enough and the mayhem gets crazy enough that people start to come over to his side. By the end of the film, it's an all out fight for survival as Mike and Jody team up to battle the Tall Man and his undead dwarf minions. There's even a cool MACGUYVEResque scene in which Mike has to break out of his bedroom using only a shotgun shell and a hammer.

The film is pretty inventive, doing a lot with a little -- the interiors of the funeral home are big expensive looking sets apparently done on the cheap, there are some sci-fi elements thrown in for good measure that make the whole thing a little more epic than it could have been, and the music is groovy.

I liked how the horror story, worthy of comic books, was scene through the eyes of a kid. I also liked the relationship between the kid and his brother, and their friend Reggie. It was unexpectedly touching. And, I liked the sci-fi elements.

Still, the ending fell apart a little bit for me and the middle dragged some. I read that the movie was originally 3 hours long and was cut down to its current 90 minute length. That might be a little apocryphal, but it still feels a little long. Maybe it's the pacing -- I don't know. On one hand it kind of helps with the dream like quality of the whole thing but on the other I could kind of do without the dream like quality -- why not just have this be the straight forward telling that you can tell it wants to be?

So, Horrorfest 2010 comes to a close. I've successfully watched 31 horror movies I'd never seen before in 31 days, and written about each of them. In fact, I watched more than 31, but only 31 of them were actually on the top 100 list that I was working off of. So now, by my count, adding the ones I had already seen with the ones I saw this month, there are still around 26 from the list I need to see. So, that's a little short of the 31 I'll need for next year, but a good starting point.

Happy Halloween.

Horrorfest 2010: Cat People / The Curse of the Cat People

The list of 100 best horror films I'm working off of has THE CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE listed, but it doesn't list the movie it was a sequel to, CAT PEOPLE. I found this odd and double checked the list a couple times, because I've been meaning to watch CAT PEOPLE for several years now as I've seen it pop up on several best-of lists, not limited to best horror films but including best films in general of all time. I've also increasingly heard producer Val Lewton's name mentioned as a genius filmmaker, and CAT PEOPLE was his first horror film.

The DVD I ended up with had both movies on it, and both movies are pretty short, so I decided I'd watch both -- THE CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE will count towards my mission to watch 31 movies off of this list in 31 days, and CAT PEOPLE will help satisfy my need to see the films widely regarded as the best ever.

Both movies were produced by Val Lewton, who delivered a very different version of horror from what audiences were used to with Universal up until that time. Lewton headed up RKO's B-horror department in the studio's attempt to make a quick buck after their financially disastrous dealings with Orson Welles on CITIZEN KANE and MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS.

Lewton's low budget horror films delivered more psychological thrills and chills instead of outright monster attacks. RKO studio heads would come up with marketable titles like CAT PEOPLE, then Lewton would turn in something far from the obvious -- a mixture of his own story-telling interests and what might appease the studio as at least a passing resemblance to what you might expect from a movie called CAT PEOPLE.

CAT PEOPLE stars Simone Simon as a fashion designer who falls in love with an all around good guy (Kent Smith). As they get closer and eventually marry, Smith's character becomes disillusioned with the distance Simon's character seems to keep from him. Apparently, childhood stories from her native Serbia have convinced her that if she becomes physically close with a man, she'll transform into a cat person and destroy him. She likes to lurk around the zoo, checking out the panther cages, animals in the pet store freak out when she's around and her pet bird eventually turns up dead.

Smith's character turns to his female co-worker (Jane Randolph) for comfort, and Simon becomes jealous. A psychologist (Tom Conway) is brought in to help Simon but it might be too late.

In the sequel, THE CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE, we follow Smith's character who is now married to Randolph's. Their seven-year-old daughter (Ann Carter) is withdrawn and unpopular with her friends at school, so she turns to an imaginary world for comfort. Smith, disturbed by his daughter's reliance on fantasy that reminds him of the late Simon's issues with childhood stories, attempts unsuccessfully to draw her out. Meanwhile, neighbors in a creepy house down the street indulge the little girl's imagination and tell her tales of Sleepy Hollow, which originated in their town.

These neighbors are the eccentric aging actress (Julia Dean) and her contemptuous daughter (Elizabeth Russell). Russell had a brief but effective cameo in the original CAT PEOPLE as a sinister diner at a restaurant who approaches Simon possibly as a fellow cat person before disappearing in the night.

Finally, Simone Simon herself shows up, reprising her role as Irena from the first film, appearing in ghostly fantasy visions to the young girl who views her as an imaginary friend who has come to save her from her loneliness and boredom.

Both films do what horror films do best, which is to highlight every day fears and neuroses by exaggerating them and focusing in on them. CAT PEOPLE deals with the fear people have that there might be a monster inside of them waiting to do something evil, but it also deals with the difficulties of establishing a relationship with a stranger. At first, she may seem exotic and interesting, but then the dark issues start to surface and even the best guy begins to wonder what the hell he's supposed to do. Of course, it's always tricky because the one with the issues so clearly needs love and acceptance that the other half of the relationship doesn't know what to do -- head for the hills, or dig in and try to get this solved. Here, we have the benefit of shorthand and broad strokes -- the girl's tragic past is literally haunted by evil monsters. In real life, these evil monsters are just as bad, or worse, but come in a much more mundane form and are therefore harder to understand and deal with.

CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE deals with childhood insecurities -- being left out on the playground, the power of imagination, the gulf that exists between the adult world that surrounds kids and the limited understanding a kid has about what's really going on.

Both are tragic but somewhat beautiful tales. CAT PEOPLE is more tragic, CURSE is more beautiful. In fact, CURSE has more in common with great literary stories like TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD and GREAT EXPECTATIONS than it does with traditional horror. In many ways, CURSE reminded me of the simultaneously sinister and fairy tale atmosphere of THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER in which children are sidelined from an adult world and become potential victims of it.

CURSE is helped along by one of the best child performances I've seen. Little Ann Carter is in almost every scene of the movie and pretty much carries the movie. Some of her delivery might be what you typically expect from a child actor of the era but the depth of emotion and feeling on her face is unique and special for someone so young.

CURSE was co-directed by Robert Wise, who directed THE HAUNTING, which I watched yesterday. He's also directed plenty of other great films, but it's interesting to compare these two because he's been quoted as saying THE HAUNTING was his tribute to Lewton, and he directed CURSE under Lewton's mentorship. I can see where Wise is coming from -- THE HAUNTING is similar to Lewton's film in the way it avoids special effects, puts most of the horror in the minds of the characters, implies things more than explicitly coming out and showing them. Still, I feel like THE HAUNTING is a bad example of all of this, and CAT PEOPLE and CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE are both great examples of the old saying, "less is more."

Horrorfest 2010: The Haunting

I was looking forward to THE HAUNTING because I'd read some good things about it, not least of which was a list composed by the great Martin Scorsese of what he thinks are the scariest movies of all time.

Sadly, I was disappointed. THE HAUNTING suffers from some of the same problems as THE AMITYVILLE HORROR as characters are determined to deem a house haunted regardless of what actually happens (or doesn't happen) during the course of the film.

I'm sick of movies where cold houses or loud noises at night count as ghosts. I understand why this stuff counts as ghosts in real life. In real life, there are no ghosts, so people are forced to use their imaginations. You'll never see a ghost, so you have to assume bumps in the night or mundane things like cold spots in your house are super natural. It's still dumb, but it makes more sense than the world of fiction where anything can happen that you can imagine. So, why should a film about an allegedly haunted house adhere so strictly to the type of stuff that can be so easily written off?

I guess you could argue that the film is more of a psychological thriller -- maybe director Robert Wise is trying to make a point about super natural phenomena and how it can all happen in your head. If so, the movie makes a good point. Still, the film is about paranormal investigation and the resident experts never explore this possibility. They go into the house knowing it's haunted, and attribute everything they experience to the haunting.

The story involves the miserable main character Eleanor (Julie Harris) a middle-aged woman who has spent her entire life taking care of her aging mother. Now that mom is dead, Eleanor has moved into her sister's hosue where she's treated like a child. She also acts like a child, though, and we see how whiny and self centered she is in the endless opening sequence in which she demands to borrow her sister's car. We really have to sit through all this? It's 45 minutes before we get to anything ghostly.

Now, this is kind of a double standard -- after all, plenty of great horror movies wait nice and long before the actual monster makes an appearance. Take KING KONG and JAWS, for example. But those movies do a few things right that THE HAUNTING does not. One is, they have likable characters you can identify with. Eleanor is not likable. She's an old spinster who complains about everything, is obsessed with herself, and even her goddamn voice overs take over most of the soundtrack. Secondly, flicks like KING KONG and JAWS manage to entertain during the long passages of suspense leading up to the first "incident." THE HAUNTING does not. Instead, we sit through boring passages of unlikable, inhuman characters sitting around.

Anyway, Dr. Markaway (Richard Johnson) is a paranormal investigator who invites several people to a haunted house with a tragic history of death to see if the house is really haunted or not. The guests include the afore-mentioned Eleanor, a supposed psychic named Theo (Claire Bloom) who never seems to use her powers or even possess any powers during the movie's run, and the only dude I could identify with, token skeptic Luke (Russ Tamblyn).

Markaway's supposedly scientific investigation of the paranormal gets off on the wrong foot when he announces to everyone that the house is haunted. So, we start off with a little poisoning of the well. The first night, there's pounding on the door to the girls' bedroom. They freak out. I don't get it, though. If Theo and Eleanor are in a room together, and there's pounding and foot steps in the hall, couldn't it just be Markaway and Luke? When you know there are other people in the house, this kind of stuff shouldn't be freaky. It's freaky when you're supposed to be alone.

Later, they find some chalk writing on the wall, but still, anyone could have done it. And, they find a "legitimate cold spot." Dr. Markaway says, enthusiastically, "I bet it wouldn't even register on a thermometer!" as if that's any kind of proof. First of all, go get a fucking thermometer and find out! Secondly, if it doesn't register, maybe you're just wrong. Maybe you just THINK it's cold, and it's not. Maybe since you've told everyone the place is haunted, everyone's freaking out for no reason.

There's other explainable stuff, like doors opening and closing on their own, and Eleanor goes increasingly crazy but we know from the opening scenes that she's a huge drama queen who can't get over herself, so even our main character can't be trusted (or liked).

Look, the movie is beautifully shot and well acted. Technically, it's good. But it's boring as hell and I don't get what the big deal is.

NEXT!

Horrorfest 2010: Basket Case

Now, this is more like it. BASKET CASE takes a weird premise and totally runs with it. And that's with zero budget. So, suck it, AMITYVILLE HORROR.

BASKET CASE is another example of my favorite combination -- horror and comedy. The premise is so bizarre, the filmmakers have to acknowledge the sheer ridiculousness or else the movie would lose most of its power. So, they embrace the idea and it pays off for the viewer.

The story involves likable and naive Duane (the equally likable Kevin Van Hentenryck) arriving wide-eyed in Times Square. His only possession seems to be a large wicker basket, padlocked shut. He always carries it with him, akward as it might be, and never quite gives a straight answer when people eventually get around to asking, "What's in the basket?" It's inherently funny, and never gets old, the way Duane sits there with his giant basket, attempting to stay unassuming and under the radar, but unable to avoid looking super weird.

Do I tell you what's in the basket or not? It's too good not to. Stop reading if you don't want to know. See, Duane was born with a deformed conjoined twin named Belial growing out of the side of his body. His abusive father (Richard Pierce) wasn't very tolerant of the deformity and ordered it cut off in a traumatic surgery scene presided over by unethical, corrupt doctors and thrown into the trash. But, Belial survived, now just a lump of flesh with a face and two deformed arms, able to live on his own and crawl around at will. He even has the power to communicate telepathically with Duane, who speaks back to Belial vocally.

So, Duane and Belial arrive in New York, Belial in the basket, and systematically visit the doctors that have done them wrong, for revenge. Meanwhile, the tenants of the sleazy hotel they've moved into become suspicious of the goings on in Duane's room, and Duane starts a tentative relationship with the receptionist at one of the doctors' offices (Terri Susan Smith). Turns out aside from being filled with murderous revenge-fueled rage, Belial also has a nasty jealous streak and can't stand that his relatively normal brother has chances at regular social relationships while he has to sit around in a basket all day.

As I mentioned before, the movie has basically no budget and I think that works to its advantage. Shot on the streets in New York in the early 80s, the movie gets a lot of built-in production value just by embracing the filth of the natural surroundings. The littered streets and dingy interiors set the tone for this dirty little story. The special effects aren't great by major Hollywood standards but are pretty amazing for such a small production -- the distorted lump of flesh known as Belial is actually able to emote some human qualities and project emotions that even some actors in similar low budget films can't manage. Belial is sometimes a puppet, sometimes stop motion animation, but I think what really helps is the sound design -- his tortured screams and belabored breathing give him a tragic personality.

The main thing that makes this movie work is that everyone involved in it seems to be having a good time. The actors, while not perfectly professional in all cases, are loose and willing to go all the way. Even background throw-away characters have vivid personalities, whether we're talking about the colorful tenants of the low-rent hotel or cranky patients in waiting rooms.

They're headed up by Kevin Van Hentenryck in the lead, who, again, isn't perfect, but does a great job of being vulnerable, naive, and likable. You get the feeling if he was born under different circumstances he wouldn't have necessarily been the most popular guy, but he would have been one of those guys that everyone could really count on. Instead, because of his deformity, he's grown up shy and tentative, but you can see, despite his actions, deep down he'd rather just be a good guy.

This movie is endlessly inventive and likable. Is this because of or in spite of the low budget, bizarre premise, and over the top violence? Who cares, as long as it works.

Horrorfest 2010: The Amityville Horror

Boy, THE AMITYVILLE HORROR sucks.

It's the fairly well-known story of a young family, the Lutzes (dad James Brolin and mom Margot Kidder) who move into a house in Amityville, Long Island with their three kids. The movie opens with flashbacks to a brutal murder that occurred in the house a little over a year before the Lutzes moved in. Seems the father of the family living there took a shotgun to everyone in the house. So, it isn't long before weird stuff starts happening and the Lutzes decide the place is haunted.

The first red flag is that the movie is marketed as a true story. I mean, it's based on a book called "The Amityville Horror: A True Story." But this isn't like BLAIR WITCH or PARANORMAL ACTIVITY where the marketing eventually ends and the fiction begins. No, there's actually a George and Kathy Lutz out there, they actually lived in a house in Amityville, and they actually claim it was haunted. They still do, to this day.

The problem with all this is that ghosts are pretend. So, it can't be a true story. Whether the Lutzes are liars or honestly believe in ghosts, they're still wrong. There goes the premise of the movie. A more interesting movie might have been about the aftermath of the so-called haunting. How did this get from a house in Amityville to the big screen? I want to see the Lutzes pitching this one in Hollywood. Now, that would be a story.

Instead, we get a series of events that aren't even that freaky. I don't get it. It's kind of like in THE OMEN where Biblical prophecies are reduced to boring politics and economics. Your premise is the house is haunted -- why not make it scary and weird and fantastic? I guess the thought process might be that the more mundane the so-called haunting is, the more believable it is? Well, sure, I guess the house being cold is believable, and doors slamming on their own is believable, and a swarm of flies is believable, and the fact that the windows on the outside of the house resemble glaring eyes is believable (if a little heavy handed). But we're asked to believe a ghost is doing these things. And that seems to be just a little bit of a stretch.

What would be believable is if a ghost walked across the front room and the whole family saw it happen. See, what makes better movies like POLTERGEIST scary is the fact that the viewer has proof that this stuff is definitely going on in the fictional world of the movie. The viewer buys into what the movie is saying and believes it. Instead, when the toilets back up and that's supposed to be ghost evidence, the viewer thinks, "Bullshit."

Another thing that would make this movie more believable would be if we could relate to the characters a little more. That's another thing POLTERGEIST gets right -- it's also about a haunted house, and deals with a suburban mom and dad with kids. But you get to know the family. They have three dimensional personalities. They're likable. They deal with fantastic and weird situations the way you might think a real person would. They have likes and dislikes and habits, the house looks lived in, the neighborhood appears to have other people in it. It's the little stuff like that that connects an audience. If they audience isn't connected, they're not going to buy anything you try to sell them.

Perhaps worst of all, the movie is boring. It was hard to keep my eyes open during this one. That's even with constant dog barking, thunder crashes, and priests screaming at the top of their lungs. I took a break watching the movie last night and watched the last half hour today and STILL started to fall asleep, and that was during the supposedly thrilling climax.

The movie was a huge hit and has spawned an entire franchise, so it must have done something right, I guess. Was there anything I liked? The score was good, I guess. Before the climax kicks in, Margot Kidder does her damnedest to rise above the material by acting human when the script seems to have been written by someone who has never met a human before. James Brolin has a killer head of hair and a sweet beard. The first scare, where a disembodied voice hisses, "GET OUT!" at a visiting priest is legitimately creepy.

Speaking of priests, why are movies like this always crawling with Catholics? I guess because they're all ripping off THE EXORCIST. This one has no less than four priests screaming at each other, at heaven, at whatever, trying to get to the bottom of the ghost thing. THE OMEN was full of them, too. How come no one ever goes to a Protestant pastor or a Rabbi for this stuff? Or an exterminator. If I had flies all over the place I'd call the exterminator. Or, the plumber, for the toilet.

Speaking of plumbers, this flick kind of reminded me of that "reality" show GHOST HUNTERS where plumbers by day become paranormal investigators by night, responding to distress calls from haunted houses and filming their "skeptical," "scientific" investigations. That show also relies heavily on stuff like cold spots, sounds of the house settling and doors moving on their own. But, that's because it's real. Since ghosts are pretend, the GHOST HUNTERS will never find any, so they are forced to fill their show with bullshit -- the only way they can get results while hunting something that doesn't exist is to overreact at every little sound. The makers of AMITYVILLE, on the other hand, settle for the same bullshit when they were only limited by their imaginations. They could have made something awesome.

Like POLTERGEIST.

Horrorfest 2010: Audition

AUDITION is the first Japanese horror film of horrorfest. I have to admit, in the early 2000s I got kind of sick of Japanese horror flicks. There was a big movement where basically everything from Japan was adapted into an American movie. People claimed the Japanese originals were superior, but they always seemed to kind of suck to me. Most of them were about creepy ghost kids, painted white with stringy hair making funny noises and lurching around awkwardly.

AUDITION, on the other hand, takes place in the real world -- basically. There are no ghost kids here, no curses, nothing supernatural. Just torture. Which, unfortunately, brings up another fad, this time of the latter half of the first decade of 2000 -- torture porn. You know, SAW, HOSTEL all those flicks where instead of horror you just get torture. Which, I guess if you're into torture, is cool. If not, it blows.

Luckily, AUDITION, despite being known for how extreme it is, takes a relatively restrained approach to the horror genre and, in fact, most of the first hour plays like a straight drama. Sure, there are some thriller elements and you can tell that not everything is quite right, but you really get engrossed in the story and genuinely wonder where it's going to go. You know it's not going to go well. You just don't know where it's going to go wrong. Or how.

That's why it's good to go into AUDITION without knowing too much. Unfortunately, the movie posters and box art feature images that kind of give some core elements away. Still, even with a basic idea of what was going to happen, I was surprised with the way AUDITION was able to string me along anyway.

AUDITION starts off as the tale of a widowed father (Ryo Ishibashi). His well-meaning teenaged son (Tetsu Sawaki) recommends he jump start his love life so he's not alone when the kid goes off to college. His filmmaker friend (Jun Kunimara) comes up with an ethically questionable scheme -- they'll stage auditions for a film production that's never going to happen, and the widowed father can use these auditions to find himself his next wife.

During the audition process, Ishibashi's character is quickly won over by an ex-ballerina (Eihi Shiina) who seems to be the picture perfect version of the demure, reserved, respectable Japanese wife. She's young, pretty, quiet, and smart. There are some early hints that something is a little off beneath the surface, but that draws Ishibashi's character in even more. He loves her and wants to be there for her. She seems to need him.

Without giving too much away, after a weekend getaway, the girl disappears. Ishibashi's character attempts to retrace her foot steps using her resume, but this only leads to several more mysteries and dead ends, each hinting at a more sinister past.

Here's where I have to stop describing the plot. Needless to say, it takes a couple twists. To the movie's credit, some of the last few sequences are strung together in a dream like manner, owing a lot to stream of consciousness. This way, you're never quite sure what's real and what's not -- what's happening now, what happened before, what's going to happen? The best way to view it is to take it basically literally -- let the images and instances speak for themselves. If Ishibashi's character seems to be taking a dream-like tour through the girl's chaotic past, then let him.

Again, I don't want to give anything away, but I do want to let you know what kind of images await you going into this film. There's a recurring image of a bag, apparently with a human stuffed inside, writhing around on the ground; a scene where a dog bowl of vomit is fed to someone; graphic use of a wire saw to sever limbs; the sinister application of painful acupuncture needles.

I'd say of all the movies I have watched this month, this one probably kept me on the edge of my seat the most. What's going to happen next, what is the truth, how horrible can this get, will the victims ever get out of this -- all that kind of stuff. As much as the ultra-violence was repulsive and totally backfired in CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST, it works here. This is because you sense director Takashi Miike is not messing around with you. He doesn't cheat. Sure, the torture scenes are arranged with a fetishistic attention to detail (just check out Shiina's costume as an example), but by the time they arrive, the movie has totally earned them. This is not cheap.

Perhaps the movie's greatest strength is that it plays on very common fears, the way the best horror movies do. In this case, the root fears aren't even necessarily commonly associated with horror. Most of it has to do with relationships. The fear of being alone, the difficulty of meeting new people, dealing with trust issues, dealing with the past -- it's all here and instead of falling into the realm of romantic comedy or drama, it's uniquely used in the service of horror.

The main thing is, you can totally identify with Ishibashi's character. Okay, sure, maybe you wouldn't hold a fake film audition just to find a wife, but who doesn't feel lonely? Who doesn't want love? When faced with someone you love who's clearly damaged, who doesn't want to try to make it work? Who doesn't look the other way when a relationship you want to work so badly seems to be going south?

And, finally, who doesn't blame themselves for being deluded?

Horrorfest 2010: Cannibal Holocaust

CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST -- what a shitty film.

In my teens, when Tarantino was just bursting onto the scene and a new interest was developing in ultra-violent cinema, I read a lot about the subject and watched a bunch of movies ranging from the great LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT to the terrible I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE. At the time, I also read about CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST but never got around to watching it.

These days, I don't have much stomach for this kind of stuff. I think part of it is once you've satisfied your curiosity, you've seen it all. One disgusting, depraved shock film is as good (or bad) as another. There's no reason to watch a bunch of them. You've seen one, you've seen them all.

Still, CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST was on the list of the 100 greatest horror films I'm working off of, and I hadn't seen it before, so I checked it out. Unlike some of the other ultra violent horror films that snuck their way into cult status in the early days of VHS, CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST has a little bit of a legacy. The controversy generated by the film in the first place is partially due to the pseudo-documentary style employed by the filmmakers, and it is that same approach that has led to a little bit of a renaissance for the film as it has been mentioned as inspiration for the huge 90s hit THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT.

The premise will seem familiar to anyone who has heard of BLAIR WITCH -- a group of young filmmakers disappears in the wilderness. Their raw footage is discovered and examined to find out what happened to them. Their fates turn out to be gruesome. Like BLAIR WITCH, CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST is pretty much set up as a true event, though, unlike BLAIR WITCH, the film itself breaks the fourth wall almost from the first scene, establishing it as clearly fictional to anyone who is even halfway familiar with filmmaking techniques. At least, I guess that's by today's standards. Maybe back when this stuff was cutting edge audiences were less savvy. My guess is the movie seems more real and more disturbing when viewed on an old abused film print, or on a watched and re-watched shitty VHS copy. This is one case where a meticulously restored DVD probably hurts the film's impact.

Or, maybe the pristine film format on DVD betrays the film's inherent cynicism as a direct result of robbing it of some of its power.

Anyway, I've said so much without saying anything. In this case, the young filmmakers are a documentary crew hired by a news organization to document indigenous tribes of the Amazon. They disappear into the jungle and an anthropologist (Robert Kerman) is sent to track them down. He finds that they've been brutally murdered and eaten by a cannibal tribe, is able to recover their lost footage, and returns to New York where he's assigned to help the news company make the footage palatable for broadcast. The story is sensational enough that the news organization just sees ratings and dollar signs. The anthropologist, having been to the Amazon, met the tribes, and viewed all of the footage in question, knows it's unsuitable for broadcast and makes his case.

The film has a strange structure -- even though the "raw footage" element is hinted at from the beginning, and even though most of what you'll read about the movie is about its unique pseudo-documentary style, the first half is firmly planted in the realm of traditional cinema. All the stuff involving the anthropologist traveling to the Amazon and tracking down the footage is clearly straight narrative -- we're not meant to believe this is real. Then, suddenly, when the anthropologist returns home with his "found footage" we're presented with the raw footage in an amateurish "real" and "unedited" format as the last half of the film unfolds, showing the fate of the lost film crew almost from a "first person" point of view, as if you're there with them in the middle of the horror. Even though we're told that these filmmakers are amazing professionals, most of the footage is shaky like no one ever learned how to hold a camera still.

To be sure, this is a revolutionary approach, especially for a low budget exploitation flick like this one. And, this is probably the primary reason why people remember the movie to this day. It was certainly influential. But is it any good?

I'm inclined to say no. Again, maybe 25 years ago before reality television and before other similar movies, this one had more power. Maybe viewed on a damaged print or abused video tape, it added to the voyeuristic snuff film allure of the thing. I don't know.

All I know is what I saw. From what I saw, the filmmaker's betrayed their own cynicism at almost every turn in the film, and that undermines any power the movie might have had. When you get the feeling that the people behind the camera have some kind of prurient interest or ulterior motive, it becomes difficult to take them seriously. So, even if they try to make some point about the influence of media on the third world, or the influence of media turning supposedly civilized cultures into savage ones, or even if the film ponders who the real savages are -- the cannibals in the jungle, or the Western media -- it's all totally shot to shit when you don't believe the filmmakers are being honest with you.

The same can be said of the violence -- extreme violence can be powerful. This ranges from gore, even to staged rape scenes -- see A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, PULP FICTION, etc. It can work. But not if you suspect the filmmaker is trying to trick you. In Kubrick or Tarantino's flicks, you always feel like the filmmakers are being totally honest with their intentions. With a film like CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST, all the gore and sexual violence is rendered hollow and exploitative by the obscured, dishonest intentions of the filmmakers.

What makes me think director Ruggero Deodato and writer Gianfranco Clerici aren't being totally honest with me as an audience member in their intentions? There are too many examples in the film for me to list, but one easy metaphor for what I'm talking about is the animal cruelty in the film. Yes, the real animal cruelty. You know you're in trouble when you pop the DVD in and it asks if you want to see the film in its "theatrical" version or "non-animal cruelty" version. Sheesh.

I opted for the "theatrical" version because I wanted to see what made this movie so controversial and famous in the first place, and part of that is the animal cruelty. Here's the thing -- the movie is called CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST. You expect some man on man violence, some extreme gore, people eating each other. You get some of that, but it's interspersed with random acts of violence against animals -- real acts of violence. Now, I don't want to get into a larger ideological discussion about whether or not it's okay to kill animals. After all, I eat meat. I can't pretend to be some moral, upstanding human who would never hurt an animal or would never want an animal to be hurt. I understand slaughter houses are awful, and I eat steaks anyway. So, I'm not doing any moral grand-standing here.

But here's what I'm saying: why the animal cruelty in the film? What's the point? The director put it there on purpose. What's his reasoning? I can only speculate, and my line of reasoning while speculating is what convinces me the movie is nothing more than cynical exploitation.

Here's what I came up with: torturing animals is easy. Special effects are hard, and you can't torture and kill humans on film. So, take it out on the animals. You need some easy shock that you don't really need to work for or be creative about? Fine, shoot a 10 minute scene where you slaughter a giant turtle and play with its body parts. There, it's nice and gross, all you had to do was haul a turtle out of the water. You didn't have to create anything or do any actual work. Just force your actors to cut it up and play with it, and you've got an automatic shock scene. Same with chopping a monkey's head off, cutting a snake in half, shooting a pig. Worried you can't deliver the shocks that the word "cannibal" suggests? Fine. Take it out on the animals.

Now, some would argue that the REAL slaughter of the animals blurs the lines between fact and fiction, and that's what the film is about. If you see an undeniably real animal slaughter, then maybe the next scene of depravity against humans seems more real. I guess. But it seems very convenient. These animals can't complain, no one will miss them. I don't know, any time something has one pretentious explanation and one super convenient one, I suspect the convenient one might be more accurate and the pretentious one might just be post-mortem rationalization.

Similarly, the graphic sexuality and violence against women serves to expose the filmmaker's prurient interests. The first sexual assault occurs early in the film as a helpless native woman writhes naked in the mud while a native man assaults her. The anthropologist observes, "This looks like a ritual punishment for adultery!" Other similar scenes follow. The one female member of the filmmaking expedition (Francesca Ciardi) is photographed nude or in compromising situations as often as possible, involving one sex scene with her filmmaker boyfriend (Carl Garbiel Yorke) and then her eventual dismemberment. There's also a scene in which the filmmakers stumble upon a native girl, capture her, and take turns raping her, again, rolling around in the mud.

Now, none of these scenes are titillating. But, butting up against scenes of faked violence and real animal cruelty, what are we supposed to think? What's the point? It's hard not to think the filmmakers are slipping this in specifically to serve the audience members looking for some tits and ass. I'm not sure the filmmakers care that the tits and ass are served up next to and along with violence. If they do, it's only at the benefit of being more extreme -- you get the feeling the sex doesn't exist in spite of the violence, but because of it. Like the animal cruelty, it's easy. Just convince a woman to get out of her clothes and roll in the mud, and you've got 10 minutes of exploitation without having to work or be creative.

In fact, after watching the film I noticed it had a director's commentary and I wondered what a scum bag director can possibly say during a scene in which a female actor is dragged naked through the mud. So, I went back through the film and listened out of curiosity. The director commented that the woman was the costume designer and she was very nice. He then praised the musical score of the movie and pointed out how nice the sky looked during the sexual assault. Very insightful.

Apparently the director ended up in some legal trouble in the mid 80s when the film was deemed too real. Again, I have the benefit of hindsight, but that's simply giving the movie way too much credit. It's all so clearly cynical and contrived from the beginning, I have to assume the courts that prosecuted the director were simply offended beyond rational thought into the realm of blind rage and didn't actually believe Deodato had shot a genuine snuff film.

As I alluded to before, the film tries to make some higher philosophical point or moral observation on the state of the media today, and whether the civilized world is really the savage world. Part of this point is dramatized through the depraved actions of the missing film crew. Their footage reveals that they were glad to contrive situations for sensation at the expense of the natives, sometimes costing lives.

But what about the actual film crew, not the fictional one? What did they do, out in the wilderness, without anyone watching? Did they take advantage of natives and animals? Did they even take advantage of actors who should have known better? Did they brow beat these poor bastards into participating in depravity for the sake of exploitation?

The positive reviews of CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST say it's a social commentary. I say it's nothing more than a commentary by director Ruggero Deodato about himself.

Note 1: Re-reading this, I realize I totally neglected to mention the rampant racism. So, here: the film's unforgivably racist. There.

Note 2: Also, I was mystified by the fictional film crew's tactics. They were happy to stage atrocities, like burning down a native village, herding the natives into a hut and setting it on fire. But they film themselves setting it up. Why not set the hut on fire and THEN turn on the cameras? How come all the clear shots are the incriminating ones, and the "sensational" shots of the villagers burning are all shaky and confusing?

Horrorfest 2010: Black Sabbath

Hey! It's another Mario Bava film.

BLACK SABBATH is a horror anthology -- three unconnected short stories bridged by tongue in cheek introductions starring none other than Boris Karloff. Phew. That was a close one. I was afraid I'd go all October with no Boris Karloff, but here he is, being all Boris Karloffy.

The biggest weakness this film has when you watch it (almost) back to back with BLACK SUNDAY (or MASK OF SATAN) is the color photography. It's not a badly shot film -- not at all. Much like Bava's other flick from Horrorfest, BLOOD AND BLACK LACE, BLACK SABBATH makes great use of bold colors. Still, when it comes to horror, I feel like color somewhat detracts from the proceedings. As BLACK SABBATH unfolded, I kept wondering what it would look like in black and white and couldn't help but think it might be scarier.

Part of this is probably just because of the context I'm watching it in -- maybe if I saw the film at the time it came out, the color would seem like an audacious and original choice, instead of kind of a tacky excess.

Here's how it goes:

The first story, THE DROP OF WATER, is a story about a woman who steals an expensive piece of jewelry from a corpse and is then haunted by the corpse, or guilt, or both, all night. The second, THE TELEPHONE, is probably the first stalker-by-phone movie, where a glamorous woman has to deal with perverted and threatening phone calls from an ex-lover. The final story, THE WURDALAK is probably the most traditional horror store, basically a retelling of vampire lore taking place in 19th century Russia. This one also stars Boris Karloff as the title monster.

Of these stories, the third one is the most naturally shot. This is probably because it has the most exterior shots and relies more on sunlight than electricity. The rest of the film is rooted firmly in studios. Still, the first 2/3 of the film are probably the most effective, I guess because they're more offbeat stories. The last 1/3 is the kind of story you'd expect from this type of movie, so it's rendered a little less effective, despite the presence of Karloff.

Reading up on this film, it seems I watched the American version -- apparently the original Italian version shows the stories in a different order, has different Karloff intros, and includes more controversial details, like a lesbian sub plot in THE TELEPHONE.

Going into Horrorfest, I was kind of dreading all the Italian films, I guess because I'd already seen ZOMBIE by Lucio Fulci and didn't care for it too much. As Horrorfest has unfolded, it has become clear that I was unfairly prejudiced against an entire country's worth of horror films, since most of the Italian films I've seen have been quite good. Let's rank Italian directors:

DEEP RED is the best Italian flick I've see this month, so Dario Argento wins top spot.

BLACK SUNDAY or THE MASK OF SATAN was the second best, so Mario Bava comes in second even though I have mixed feelings about BLOOD AND BLACK LACE and BLACK SABBATH.

Finally, Lucio Fulci comes in last with the terrible THE BEYOND.

It's almost not fair to rank Fulci 3rd after the likes of Argento and Bava. There should be roughly 100 spots between the directors, with Argento and Bava close to the top and Fulci all the way at the bottom.

Horrorfest 2010: The Pit and the Pendulum

THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM is another horror film I've read about and seen pictures of over the years but never got around to watching until today. I was looking forward to watching it today because I knew it stars Vincent Price.

That's one of the unexpected joys of setting out to do something like this -- one of the main reasons I make arbitrary rules for myself like, "I'm going to watch 31 horror movies in 31 days" is to force myself to write. The secondary reason is that these are all films I'd like to see anyway, so it's nice to give myself an excuse to do it systematically. But, other benefits sneak in while all this is going on -- I might notice I like a director or star I've never really been exposed to before. The more Vincent Price movies I see, the more I realize I'm a Vincent Price fan.

Vincent Price is one of those guys that is so famous that he permeates pop culture. Even if you've never seen a Vincent Price flick, if you're any kind of movie fan you can probably hear his voice or picture his pencil mustache. It's kind of like when I realized Barbara Streisand's greatness last February -- sure, the entire world says she's great, and I grew up hearing that, but you never really realize how great she is till you check out her flicks. Same with Vincent Price.

Price is from the old school of acting where you don't treat anything like it's shit. Even if you're in the shittiest movie of all time, you read the lines like it's Shakespeare. Admittedly, this still won't turn shit into greatness. But, it can turn mediocrity into greatness.

THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM opens in 16th century Spain with Francis Barnard (John Kerr) riding to the castle of his late sister (Barbara Steele -- hey, she was in BLACK SUNDAY!) and her husband via stage coach. Damn, there sure are lots of horror movies where guys are heading towards castles in stage coaches and then the coach stops and refuses to take the guy the whole way. They're always like, "Woa, no way, this is as far as I go. Sorry, dude." And then they take off, and the dude has to stand there with his bags all alone in the barren country side. If I wasn't so lazy, I'd count how many times this has happened in Horrorfest so far, but it seems like roughly 1/3 of the movies feature a similar scene.

Anyway, Barnard is visiting the castle to investigate his sister's death. His brother-in-law, Nicholas Medina (Vincent Price) is clearly hiding something. He goes to great lengths to demonstrate how much he loved his late wife, but also mysteriously won't let Barnard into certain blocked off parts of the cobwebbed castle. Creepy.

The family doctor, Leon (Antony Carbone) shows up and lets some vital information slip -- he says Barnard's sister died of fright. Barnard's suspicions are fueled even more and finally Medina has to reveal the family's deep dark secret -- an elaborate torture chamber in the castle's basement. Leon reveals to Barnard that Medina witnessed his own mother's torture and live burial in this chamber at the hands of his father (also played by Price in flashbacks), and now suspects he may have accidentally buried Barnard's sister alive, as well. Medina even hallucinates that her ghost is out to get him.

The movie has a couple twist endings, so I don't want to describe too much more except to say when the last 20 minutes or so kicks in, the whole thing moves along at a breakneck speed and keeps on gaining its own momentum in a way that kind of clicks everything that went before it into place. This is clearly a low budget production, but with Price in the lead role and a snappy narrative, you barely notice -- sure, it could be lit a little moodier, and the sets, as great as they are, could be a little less wooden, and Spain could look a little less like Southern California, but that's all beside the point because the story works.

I'll admit -- this movie kept me guessing. I didn't know what the twist was going to be, before there was one, and I didn't even necessarily realize there was going to be one in the first place. Lesser movies telegraph their twists in advance. Sure, this was a mystery, so I knew there had to be a solution. But, I had no idea what the solution would be.

The pit and pendulum of the title make an appearance in the film's last act and serve as a fitting climax, expertly kept off screen and out of the dialogue until the last moment by director Roger Corman, who could whip these things off in 15 days precisely because he knew what the hell he was doing.

Horrorfest 2010: Black Sunday (The Mask of Satan)

BLACK SUNDAY or THE MASK OF SATAN, as it is also known, is the second film by Mario Bava for Horrorfest 2010. The first was BLOOD AND BLACK LACE. I liked this one better.

BLACK SUNDAY opens with the capture and destruction of a witch and her lover. At first you're prepared to think this is unfair persecution but you quickly realize in the world of BLACK SUNDAY, witches are actually witches and Satan worshippers are actually Satan worshippers. The witch has an iron "mask of Satan" gruesomely nailed onto her face for punishment, after an "S" for "Satan" is branded into her back with a hot iron.

This is the harrowing first ten minutes. The film's off to a good start, not just because of the action, but because of the beautiful black and white cinematography. This elevates the events from the world of garish exploitation to classy horror. Bava not only directed the film, but was the cinematographer as well, which I guess makes sense -- if you look at his credits, he had about a decade of experience lensing flicks for other directors before he took the reins.

Next, we get the kind of title card I live for -- "Two Centuries Later." Dr. Kruvajan (Andrea Chechhi) and his apprentice Dr. Gorobech (John Richardson) are traveling through the same country where the executions occurred on their way to a medical convention. When their stage coach loses a wheel, the two doctors explore a nearby cemetery and crypt while the frightened and superstitious driver makes the repairs. Kruvajan is attacked by a giant bat that he beats to death, and the doctors discover the burial site of the executed witch, still wearing her mask of Satan. Unbeknownst to Kruvajan, some of his blood drops onto the witche's corpse. . .

Descendants of the witch's family still live in the castle on the hill. The father Prince Vajda (Ivo Garrani ) is worried that the witch will attempt to seek revenge against his family -- after all, it has been exactly 200 years since the execution and on the anniversary of the first 100 years some terrible stuff happened. His beautiful daughter (Barbara Steele) looks exactly like the witch, whose painting looms menacingly over the main room of the castle.

The witch begins to rise slowly from the grave, reawakened by the doctor's blood. She telepathically commands her lover Javuto (Arturo Dominici) to rise, as well, to hunt down and destroy her descendants. The witch's ultimate plan is to revive herself entirely by inhabiting the body of her beautiful ancestor, but along the way she intends to destroy the rest of her descendants in the castle, starting with the Prince.

The cool thing about this movie is that it's clear that Bava wanted to imitate and pay tribute to the Universal horror films. The way the movie is shot in gorgeous black and white with generous amounts of fog and gothic sets makes it obvious that this was meant to be a throwback. It is almost a perfect imitation, lacking only the star power but making up for that with a more energetic camera, gliding around everywhere, and brief moments of strategic gore -- like when the titular mask is nailed into place and blood spurts, or when maggots crawl in the eye sockets of the decomposed witch.

There are several great sequences -- a sinister horse and carriage seemingly floating down the road in fluid slow motion, a stake driven into the eye of a living dead corpse, Javuto's rebirth from the grave, even an angry mob with torches. This movie has it all.

Watching the early passages, I thought this movie must clearly be inspired by Tod Browning's DRACULA with Bela Lugosi. Reading about the flick after it was over, I found out Francis Coppolla used this movie as inspiration for his own 90s version of DRACULA. I guess that's the ultimate form of flattery, when you seek to pay homage to the greatest and, in turn, end up being paid homage to.

Horrorfest 2010: Village of the Damned

VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED is another one I used to always see listed in all the books about horror films I used to read as a kid. I clearly remember seeing the photographs of the creepy kids with glowing eyes. But, since it didn't star a famous monster or a big horror name, I never checked it out until now.

Turns out, VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED is great. I was hooked from the first few minutes. Going in not really knowing the premise, beyond the fact that creepy kids eventually show up, was very rewarding. The opening sequence suddenly starts without warning, showing all the people of a small village in England suddenly dropping unconscious in mid-action. The film cuts all around town, showing people in the middle of phone calls, ironing dresses, driving tractors -- suddenly dropping asleep. The town is eerily silent. A record skips over and over in one of those houses.

The military is called in to check out the phenomenon and they quickly find that any living thing that steps within a certain perimeter of the village suddenly drops unconscious. Cows in fields fall on their sides, airplanes fall out of the sky, even military dudes with respirators drop to the ground if they get too close.

And, as soon as the phenomenon suddenly appears, it suddenly disappears, and everyone in the village wakes up, confused but unharmed. Otherwise, everything seems normal, until all the fertile women suddenly show up pregnant without explanation. One woman has only slept with her husband, but her kid clearly isn't his. Another has been separated from her husband for the better part of a year. The women are disturbed, the doctor is disturbed -- the whole town is abuzz. The pregnancies proceed at a fast pace, the kids are born a little larger then normal kids, and develop rapidly.

Three years later, they're all approaching adolescence and apparently abnormally genius, still with no explanation. Scientists guess maybe energy from space came down and caused the phenomenon, others think it might be some kind of sudden genetic mutation, which doesn't explain the sudden unconsciousness of the whole town. It also doesn't explain similar circumstances in other countries across the globe where similar batches of pregnancies sprang up over night.

The kids are all healthy, mature beyond their years, and appear to be Aryan clones. They also seem to have mental powers they can use both to read the minds of those around them and control others' thoughts.

One of the "fathers" of these kids is a scientist (George Sanders) who is able to persuade the military to allow him to attempt to develop these kids' mental powers into something useful and productive over a year of instruction at a special boarding school. Other cultures around the globe have done away with their strange kids (and the mothers) in one way or another, but Sanders' character believes they might have something to offer society -- they may even be the next batch of Einsteins.

Still, the kids seem to have sinister intentions. The don't appear to have any sense of morals or ethics and don't seem to indulge in emotions. Sanders' character's "son" even goes so far as to tell him he could be great if he'd just stop giving into his human feelings.

Unfortunately, people start dropping dead under mysterious circumstances, and this, combined with the strangeness of the children, leads the villagers to believe the children might be evil. A motorist almost runs over one of the children on accident, and the kids gather around his car and stare at it intently until the driver rams himself into a wall. His brother attempts to kill the children for this, and then mysteriously turns his shotgun on himself. It's not long before a an angry village mob is forming.

VILLAGE OF THE DAMND is a good thriller that unfolds at a brisk pace without ever really giving itself away. The audience is always in the dark as far as what exactly is going on, which keeps us on the edge of our seats from the first sequence, which is also probably the best sequence, with the villagers all mysteriously dropping unconscious in mid-action. But, from there, every ten minutes or so, a new mystery crops up, and that keeps us going until the unavoidably tragic end.

Horrorfest 2010: Night of the Demon

NIGHT OF THE DEMON has a weakness that is also a strength -- it shows the demon.

The reason this is a strength is easy to explain: the demon looks awesome. It's a complete scene stealer. It shows up early on and at the climax of the film, appearing in a puff of smoke, a horned, winged, clawed, sharp-toothed monster that always seems to be smoldering. It's a triumph of special effects, especially for the time. I wonder if Peter Jackson had this in mind when they designed the Balrog for LORD OF THE RINGS?

The reason this is a weakness is a little more complex. The story of NIGHT OF THE DEMON involves an American psychologist who is traveling to London to participate in a paranormal psychology convention. This is Dana Andrews playing a total skeptic. Part of his mission in London is to expose a devil worshipping cult as not only a huge fraud, but also potentially a group of dangerous killers. Of course, this puts him immediately on the cult's hit list. Meanwhile, his partner in skepticism (Maurice Denham) has recently shown up dead under mysterious circumstances.

Here's the deal: as the audience, we know Denham's character was menaced by a supernatural demon before he died. We know he visited the leader of the cult (Niall MacGinnis) begging for his life the same night that he ended up dead. Because we know this, it casts a shadow over the rest of the movie, which unfolds like a mystery with Andrews' character teaming up with his love interest, the niece of his dead partner played by Peggy Cummins. We know for a fact something supernatural is going on, so all of Andrews' skepticism, while totally logical and rational, gets a little old and annoying, fast.

The thing is, if we hadn't seen the supernatural death, the rest of the events of the movie leading up to the climax would be ambiguous enough that we'd wonder if Andrews is right to be skeptical. Since we know a demon is involved and saw the evil creature with our own eyes, we know all along Andrews, while totally making sense, is also totally wrong.

So, the demon works as a great visual. But, it kind of overshadows the good aspects of the story, which involve the battle between critical thinking and magical beliefs. The two seem kind of mutually exclusive, but here they are butting up against each other. All that said, the movie is still good. Still, it's a frustrating glimpse at what could have been even greater.

There's a creepy seance scene, a good climax involving the reapparance of the demon, and some good sparring dialog between the skeptic Andrews and the cult leader MacGinnis. MacGinnis is particularly effective, seeming at once to know more than any of the other characters while also projecting an uneasy kind of social unease. Even if he wasn't a sorcerer, he'd make you nervous to be around. He's especially unsettling in his first meeting with Andrews where he's entertaining children at his annual Halloween party dressed as a clown magician, a fake smile and bulbous prosthetic nose attached to his devilish face. Yuck, no thanks.

The movie is shot beautifully in black and white, ironically specifically towards the beginning and end of the film during the demon sequences and has an admirably bombastic score that shifts into super weird gear when the demon shows up. Reading up on the film, it appears there was a struggle between the producer of the film who wanted the demon to be visually represented and the director and writer who wanted to leave the film ambiguous. Again, despite the fact that these approaches seem to be mutually exclusive, they seem to have struck as good of a balance as they possibly could, given the circumstances -- an odd case where the striking visuals of the film are actually at odds with the intellectual ideas the movie leaves you with.

Horrorfest 2010: Re-Animator

My favorite horror films also tend to be comedies. Maybe this is because I tend to like comedies more than horror films, so if a horror film is spiced up with a little bit of comedy, it's easier for me to swallow. I'm not sure. All I know is, from BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN to EVIL DEAD and even to the satirical DAWN OF THE DEAD and the recently-seen-by-me AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON, it's becoming increasingly clear I like my bloodshed sprinkled with laughter.

So, it should be no surprise that RE-ANIMATOR was right up my ally. RE-ANIMATOR stars the great Jeffrey Combs as Herbert West, a medical student who thinks he has discovered the secret to eternal life -- a glowing green serum that raises corpses from the dead. He even tries it out on his own mentor at an institute in Switzerland. Unfortunately, he overdoses his mentor with tragic results.

Cut to a hospital in Boston, where affable medical student Dan Cain (the equally affable Bruce Abbot) idealistically trains to save lives. After hours, he's secretly dating fellow medical student Megan (Barbara Crampton) who also happens to be the daughter of the school's dean, Halsey (Robert Sampson). Seems Halsey is kind of old fashioned and frowns on fraternizing between students, especially ones who happen to be his daughter.

West shows up to continue his studies, and disagrees with the local brain surgeon Dr. Hill (David Gale). Hill has apparently ripped off some of West's late mentor's theories and, according to West, has gotten them horribly wrong. Needless to say, they immediately dislike each other.

It's not long before West is moving in with Dan, who has posted a notice for a roommate, much to the chagrin of Megan who has enough of a head on her shoulders to be creeped out by West and wonder what exactly happened back in Switzerland that made him leave in disgrace. West sets up a makeshift laboratory in Dan's basement and gets to work on his crazy experiments, starting with re-animating a dead cat.

Here's the thing: West's miracle serum has a disturbing side effect that causes any re-animated life form to immediately go on a kill-crazy rampage. So, it's awesome that it brings people and animals back to life, but it sucks that it turns them into blood thirsty zombies. Still, West and Dan eventually team up to try to perfect the serum and prove its greatness, which leads to a domino effect of bodies piling up and bloody mayhem breaking out in the hospital.

The movie works because of the balance between comedy and horror -- there's plenty of gore that the likes of Lucio Fulci would be proud of, but here it's at the service of an exciting, well paced, break-kneck story and a series of squirm inducing visual and physical jokes.

Aside from that, the rest of the movie falls squarely on the shoulders of Jeffrey Combs as the resident mad scientist, West. Man, is this guy great. He over acts and chews scenery in ways that would make fellow mad scientists like Colin Clive (FRANKENSTEIN) proud. But, he also has a great comic sensibility. It's not just an overactive "evil" performance -- it's somehow also an understated comedic one. Riddle me that one -- how do you overdo the evil and underdo the comedy -- AT THE SAME TIME? Combs does it. Why can't guys like this win Oscars? Oh well, at least he got to play a bunch of good characters in STAR TREK. Nerd alert.

The thing about Combs as West is that he's a total dick, but you also sympathize with him. In the early scenes it looks like he's going to shape up to be the villain, but eventually it's an all out war against an army of the undead, led by a headless doctor who carries his own head around and kidnaps Megan in an attempt o have his zombie way with her. By this time, it's every man for himself, and Combs emerges as somewhat of an anti hero. Not in the sense of, say, Han Solo who is an anti hero in the sense that he's out for himself and begrudgingly comes around to helping the forces of good. More in the sense of. . . I don't know. . . an arrogant asshole who just happens to be right all the time and eventually comes in handy? Sure, West causes all the problems he and Dan eventually have to mop up, but you have to admire his enthusiasm as he wields bone saws and injects glowing green serum into every dead thing he sees.

Anyway, RE-ANIMATOR is a rollicking good time that never stops for a breath. It's one of those movies where you can tell everyone had a good time making it. Just because it's a gory horror film doesn't mean it has to be grim. All the characters are likable, even if you love to hate them, and the momentum effortlessly carries you through to an ever-escalating climax featuring more bodies popping up off of slabs that you can shake a stick (or an axe) at.

Horrorfest 2010: The Vanishing

Now here's a really good one -- THE VANISHING, proof the Dutch can do horror. Even though it's mostly in French.

THE VANISHING plays on one of the most common fears: the idea that a loved one could just disappear, seemingly into thin air, at any moment. The fear is so common, most people don't even think about it. It's the kind of thing that only really enters your mind when your heart suddenly turns cold and drops into your stomach when you realize someone isn't where they're supposed to be, or they're taking a little longer than you think they should be, or. . . and then, if you're lucky, they suddenly pop up and everything is fine and you instantly forget how scared you were.

THE VANISHING is about what happens when the loved one doesn't pop up and it turns out everything is not fine, and your heart stays cold. In this case, we have a young married couple traveling through France on vacation. They stop at a busy gas station / rest stop, leave each others' sight for a brief moment, and never see each other again. Rex (Gene Bervoets) searches the truck stop in vain, but his wife Saskia (Johanna ter Steege) is nowhere to be found.

One interesting thing about THE VANISHING is that it is not really a mystery about what happened. I mean, it is, and it isn't. See, very early on, we get glimpses of a suspicious creep trying on a fake cast and suspiciously loitering around the rest stop. It's fairly clear that this is the guy responsible for Saskia's disappearance, so we know pretty early on that it's definitely foul play and not some strange conspiracy.

In fact, shortly after the opening passages focusing on the married couple, the film switches tracks and begins to focus on this creep, who turns out to be an academic family man, Raymond Lemorne (Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu). We start to figure out that the movie has jumped back in time and is now showing us Lemorne's intricate preparations to satisfy his overwhelming desire to kidnap a woman and do God knows what to one. This is some of the most interesting stuff in the movie, as Lemorne meticulously, and sometimes pathetically, plots out his crime. It's chilling to watch as he dispassionately role plays the act of tricking a strange woman into his car, first by himself and later by using his unwitting daughter as a prop, and finally as he fails on several clumsy attempts to act his plan out.

Meanwhile, 3 years after the disappearance, Rex has devoted his entire life to finding out what happened to Saskia. He's broken hearted, sure, but he's also simply obsessed with the mystery. You get the feeling that even though he loves Saskia, he'd almost rather simply know what happened to her than actually find her alive. Lemorne sees the "missing" signs around town and catches an interview with Rex on TV, and becomes obsessed as well -- with the idea of having the power to "show" what he did with Saskia to Rex. He starts sending postcards to arrange for a meeting.

So begins the third act of the film, which, of course, I can't give away, except to say that it features a battle of wills and wits between Lemorne and Rex as they finally meet and discuss what happened that day at the rest stop, how it happened, why it happened, and what Saskia's fate was, all leading to a nightmarish ending.

Most of the power of the movie lies in the suspense -- you want to know what happened to Saskia, even though you basically already know. I mean, she was clearly kidnapped by Lemorne and disposed of in some way. But how and why? Those details gnaw at you, just like the gnaw at Rex. And, even as we're introduced to Lemorne, his sociopathic behavior continues to fascinate, confuse and intrigue.

The sad truth is, there are some actions that can never really be explained, beyond blaming it on a chemical imbalance or mental disease -- the wiring goes wrong at some point. But, that same wiring is designed to make humans intellectually curious, and gives humans the desire to try to connect the dots and find motivations.

In the first shot of the film we see a stick bug, expertly blending in to its surroundings. In the last shot, we see a preying mantis, born to hunt. So, like the basest critters on the face of the Earth, mankind struggles on in an eternal game of hide and seek -- hiding from ourselves, and seeking ourselves.

Horrorfest 2010: Black Christmas

Seems like there's a lot of movies that are said to be the first slasher film. BLACK CHRISTMAS is another one of them.

This time we have a sorority house full of chicks ready to go home for winter break. The house mother is a drunk (Marian Waldman) and the most dominant sorority girl is also a drunk (Margot Kidder). The house has been getting obscene telephone calls, and as we see from the opening point-of-view scene, a stranger has broken into the house and is lurking in the shadows of the attic.

It's not long before the first girl (Lynne Griffin) disappears and is hauled into the attic by the killer where she's propped up in a rocking chair like Norman Bates' mom from PSYCHO, another flick that's supposedly the first slasher movie and predates this one by 14 years. Her dad (Jamed Edmond, Jr.) shows up on campus looking for her, and the investigation begins, led by Lt. Fuller (John Saxon of ENTER THE DRAGON and NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET fame).

Meanwhile, another sorority girl (Olivia Hussey) wants to have an abortion, but her tortured artist boyfriend (Keir Dullea) won't hear of it. He wants to get married, she wants a life. He wants to give up on his dreams, she wants to pursue hers. It's a match made in heaven.

Meanwhile, again, the bodies keep piling up and the phone keeps ringing.

Classy cast, huh? Let's review. Margot Kidder owns the first half of the movie as the drunk and sarcastic sorority sister and shows lots of real comic timing and personality. Then, she went on to play Lois Lane. Then we've got the afore mentioned John Saxon, Keir Dullea of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY fame and Olivia Hussey from Zeffirelli's ROMEO AND JULIET. These are not the thespians you'd normally expect to see popping up in a low budget horror flick and the movie is stronger for it.

The movie was directed by Bob Clark, who is probably most famous today for the nostalgic comedy A CHRISTMAS STORY. That film has gained such popularity over the years that it has supplanted even PORKY'S as the crowning achievement of Clark's resume. BLACK CHRISTMAS benefits from slightly more interesting direction than your average low budget horror film, including several creative point of view shots that couldn't have been easy to pull off. Clark also shows an obvious flair for comedy, so where some slasher movies are heartless and grim (FRIDAY THE 13th) this one at least has some good character moments.

Another strength of the film is the totally bizarre nature of the killer -- we never find out who he is, what his deal is, and why he's doing what he's doing, which makes him more realistic and frightening, in my opinion. He's simply crazy. And, listening to his insane rambling during the obscene phone calls really is chilling. Yes, it's exaggerated, but the sheer unexplained audacity of them and the fact that they seem to hint at something more gives the movie a little more depth than it otherwise might have had.

A few words on Olivia Hussey. Here's the thing: she is HOT. Like, really hot. Like, hotter than most actresses. What happened? How come she didn't have much of a career after ROMEO AND JULIET? How'd she go from that one to BLACK CHRISTMAS? They could have just made a documentary where they just had one continuous shot of her face for 2 hours and it would have been awesome. But no, she just kind of flew under the radar for decades. She's worked consistently, which is great, but. . . she should have been a super star. When people talk about famous hot chicks, Olivia Hussey should be at the top of the list every time.

I love you, Olivia Hussey.

Seriously.

Horrorfest 2010: The Omen

I tried to watch THE OMEN once before, at the behest of some friends who claimed it was great but then wouldn't stop talking while the movie was actually playing. So, I gave up trying to pay attention halfway through. They did the same thing to me while I was trying to watch DONNIE DARKO, an aborted attempt that has led to a decade of people saying the following sentence to me: "YOU haven't SEEN DONNIE DARKO?!?!?!"

Anyway, now I've seen the whole thing. THE OMEN I mean. Not the other one. And. . . it's okay.

Here's the problem with THE OMEN, and it's not entirely the movie's fault: it has been so thoroughly imitated over the years by so many terrible movies that it's difficult to watch it the way the original audience must have. It's tough to be the movie that gave birth to an entire often-times shitty subgenre.

Granted, ROSEMARY'S BABY and THE EXORCIST -- both superior films -- came first. But maybe it says something about the genre that future filmmakers chose to emulate THE OMEN most closely.

THE OMEN is one of those "creepy kid" movies, where a 5-year-old stares sullenly at the camera and that's supposed to freak you out. Sometimes it works, other times it doesn't. It works about half the time here. In this case, the creepy kid is the aptly named Damien (Harvey Stephens) who barely has one line of dialogue in the entire film. He's the son of the American ambassador to Great Britain, Robert Thorn (Gregory Peck). Or, actually, the secretly adopted son -- minutes after his actual son apparently died just after birth, Thorn was pushed into secretly adopting Damien by a priest and a few nuns, and raised the kid without ever telling his wife (Lee Remick) what happened.

It's not long before weird stuff starts happening around Damien. His first nanny publicly hangs herself at his birthday party, creepy hellhounds start showing up, every other animal gets freaked out by his presence, he freaks out if he gets near a church, and an ominous replacement nanny (Billie Whitelaw) shows up without being asked. Even Damien's mom can barely stand him, and he doesn't even do anything that annoying early on, other than misuse a billiard table.

Eventually, a priest (Patrick Troughton) shows up to try to warn Thorn that he's raising the son of Satan -- the anti-Christ, but he gets so excited and crazy about his own warnings that he just ends up creeping Thorn out. Before he can really get his message across, the priest is killed in a bizarre "accident" when a bolt of lightning knocks the spire off the top of a church and it impales him. Neat.

As always happens in movies like this, eventually the strange goings on pick up such a fever pace that even Thorn has to come around and consider the idea that his son may actually be evil. He's helped in his quest to figure out what to do about all this by my favorite character, a photo journalist played by the great David Warner. He's the only one who seems to have any intellectual curiosity about what might be going on with Damien.

On its own merit, out of context, is it any good? Well, it's a little boring and about 20 minutes too long, but other than that, if you try to pretend you're watching it in a pop culture vacuum, you can see why it was originally so effective. First, all the performances are good, from a legend like Gregory Peck all the way down to the devil kid. Secondly, the technical credits are impeccable under the direction of Richard Donner. And, there's a killer score by Jerry Goldsmith. Again, this score has been so plundered by other movies that you kind of have to try to imagine what it was like to hear it for the first time, but it really spices up the action and does a lot of heavy lifting to help the somewhat slow and bloated flick move along a little better.

One thing I don't get about this movie is how little screen time Damien actually gets. There's never a scene were Thorn sits down to actually talk to his son about what's going on. Plot wise it probably wouldn't get him very far, but Damien could have been a 1 year old for as much autonomy as the movie gives him. He rarely talks and rarely does anything on his own unless someone else is pushing or pulling him along. I'm no expert when it comes to kids, but it seems like at 5 years old Damien should have at least some kind of personality and not just act as a sinister prop for the grown ups to react to. Rosemary's baby had more personality and it was a fetus.

Another nit pick that always bugs me about movies like this, and real life, I guess, to an extent. Just like some of the preachers at the mega-churches I catch on TV sometimes, the characters in movies like this are always interpreting fantastic Biblical prophecies in the terms of modern every day life. They routinely take complex, sometimes even crazy descriptions from the Bible and write them off as references to boring stuff like politics, the economy, whatever. I don't understand why. These same people have already made the leap of faith to believe in all this seemingly impossible stuff, but then try to reign it all in by explaining all of it away? Is this so guys like me will buy it more? Or, despite their faith, do they still have no imagination? I mean, why can't a seven headed dragon just BE a seven headed dragon, for once? How come it has to be the EU or whatever? I mean, this is God we're talking about. GOD. The almighty, all-seeing, all-knowing, omnipotent, omniscient, beginning, end, all that stuff.

As the wise role model Captain Kirk once said, "What does God need with a starship?"

Horrorfest 2010: House of Wax

I am developing a theory about the old, classic horror stars and it goes like this: they're both friendly and scary at the same time. That's why they're so effective. That's why kids identify with the classic monsters, like I did when I was little.

Guys like Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, and both Lon Chaneys were both frightening and totally accessible at the same time. Part of this was because of the kinds of stories they starred in -- it was no mistake that the likes of the Wolf-Man and Frankenstein's monster were both sympathetic and horrifying. But, these actors embodied that tragic gap between identifiable and foreboding with something that's missing in a lot of horror flicks these days -- humanity.

Later on, others took on these roles, and as I was watching HOUSE OF WAX today I was thinking part of the reason it works so well is that Vincent Price is an actor who can be simultaneously likable and horrible. If he wasn't, the movie wouldn't work as well.

HOUSE OF WAX is the story of wax sculptor Henry Jarrod (Vincent Price) who operates a wax museum specializing in showing historical scenes. This is much to the chagrin of his business partner (Roy Roberts) who would rather see a museum with the kinds of chambers of horrors in competing museums that rake in the money. But, Jarrod thinks of himself as an artist and won't stoop to the levels of exploitation and pandering.

It's in these early passages that we connect with Vincent Price. It's funny, his name is so synonymous with horror that it seems odd to talk about how vulnerable and sympathetic he seems here, but he does. Sure, his obsession with his wax statues starts to get a little creepy even early on, but that can easily be overlooked as part of the eccentricities of a great artist.

In any case, it's important that we sympathize with Jarrod because his entire museum is quickly destroyed by his business partner who decides if he can't make money off of a chamber of horrors, at least he can make money off of insurance. So he burns the place to the ground. This guy's a total dick -- he floats his insurance scam idea by Jarrod, who turns it down, and then acts on the scheme within seconds of bringing it up! Almost before Jarrod can even say, "No thanks," the business partner is already busy throwing matches around and pouring kerosene on wax figures -- RIGHT IN FRONT OF JARROD! There's a struggle, the business partner escapes, and Jarrod is presumed dead, burnt alive with his wax creations.

Before the business partner can cash in fully, however, he and his mistress (Carolyn Jones) are both found dead -- murdered by a mysterious, creepy, hideously disfigured mad man who chases a witness to one of the crimes throughout the streets of turn of the century New York before she gets to safety. This is our heroine (Phyllis Kirk) who eventually unravels the mystery of these murders and the identity of the scarred killer.

Around this same time, Jarrod is revealed to still be alive -- he's in a wheel chair and can't use his hands to sculpt anymore, but he is nevertheless building a new museum with the help of his assistant, the deaf-mute giant Igor (Charles Bronson motherfuckers!). This time he's going all out with the museum, ditching his classy artsy-fartsy image and going straight for the blood and guts, complete with the creepiest chamber of horrors he can come up with. Interestingly, one exhibit features a wax figure of the dead body of his own ex-business partner, meticulously posed in a recreation of his own murder. Hmmmm. . . .

Our heroine visits the museum and begins to think a wax figure of Joan of Arc looks a little too lifelike, specifically resembling her old pal, the murdered mistress -- right down to her vacant ear piercing holes. What wax sculptor would bother to go into that much detail, she wonders? Maybe one who can't sculpt anymore and is just killing people and posing their dead bodies? Spoiler alert: that's one possibility.

The movie is notable historically as being one of the first big budget 3D films from a major studio, in this case Warner Bros. Since I saw it on DVD I didn't have a chance to check out the 3D effects, but there are a few scenes that are clearly staged specifically for 3D audiences, including a carnival barker who bounces balls off a paddle directly into the camera and a row of can-can girls who kick right in the audience's faces. Without the 3D, these moments linger a little too long, but the movie doesn't suffer from this stuff as much as some other 3D flicks I've seen over the years (FRIDAY THE 13th 3D and JAWS 3D, I'm looking at you guys).

Anyway, the movie is a good little thriller with killer production values, a good central performance from Vincent Price, and a creepy reveal in the last act that is well played enough that it might make you jump despite how obvious it is.