Horrorfest 2021: Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster

Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster
Written by R.H.W. Dillard, George Garrett and John Rodenbeck
Directed by Robert Gaffney
Starring James Karen, Marilyn Hanold, Lou Cutell and Robert Reilly
USA

My favorite show on TV right now is Svengoolie, named for the punny horror host who stars and showcases different classic horror and sci-fi movies each week. Sometimes they’re masterpieces, other times they’re so bad they’re good. This week he showed one I’d never seen before so it has become the final movie of Horrorfest 2021.

FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE SPACE MONSTER definitely falls into the “so bad it’s good” category – it’s the kind of movie you see on “worst of” lists. I remember as a  kid when I’d look at lists of horror films in books, I’d be amazed at the seemingly insane amount of “sequels” to Frankenstein and Dracula movies, including this one. At the time I didn’t realize most of these movies weren’t connected, and it was just B or Z-grade filmmakers taking the names for the marquee and then making schlock.

Don’t go looking for Frankenstein in this movie – you won’t find him. There is, however, a part man, part android astronaut named Frank who has his brain damaged and face disfigured in an alien encounter. As a result, he goes out of control and on a rampage. So, disfigured rampaging half man, half robot named Frank = Frankenstein. Get it? Nice try, guys.

You may notice I mentioned aliens above. Yep! Half this movie involves a ship full of aliens who come from a planet bereft of women to bring Earth women (preferably bikini babes) back with them. They also bring along a space monster, and Frank and the space monster eventually fight each other, hence the title.

The best character in the movie is the mischievous assistant to the alien queen, a bald imp with bat-like ears who seems to enjoy his job a little too much. This actor, Lou Cutell, went on to a modest career with small parts in mainstream flicks and TV shows, the most memorable of which, for me, is the inexplicable Amazing Larry who Pee-Wee yells at in a throw-away joke in PEE-WEE’S BIG ADVENTURE.

So that wraps up Horrorfest 2021 – 31 horror movies I’ve never seen before in 31 days. See you next year and happy Halloween.

Horrorfest 2021: Frankenhooker

Frankenhooker (1990)
Writteny by Robert “Bob” Martin and Frank Henenlotter
Directed by Frank Henenlotter
Starring James Lorinz, Patty Mullen and Louise Lasser
USA

I remember as a kid when we’d stay in hotel rooms on vacation, sometimes there’d be a little pay-per-view movie brochure along with the brochures for local attractions. It would list all the movies you could order. Of course we’d never order any, but I’d always flip through out of curiosity and one time I distinctly remember seeing FRANKENHOOKER was one of them.

Now, imagine. You’re some lonely salesman on a road trip, ready to kick back and enjoy some dirty pay-per-view. You choose FRANKENHOOKER. You’re instantly confounded by the film that unspools before you as your money goes down the drain.

But, outside that scenario, FRANKENHOOKER is surprisingly entertaining – this is another low budget Troma Team release, this time from BASKET CASE director Frank Henenlotter, who once again uses an offbeat sense of humor and authentically sleazy real-life New York locations to his advantage. Hell he even shoots a scene in Times Square! Take that, Cameron Crowe (this is a dated old man reference to a 20-year-old movie called VANILLA SKY).

The movie concerns a guy who still lives at home with his mother, doing weird experiments in his spare time (he has a living brain with an eyeball floating in a fish tank). When is fiancé dies in a tragic lawnmower accident (LOL) he decides to use all his know how to bring her back, Frankenstein-style, opting to murder sex workers and use their various body parts to help stitch her back together.

He successfully brings her to life, but unfortunately all she can do is spout sex worker catch phrases (“Wanna date?” “Lookin’ for a good time?”). Before long she’s busted out of the garage lab and is staggering around Times Square looking for johns and accidentally murdering them with her electric powers.

As you might expect, none of this is meant to be taken seriously, and although it is sleazy, it is definitely funny, especially when the titular Frankenhooker goes on her “rampage.” This is because Penthouse Pet turned actress Patty Mullen is legitimately funny. It’s a pretty demanding comedic role, requiring her to be both physically funny with the way she walks and the faces she makes, and verbally funny with the way she spouts her lines. She nails it and makes the movie. It’s a shame she didn’t get more work. Her list of credits is inexplicably short.

Horrorfest 2021: Last Night in Soho

Last Night in Soho (2021)
Written by Edgar Wright and Krysty Wilson-Cairns
Directed by Edgar Wright
Starring Thomasin McKenzie, Anya Taylor-Joy, Matt Smith, Terence Stamp and Diana Rigg
UK

Writer/director Edgar Wright returns to the horror genre for the first time since his horror comedy debut, SHAUN OF THE DEAD, which helped usher in the recent zombie craze. I guess you could say there are horror elements in HOT FUZZ, which is mostly an action movie, and THE WORLD’S END, which is mostly a disappointment, but this is his first supernatural flick since the beginning.

This is the tale of a young girl from a small rural town who idolizes the swingin’ 60s and heads to when she’s accepted to fashion design school. We learn her mother was also into fashion, but had mental problems and eventually killed herself, so early on we’re a little worried – especially after she doesn’t adjust well to her dorm situation.

But, she gets her own apartment in Soho and things start to look up when suddenly she experiences weird dreams where she’s seemingly transported to the 60s London she loves, living the life of a glamorous aspiring singer. At first these nightly trips into her life are fun and romantic, but soon they take a grim turn when it turns out the swingin’ 60s weren’t necessarily so great after all, especially when it comes to slimy guys taking advantage of and exploiting women.

Like most Wright flicks this one moves along with a satisfying beat, punctuated with great tunes and even greater images. There were moments early on when I wondered if this could really even be best picture type material. But then the horror story develops – along with the grim turn her 60s adventures take, creepy ghosts seem to bleed over into her real life and start menacing her. She tries to look into what may have happened to the woman whose life she’s experiencing in her time traveling dreams, and starts to unravel a mystery… etc.

Ultimately the final act where we find out what’s going on is the least satisfying part of the whole movie. Spoilers: we do get a happy ending, which I liked, because, to be honest, early on in the film, I was pretty wrapped up in this woman’s non-supernatural life, and could have probably watched an entire film about her going to design school without all the ghosts and been pretty happy with it. But, that’s not the movie we got. It’s crazy because the ghost stuff is actually creepy and good – it just doesn’t really resolve in a satisfying way.

It is important to note, though, that this may be the only movie ever made that features The Who’s cover of Heatwave. So it has that going for it. Which is nice.

Horrorfest 2021: The Devil Bat

The Devil Bat (1940)
Written by John Thomas Neville
Directed by Jean Yarborough
Starring Bela Lugosi
USA

Get this story: a scientist creates colognes and perfumes for a corporation. The heads of the corporation get rich off these products, but the scientist only gets a small cut. So, to get revenge, he creates a giant bat and a new cologne that attracts the giant bat. Tricking his adversaries into wearing the cologne, and then releasing the giant bat, he’s able to take them out one by one.

Crazy, right? I know! It’s so good. Just when you think it can’t get any better? Bela Lugosi is the scientist! 

This is a bargain basement production but boy is it fun, with a big crazy bat puppet that swoops down on its victims, accompanied by a dubbed-in other-worldly screeching scream. Only an intrepid reporter and his bumbling photographer companion can hope to stop the madness. Will they be able to before the devil bat eats the babes they’re making time with?

I know this isn’t top tier stuff, but I saw it sitting there on Kanopy, the website where you can watch stuff by just entering your library card, and I thought – I gotta see at least one Bela Lugosi flick this year!

Lugosi doesn’t disappoint. As evidenced by his work with Ed Wood, he gives his all in even the slightest of productions.

Horrorfest 2021: The Vampire Bat

The Vampire Bat (1933)
Written by Edward T. Lowe Jr.
Directed by Frank R. Strayer
Starring Lionel Atwill, Fay Wray, Melvyn Douglas, Dwight Frye and Maude Eburne
USA

Where has this movie been all my life? Apparently a bargain basement studio called Majestic Pictures threw this cheapie together in a desperate attempt to steal the thunder from an upcoming movie from a competitor. You see, the Lionel Atwill and Fay Wray joint THE MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM was about to come out, so Majestic swooped in, scooped them up, threw together a horror movie real quick and stole Warner Bros. thunder.

Here’s the thing, though: it’s pretty good. I guess Majestic was somehow able to get a bunch of left over sets from Universal horror films, and they hired character actor Dwight Frye to add some color to a bunch of scenes – you might remember him as a scene stealing Renfield in DRACULA or an equally scene stealing Fritz in FRANKENSTEIN (the archetype for the Igor character you are familiar with you today).

Now, Dwight Frye is one of my favorites. This movie made me decide he’s officially in my top 10 favorite actors. I mean this guy really puts the work in. And he seems modern, too. That’s what struck me in this flick – he seemed to have the look and mannerisms of a more modern actor, even though he’s hanging out in a movie from 1933.

I’ve said so much and I haven’t even gotten into the plot. Let’s see – Lionel Atwill, most famous for playing the one-armed inspector in SON OF FRANKENSTEIN a few years later – stars as a mad scientist (a role he’d repeat in many Universal movies later) who has created an artificial lifeform that needs fresh blood to live. To get this, he hypnotizes an unlucky servant to carry out murders for him. The townspeople think the murders might mean there’s a vampire in town, and local crazy guy Dwight Frye, who thinks bats are cute, seems to be the perfect scapegoat.

I’ve told things a little out of order here, but along with THE BLACK SLEEP, DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE, MARK OF THE VAMPIRE and WHITE ZOMBIE, this is one of the best non-Universal Universal-style horror films out there.

Horrorfest 2021: Halloween Kills

Halloween Kills (2021)
Written by Scott Teems, Danny McBride and David Gordon Greene
Directed by David Gordon Greene
Starring Jamie Lee Curtis, Judy Greer, Andi Matichak, Will Patton, Thomas Mann, Anthony Michael Hall and Kyle Richards
USA

When it was announced a couple years ago that director David Gordon Greene was going to be tackling the next HALLOWEEN movie, I had hope. After all, with only a couple missteps, Greene’s career has been amazing – he’s had some mainstream hits and a couple of mainstream flops, but most of his career is made up of some of the greatest American indie films ever made – lyrical and poetic character studies that really have a unique point of view, and something important to say about the world we live in and human nature.

Unfortunately, his HALLOWEEN movie in 2018 didn’t have any of that and its sequel, HALLOWEEN KILLS, doesn’t either.

Now – let’s step back a minute. Is this a serviceable HALLOWEEN sequel, forgetting any Greene potential? I guess that depends. It definitely has Michael Meyers killing a bunch of people, like the other ones. Does that make a good HALLOWEEN movie?

If you look at the original, this one has basically nothing that made it great. It lacks the simplicity of a suspenseful situation. Here, we have Michael Meyers surviving the trap set for him by Jamie Lee Curtis at the end of the last film, to go on a killing spree in town, where the townsfolk have had enough of his shenanigans and decide to form a mob to kill him. First they get picked off one by one, then they think they have him but it turns out to be the wrong insane asylum escapee and finally they do get him – except he just survives and kills a bunch of them. The end.

I guess I’m supposed to be hyped for the sequel to this sequel but we’re how many HALLOWEEN movies deep by now? A thousand?

The best thing that can be said for this movie is that it has Halloween type stuff in it and I watched it on a super blustery fall day. That was nice.

Horrorfest 2021: Chopping Mall

Chopping Mall (1986)
Written by Jim Wynorski and Steve Mitchell
Directed by Jim Wynorski
Starring Kelli Maroney, Tony O’Dell, John Terlesky, Russell Todd, Karrie Emerson, Barbara Crampton, Suzee Slater and Nick Segal
USA

The final movie of the Hollywood Theater’s all-night horror movie marathon was CHOPPING MALL. This one falls into the category of movies where I’ve seen so many parts and heard so much talk that it FEELS like I’ve seen it before. But, truth be told, I never sat through the whole thing until the marathon made me. I’m glad I did – this movie’s great.

The premise revolves around a trio of security robots developed to protect the mall, and how, after being struck by lightning (SHORT CIRCUIT style) they go crazy and hunt down a few mall employees who stayed after hour to party and get laid. These kids get their shit together pretty quick and fight back, and guess what? All this goes down in, like, 80 minutes. This is my kind of movie.

Despite the fact that much of the running time is used up by scenes constructed specifically to get the girls’ tops off, the lead of the movie merges as a seemingly timid new girl at one of the mall restaurants who turns out to be the only one with her head screwed on enough to fight a robot apocalypse, outwitting even the boys in this survival situation, while simultaneously romancing the nerdiest (and least shitty) boy of all.

This is a Julie Corman production (her husband’s Roger) so it does a lot with a little, looking pretty great for a low budget effort, and never failing to entertain. Is the premise ridiculous? Of course. Does that make the movie even better? Also of course. 

Horrorfest 2021: Rawhead Rex

Rawhead Rex (1986)
Written by Clive Barker
Directed by George Pavlou
Starring David Dukes, Kelly Piper, Niall Toibin, Cora Venus Lunny, Ronan Wilmot and Donal McCann
Ireland/UK

Another movie from the Hollywood Theater’s all-night horror movie marathon, RAWHEAD REX comes with the name Clive Barker attached to it – based on his short story, he wrote the screenplay. Now, Clive Barker is a name famous among horror circles, and usually names become famous due to the quality of their work. Right?

This one left me wondering what’s so great about Clive Barker. You see a name like Clive Barker and you think a movie might have an interesting premise. Well, get a load of this: this movie is about a guy trying to remove a cement pillar from a hole. He can’t move it. The pillar gets struck by lightning. At the same time, a monster called Rawhead appears. The implication is he came out of the hole, I guess. He goes around killing people. There’s some intrigue at a local church where the priest becomes a disciple of Rawhead and blah blah. Who cares. Long story short (too late) a monster goes around killing people.

The monster looks stupid – it’s a low-rent costume with a not-very-articulated mask. I guess this is some kind of Irish folklore, or something, because the movie takes place in Ireland and our “hero” has traveled there to research religious artifacts.

The movie’s claim to fame is a blink-and-you-miss-it scene in which the demonic Rawhead baptizes his priest servant by peeing on him. Edgy, Clive. Real edgy.

The ending made me sad because apparently the researcher “hero” whose son is killed in the course of the movie apparently has his kid buried in an Irish graveyard and then flies back home to America. Why not have your kid’s dead body shipped back home where it can be close to you and your wife and daughter? He’s gotta be buried in a cemetery in Ireland, instead, where Rawhead’s liable to pop out of the ground again at any moment, exactly as he does in the final moments of the movie?

Horrorfest 2021: Slugs: The Movie

Slugs: The Movie (1988)
Written by Ron Gantman and Juan Piquer Simon
Based on the book by Shaun Hutson
Directed by Juan Piquer Simon
Starring Michael Garfield and Kim Terry
USA/Spain

Every year (except last year – pandemic!) the Hollywood Theater down the street holds an all-night horror movie marathon in honor of Halloween. I’ve attended twice, and I attended this year. It’s a fun event where you don’t know which four movies are going to be shown, and you get more and more delirious as your sleep deprived night goes on. Even if the movies are terrible, it’s still fun. This year, three out of the four movies were movies I had never seen before, so I was able to include them in Horrorfest. SLUGS: THE MOVIE is the first one.

Positioned as a JAWS clone, only with slugs instead of sharks, SLUGS unfolds how you might expect – people are dying, no one knows why, the health inspector figures it’s slugs, the authorities thing he’s crazy, he puts together a team to hunt down and destroy the slugs once and for all, credits.

So, the movie is objectively not good, however it is never dull and has a lot of gross out moments as well as unintentionally funny moments. Also, for the most part, the special effects are pretty great.

It’s one of those movies that you begin to expect might have been made by aliens – there’s lots of scenes of humans in seemingly normal social situations, but the way the dialogue goes and the scenes develop, it plays as if it’s someone’s approximation of what they think humans might do, as opposed to something a human who has been around other humans might write and direct.

My favorite part was the overly enthusiastic score. It’s actually a pretty good score, by the standards of the time, especially for a B-movie. But it’s employed in such an odd way. Most of the suspenseful and action packed music cues end up getting used in the endless filler footage of cars either arriving places and parking, or departing places. The juxtaposition of an orchestra going full throttle while someone carefully parks their car is comedy gold.

Horrorfest 2021: Lamb

Lamb (2021)
Written by Sjon and Valdimar Johannsson
Directed by Valdimar Johannsson
Starring Noomi Rapace, Hilmir Snaer Guonason, Bjorn Hlynur Haraldsson and Ingvar Eggert Sigurosson
Iceland/Sweden/Poland

When I first saw this trailer, I thought, “Well, A24 has done it – they have officially made the most A24-ish movie ever.” You know A24, right? That indie distributor/studio that has churned out a bunch of creepy-but-artsy horror flicks over the last several years? They’re usually pretty good but also leave a lot of people walking away going, “Hey, the trailer was creepy, but nothing happened.”

This one pushed the limits, for me. Normally I am not one of the ones who leaves the theater claiming nothing happened. Usually the creepy tone is enough for me. This time, I still admired the film, but for the first time, I sort of identified with moviegoers who might feel tricked.

This is the tale of a sullen couple on a farm on Iceland who witness a seeming miracle on Christmas – a lamb is born, but from the looks on their faces, we can tell it is not a normal lamb. And, the way they take care of it, we start to suspect it’s part human. And eventually we find out – it is.

Now, my first thought was that the big surprise is going to be that the male half of the couple has been sleeping with sheep. Guess what? That is NOT the big surprise. In fact, there isn’t really any big surprise. I mean, something crazy happens at the end, but I wouldn’t call it a twist or surprise. Just… a thing that happens.

Most of the bulk of the middle part of the movie is taken up with a  love triangle as the husband’s brother arrives and tries to seduce the wife. At first you think, okay, this guy’s going to freak out about the lamb-human, but he takes to it pretty quickly. So, what could have been a plot about an outsider coming in and shaking things up for this cobbled-together family turns into… nothing?

We do eventually learn the reason this couple is so brooding and morose and seemingly detached from each other (at first) is because they recently lost a kid. Okay, so that explains why they take to this lamb-kid so quickly. But… what else?

Nothing else, I guess. There’s a little drama when the lamb’s sheep-mom keeps standing around bleating outside the nursery window, and it is a good sequence when the human-mom takes the sheep-mom out to the pasture and kills it. But then nothing comes of that, either.

So what are we left with? The premise is crazy, which I appreciate. The movie is beautiful to look at. The performances are all great. The tone and pacing are spot on. It’s just the story that’s missing. And that doesn’t always bother me. But this time it did, a little.

Horrorfest 2021: Ghost Team

Ghost Team (2016)
Written by Peter Warren
Directed by Oliver Irving
Starring Jon Heder, David Krumholtz, Melonie Diaz, Paul W. Downs, Justin Long and Amy Sedaris
USA

A print shop clerk and his depressed best pal enlist a group of misfits to go ghost hunting when they learn they have a chance to win a spot on a famous cable show.

It’s a fun premise – those ghost hunting shows are hilarious because they stress how scientific they are while being the complete opposite, and never, ever find evidence because ghosts don’t exist.

The movie’s biggest strength is the cast – they overcome the clearly low budget, to a degree. Jon Heder of Napoleon Dynamite fame leads the charge and he’s great. David Krumholtz is equally great as the depressed pal, even though this character’s plot lacks a proper conclusion. Justin Long is hilarious as a security guard who thinks he’s tough. And Amy Sedaris rounds it out as a huckster clairvoyant who’s only in it for the money – of which there is none.

There are a couple creepy moments throughout but I especially like how the story resolves itself – spoiler alert – in a completely non-supernatural way. Although I appreciated everyone’s efforts in this one, it plays like a rough draft that could have used a few revisions. I liked the good will enough to admire what was there, but I think I was enjoying the film the filmmakers wish they hade made rather than the one that actually got made. If that makes any sense.

Horrorfest 2021: Daniel Isn't Real

Daniel Isn’t Real (2019)
Written by Adam Egypt Mortimer and Brian DeLeeuw
Based on the book by Brian DeLeeuw
Directed by Adam Egypt Mortimer
Starring Miles Robbins, Patrick Schwarzenegger, Sasha Lane, Mary Stuart Masterson, Hannah Marks, Chukwudi Ilwuji and Peter McRobbie
USA

A college kid with a troubled mother reunites with his childhood imaginary friend. The imaginary friend originally visited in childhood just after the kid stumbled upon the bloody crime scene of a spree killer. At first a confident and outgoing influence on the shy kid, eventually the imaginary friend ends up symbolically locked away in a dollhouse after encouraging the kid to poison his mother.

Now, the imaginary friend’s confidence comes in handy once again as he helps navigate this kid through the ins and outs of college – like cheating on tests and romancing college girls. Of course, the imaginary friend’s nasty edge starts to come out again, and the college kid starts to investigate what might really be going on.

This movie starts out great but kinda falls apart at the climax. It’s not necessarily the explanation of what’s going on that tanks things so much as I guess the belabored and slow pace at which this stuff gets revealed. By the time the main character and his imaginary friend (who is actually an evil entity!) end up in a symbolic sword fight on a rooftop, I was overdue for end credits.

Still, for the most part, this flick’s worth a watch, with a particularly good performance from Miles Robbins as the college kid, though the flashier role is the imaginary friend, Daniel, played by Patrick Schwarzenegger, son of – you guessed it! – Arnold Schwarzenegger. Nothing against Patrick, but this movie might have gone from okay to great if someone with a little more presence or gravitas or… I don’t know what… got the flashy role. But don’t tell Arnold I said that.

Horrorfest 2021: Slice

Slice (2018)
Written and Directed by Austin Vesely
Starring Zazie Beetz, Chance Bennett, Rae Gray, Marilyn Dodds Frank, Katherine Cunningham, Will Brill, Y’lan Noel, Hannibal Buress, Tim Becker, Joe Keery, Chris Parnell and Paul Scheer
USA

Where to start with this movie? I was ready for a simple slasher comedy involving pizza delivery. Let’s see if I can describe what I got instead. First, the movie takes place in a world where ghosts exist – they’re second class citizens and only accepted begrudgingly by living people, if at all. This causes a rift in the community when a string of murders are pinned on the ghosts. Though, they’re also pinned on a werewolf. Turns out the werewolf is a pacifist. And the local pizza place sits on a gate to hell. And a local coven wants to open the gates of hell. And… well, whatever.

The point is, this movie’s all over the place. Is it any good? I guess. I mean, it’s funny. And it’s weird. And the cast is cool. It is a little clunky and probably has more plot than it really needs. It also doesn’t do much with its fantastic premise (ghosts as minorities) although I guess you could say it’s part of the charm that that aspect is just accepted as a given by everyone.

Speaking of charming, Chance Bennett, AKA Chance the Rapper, stars as the pacifist werewolf and he’s charismatic as hell. So, let’s cast Chance in more things, people. Get on it!

Horrorfest 2021: Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (2019)
Written by Dan Hagerman and Kevin Hagerman
Based on the books by Alvin Schwartz
Directed by Andre Ovredal
Starring Zoe Colletti, Michael Garza, Gabriel Rush, Austin Zajur, Natalie Ganzhorn, Austin Abrams, Dean Norris, Gil Bellows and Lorraine Toussaint
USA/Canada

Man, remember those creepy books when you were a kid? Checked out from the library and then passed around with hushed tones. The stories were mostly inspired by urban legends, and as you read them you got the sense the author wasn’t entirely serious. But the illustrations. The illustrations were the creepiest part.

Now, the books come to life (sort of) on the big screen, as writers Dan Hagerman and Kevin Hagerman attempt to cobble together a couple of the most memorable stories into a self contained narrative. They could have gone with a anthology film, here, but what they’ve done instead is interesting, as the story revolves around some young teenagers who discover a creepy book in a haunted house – as the book seems to fill itself with stories, whoever the story is about turns up dead – or disappears.

So, it’s up to our main characters to figure out what’s going on, led by a plucky heroine who wants to be a horror writer when she grows up and a kid who just drifted into town and is trying to stay off the authorities’ radars for mysterious reasons.

Oh! I forgot to mention – this is a period piece, taking place in 1968, on the eve of Nixon’s election, and in the middle of the Vietnam War. I’m not sure how well this is tied into the rest of the movie, necessarily, but it does solve some stuff like making it so the kids can’t have cell phones or the internet to help them on their mystery solving. It’s also refreshing to see a horror period piece like this that’s not trading on 90s or 80s nostalgia, although I guess 60s nostalgia is probably the other most common setting.

Anyway, does it succeed as a SCARY STORIES adaptation? Not in the traditional sense. The images don’t really remind me of the scary illustrations, and the movie’s tone doesn’t really remind me of the author’s sense of humor. But it does work as an adaptation in the sense that it’s a good movie on its own merit, and perfect for Halloween because it has a variety of scares and is not R-rated, so kids who can take a little scary stuff can enjoy it with the rest of the family.

Horrorfest 2021: One Cut of the Dead

One Cut of the Dead (2017)
Written and Directed by Shin’ichiro Ueda
Starring Takayuki Hamatsu, Mao, Harumi Syuhama, Yuzuki Akiyama and Kazuaki Nagaya
Japan

You think the name says it all but… wait. Am I getting into spoilers in the first sentence? I guess so. Don’t read this review if you don’t want to be spoiled. Just know the movie’s worth watching, but you have to stick with it. Don’t give up in the first half hour.

Okay. Is everyone gone? Am I alone? All right. I’ll talk about the movie now – ONE CUT OF THE DEAD is a movie within a movie within a movie that starts off as a found footage zombie movie, all shot in one take, as zombies ironically attack a film crew who are in the midst of making a zombie movie. This goes on for around a half hour, or maybe a little more, until suddenly… roll end credits.

Then the REAL movie begins – I went into this thinking the opening sequence was the only gimmick the movie had to offer. I suspected there was something up the movie’s sleeve the way people told me about it, I just didn’t know exactly what. So, I watched the whole opening sequence thinking this was all the movie was going to be – a mediocre zombie movie where the only main difference between it and its predecessors is that it was all done in one shot. So, while I found parts of it to be clunky or odd, I kept myself entertained paying attention to how it was all one shot and thinking about how difficult it must have been to make.

Turns out the REST of the movie is about the characters within the movie mounting this production, and then executing it. So the first half hour of the movie is the finished product – you see that first. The middle half hour is pre-production, then the last half hour is production. The last half hour is the best part, as everything starts to come together – you suddenly begin to realize why all the stuff you found clunky or odd in the first half was the way it was, as the film crew desperately tries anything to keep the live, one shot zombie broadcast going.

And this is where the most unexpected thing happens – the movie turns into a heartwarming “hey everybody, let’s put on a show!” type of flick, where you’re rooting for the underdog film crew to pull this off and marveling at how they made it happen, while also being amused with all the last minute changes they have to make on the fly.

Stay for the end credits, where you’ll see the ACTUAL crew shooting the FAKE crew. This thing has more layers than INCEPTION.

Horrorfest 2021: Summer of 84

Summer of 84 (2018)
Written by Matt Leslie and Stephen J. Smith
Directed by Francois Simard, Anouk Whissell and Yoann-Karl Whissell
Starring Graham Verchere, Judah Lewis, Caleb Emery, Cory Gruter-Andrew, Tiera Skovbye and Rich Sommer
Canada

Ah, nostalgia. Much like that first FEAR STREET movie, SUMMER OF 84 roped me in easily as the 1980s setting both reminded me of my own childhood as well as all the movies it wanted to remind me of – mostly of the Spielbergian variety, even if the plot comes by way of Hitchcock.

Here we have your requisite group of 4 80s teens on their bikes: the normal guy you identify with, the “cool” guy, the nerdy guy and the tubby guy. The normal guy thinks a local cop he delivers the paper to might be the serial killer who is terrorizing the town, making young boys disappear. But everyone tells him he’s crazy. Still, with his pals and his ex-babysitter, he sets off to find the truth.

This is an interesting juxtaposition: unlike other 80s nostalgia vehicles like SUPER 8 (if you even remember that movie – I feel old even referencing it) and STRANGER THINGS, there’s no supernatural element – so, while there’s plenty of fun to be had with this movie, when you boil it down, it IS about a serial killer who kills children. So, a little more somber than some of this other stuff, which works to the movie’s credit until the climactic finale, which left me unsatisfied and upset.

I’m not one of those guys who always wants a happy ending or to have everything tied up in a bow, but some endings work and others don’t, and this one doesn’t. The tone of the movie is all over the place, but that might not have mattered if it had a solid ending that brought everything together. Instead the ending seems to make everything worse. But the (bike) ride to get there was pretty good.

Horrorfest 2021: Revenge

Revenge (2018)
Written and Directed by Coralie Fargeat
Starring Matilda Lutz, Kevin Janssens, Vincent Colobe and Guillaume Bouchede
France

A straight forward title for a straight forward movie, the kind that has been made many times before – a woman is attacked and seeks revenge on her attackers. In this case, we start off with a woman and the very wealthy man she is having an affair with, in his secluded vacation home in the middle of the desert. Turns out the plan was to hang out with her there for a couple days, send her home, then go on a hunting trip with his buddies. But his buddies arrive a day early and plans change.

One of the buddies rapes her after he mistakenly thinks she’s coming on to him, and the other buddy looks the other way and lets it happen while the man of the house is away. When he returns, the first twist is that his solution is to do away with her, rather than defend her from his friends. The next twist is that she survives a drop off of a cliff, impalement on a tree, and brings herself back to life with the powers of peyote, just enough to hunt the men down one by one.

One thing that differentiates this film from others that have preceded it is that it is directed by a woman. Another thing is that one of the main antagonists is not a stranger to the assaulted woman, but is actually having a romantic relationship with her, which is more in line with reality. 

There’s still plenty of objectification here, though. So, I dunno if this is necessarily any better than the exploitation that has preceded it, although I guess it is more slickly made and looks a lot better, with a lot more style than most of this stuff. And, while it does dwell on the lead’s body a lot, it does not dwell on the rape scene too much, which is a nice change of pace.

Horrorfest 2021: Cheap Thrills

Cheap Thrills (2014)
Written by Trent Haaga and David Chirchirillo
Directed by E.L. Katz
Starring Pat Healy, Sara Paxton, Ethan Embry and David Koechner
USA

Here’s another one I wrote off as an edge-fest. The guys from RedLetterMedia reviewed this a while back and it seemed like the kind of premise you’d come up with as a teenager who wants to shock someone, but then move on from once you realize you’re not the first person to think of crazy stuff. Turns out it’s pretty good – I guess I should stop writing things off, huh?

It’s about this dude who is down and out – he has a wife and kid to support, he’s having trouble making rent and he just got laid off. So he goes to a bar to have a drink, meets an old buddy who he shares his woes with, and then the two of them end up embroiled in a strange game with a couple sitting in a nearby booth – a brash rich guy and his sullen trophy wife.

What kinda game you ask? Well, it starts off innocuously enough, with the rich guy offering money for our two heroes to perform stunts – like, go over there and say something to get that woman to slap you. But things escalate quickly to the point where things like breaking and entering and self harm are involved.

There two things that keep this movie from just being a complete “look how edgy we are” compilation. The first is the performances. All four leads are great – I’m not too familiar with Pat Healy or Sara Paxton, but Ethan Embry was almost unrecognizable in his role and people should hire him for more stuff, and this was probably the best David Koechner performance I’ve ever seen – he’s good at what he does, the blowhard guy, but this character has enough other shades to show Koechner’s real range, and in a less capable actor it might not come off.

The second thing is the fact that the movie allows the characters to be conflicted about what’s going on. It allows them to really be hurt, to change their minds, to get freaked out. This movie would fail if the underlying joke was “look, these people are so checked out they’re not fazed by anything, isn’t humanity terrible.” Not at all – for the most part, this movie is happy to indulge in all the implications of what these people are doing, for better or worse, right up until the last shot, which is both darkly comic and devastating.

Horrorfest 2021: The Stepfather

The Stepfather (1987)
Written by Donald E. Westlake
Directed by Joseph Ruben
Starring Terry O’Quinn, Jill Schoelen and Shelley Hack
USA

When I saw “written by Donald E. Westlake” in the opening credits, I knew I was in for a treat. Westlake is one of the many paperback crime fiction authors I enjoy reading. I never realized he wrote movies, too, though it makes sense. And THE STEPFATHER plays like a page turner.

The great thing about this movie, aside from Terry O’Quinn’s performance as the stepfather, which is superbly creepy, is that you know for a fact from the very beginning what’s going on. There’s no question – this guy murdered his whole family, changed his identity, and is now moving on to insert himself into a whole new family – this time a widow with a teenage daughter. The teenage daughter doesn’t trust him, and we know she shouldn’t – but no one in the movie does.

So, it’s fun to watch as the daughter goes from just sorta not liking the guy to investigating his background, putting some things together, beginning to think she might really be on to something – all while everyone else tells her she’s crazy, get over it, move on. When’s this guy going to get exposed? Will he?

You also get to see the stepfather’s MO unfold – as soon as he feels like he’s done with this family, he begins to set up his next identity and potential family before leaving, cultivating a new job and relationship in another town while continuing his life with his current family. What a creep.

So, this is a nice, simple, efficient thriller – just like a Donald E. Westlake paperback.

Horrorfest 2021: Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale

Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale (2010)
Written and Directed by Jalmari Helander
Starring Onni Tommila, Jorma Tommila, Per Christian Ellefsen, Tommi Korpela, Rauno Juvonen, Ilmari Jarvenpaa, Peeter Jakobi, Jonathan Hutchings and Risto Salmi
Finland/Norway/France/Sweden

I remember when this Christmas-themed horror movie was playing just down the street at the Hollywood theater. At the time I thought, “I get it. Edgy Christmas horror movie, Santa’s evil.” And, I wrote it off. Since then, the Hollywood keeps bringing it back (almost) every Christmas, so I started to think maybe there was something there, after all. So, I’m glad I finally got around to watch it – even if it’s Halloween, not Christmas.

This is the tale of a little kid living in Finland whose father makes his living running a reindeer slaughterhouse. A lot of people in the small community apparently rely on a good reindeer hunting season to survive, and as the movie starts we find that the reindeer have mysteriously been killed before they were able to be rounded up. There’s suspicion a mysterious company conducting some sort of archaeological or geological dig on top of a nearby ominous mountain might have something to do with this.

I’m getting too into the plot here – the point is that the little kid begins to suspect Santa is not the benevolent guy Coca-Cola would have you think, but is actually more like his evil monstrous counterparts from older folktales, who wants to come and punish children, or take them away. He becomes convinced the digging on the mountain has disturbed Santa in some way, and his suspicions seem to be coming true when a naked old man with a white beard is found in one of his family’s wolf traps.

From here, the movie takes many surprising turns – I figured at this point, this is it – this creepy old man they’ve caught is Santa, he’s going to go on a killing rampage, and the kid will eventually stop him. But, it’s not as simple as that, and there are a few surprises before the somewhat convoluted ending.

The main thing about this movie pleasantly surprised me was that it looks like a million bucks. I figured this would be a low budget affair but it looks like a big box office movie, with great cinematography, lighting, special effects – it takes place on a big scale, making everything seem a little more grand and important than I thought it would be. At times, it feels like an early Spielberg movie – there are scares, but there’s also plenty of childlike wonder and adventure. It’s not quite the cynical horror film I assumed it would be, although the ending “joke” kinda goes that direction at the last minute.

Horrorfest 2021: Elvira: Mistress of the Dark

Elvira: Mistress of the Dark (1988)
Written by Sam Egan, John Paragon and Cassandra Peterson
Directed by James Signorelli
Starring Cassandra Peterson, W. Morgan Sheppard, Daniel Green, Jeff Conaway, Susan Kellermann and Edie McClurg
USA

Elvira was everywhere in the 80s but, like many characters who become famous more for their personality than for whatever vehicle they’re in, as a kid I was often confused as to what she was. I got that she was a horror hostess, but how could she have a movie then? I’d see the big standee of her tied to the stake in the local video store and wonder what an Elvira movie could possibly be about. Was it for adults? Kids? Why did my Intergalactic Trading Co. catalog have so much Elvira merchandise in it? It was a mystery.

Now that I’m an old man, I’ve finally seen her feature film debut, and I have to say I liked it a lot. It starts off with her getting fired from her horror hosting gig (for turning down the lecherous advances of her gross boss), and moves on to her inheriting a house from a deceased relative she didn’t know she had, in a small conservative town where she stops off on her way to seek fame and fortune in Vegas with a stage show.

The movie exists in kind of a Pee-Wee Herman-esque parallel reality where it’s sort of the 1950s all the time – the teens in town are starving for rebellion, and the local city council simply won’t have it. Luckily here comes Elvira to shake things up.

It’s funny how these counter-culture icons that break into the mainstream always stand for positive ideals like inclusiveness and being true to your own weird self, while the mainstream society they break into only cares about maintaining the status quo. Elvira doesn’t look like a role model, but as the titular (get it?) Mistress of the Dark, she spreads a liberating message to have fun, don’t take yourself too seriously, and don’t worry about what other people think.

 

Horrorfest 2021: Prom Night

Prom Night (1980)
Written by William Gray
Directed by Paul Lynch
Starring Jamie Lee Curties and Leslie Nielsen
Canada

What? I’ve never seen PROM NIGHT?!?! That’s right, I’d never seen probably one of the most famous slashers ever, let alone its remake. Let’s talk about the original, though, about a group of kids who bully one of their friends to death and then live with the guilt right up until prom night, when someone comes back for bloody revenge.

This movie has a few things going for it that most slasher movies do not. One of them is Jamie Lee Curtis. Yes, I know, she’s the star of HALLOWEEN, one of the movies who invented the entire genre, but other than inferior Halloween sequels and remakes, PROM NIGHT marks her only other appearance in the slasher genre and having a strong lead like her goes a long way towards making a potentially forgettable flick memorable. Oh, wait. I just looked it up. I guess she’s in TERROR TRAIN, too. Better put that on my watch list.

The other thing this movie has going for it is that it’s not only trying to ape the slashers that came before it, but it’s also trying to be the next SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER. So what that means is you get some super groovy disco dance sequences, featuring Jamie Lee Curtis, who is no slouch. She’s no John Travolta either, though she does eventually bust a move with him in PERFECT (see Romancefest 2012 for details).

There are some strange narrative dead ends in the flick, I guess trying to be red herrings, but for the most part it’s a pretty good slasher yarn, with a particularly good opening sequence in an abandoned hospital and a mystery about who the killer is that will keep you guessing. So, come for the killings but stay for the dancing.

Horrorfest 2021: Bloodsucking Freaks

Bloodsucking Freaks (1976)
Written and Directed by Joel M. Reed
Starring Seamus O’Brien, Luis De Jesus, Viju Krem, Niles McMaster, Dan Fauci, Alan Dellay and Ernie Pysher
USA

My first reaction here was to say the title says it all. But I guess it doesn’t. Are the main characters of this movie freaks? Yes. Do they suck blood? Well, technically, no, I guess not. There’s all manner of torture here. But not really any bloodsucking. So, while the title does not say it all, it sorta feels like it does.

But I’ll keep going anyway! This is the tale of a pretentious artist who wants to make it in the realm of Broadway theater, spending his time and energy on off, off Broadway productions in which he tortures and murders real victims in front of live audiences who assume everything’s an elaborate put on. His ambitions: move this shit to Broadway.

To that end, he captures a critic who doesn’t like his work and kidnaps a ballerina for the dancing portion of his show – a name that will light up the marquee! She happens to be dating a football star, who hooks up with a cop to look into what exactly is going on here.

What exactly IS going on here? You’ve got a sadistic guy kidnapping and torturing these people, with the help of a couple assistants. Plus, he keeps a dungeon full of naked cannibal women in his basement. Oh wait… cannibals. I take it back, I guess maybe this movie has bloodsucking in it after all.

Well, whatever, this is ultra z-grade low budget stuff the likes of which only Troma would release – and they did! If you can make it through the endless torture scenes (with creative but bargain basement special effects) without falling asleep, you might be able to enjoy what I consider the only redeemable part of the movie, which is the oddly funny domestic relationship between the haughty dungeon master and his eager diminutive assistant. To the movie’s credit, this stuff is played for laughs on purpose, and ultimately the whole thing is supposed to be a satire of pretentious artists. Just, not a very good satire. 

Horrorfest 2021: Ichi the Killer

Ichi the Killer (2001)
Written by Sakichi Sato
Based on the manga series by Hideo Yamamoto
Directed by Takashi Miike
Starring Tadanobu Asano, Nao Omori, Shinya Tsukamato, Alien Sun and Sabu
Japan

This ultra violent crime thriller, based on a series of Japanese comic books, was available on the horror movie streaming site, Shudder. You might say, hey, this isn’t a horror movie! It doesn’t belong in Horrorfest! Unfortunately, you’re wrong. See, I program Horrorfest, and I programmed this movie, therefore it’s horror.

Kidding aside, I think it sorta counts because let’s be honest – what is this movie most famous for? The insane amount of gore, that’s what. Normally that’s relegated to slasher movies, but this time it’s in a gangster movie. Still, I say if you’re watching something just to see the gore, it’s a horror movie. So there.

The plot is a little convoluted, but I’ll try to keep it simple – suffice it to say you’ve got a bunch of warring factions of gangsters and they get played against each other by a guy who sicks a serial killer he has manipulated under his control after them.

This is one of those ones I’ve heard about for years because of how extreme it is – Tarantino’s clearly a fan. It is extreme with some very hard to watch scenes, including a torture one early in the film. There are other gory scenes that are more laughable thanks to the turn of the century CGI in use. Everything is so over the top that you have to assume we’re in the realm of satire, though I’m not certain any sort of real message lands with any decisiveness.

If you want to see a Takashi Miike horror film, I recommend AUDITION instead, covered in Horrorfest 2010.

Horrorfest 2021: Titane

Titane (2021)
Written and Directed by Julia Ducournau
Starring Agathe Rousselle, Vincent Lindon, Garance Marillier and Lais Salameh
France

The writer/director of RAW returns with TITANE. And guess what? This one’s even crazier than the last one! Once again the tale of a woman with unique tastes, TITANE follows a car show model who suffered a brain injury in a car accident as a child and now finds herself both sexually attracted to cars and drawn to murder. That’s right, she’s a serial killer! And if you don’t want any spoilers, stop reading right now, because I’m going to spoil everything.

Why am I going to spoil everything? Because, it’s hard to talk about what I like about this movie otherwise. See, I had no idea what to expect, going into this movie – yes, the trailer looked crazy and the movie clearly had violence in it, and half naked women writhing around on cars, I knew all that stuff. But most of that stuff is in the first act, and after that, the movie blew my mind with where it went.

When the heat’s on, our serial killing heroine decides to change her appearance in order to pass herself off as the now-aged-up missing kid of a local fire chief. The fire chief takes her in, even though it’s fairly clear she’s not his kid, and this starts a whole second half of the movie I didn’t see coming at all.

Another thing I didn’t see coming was the implication that, after apparently having sex with a car, our heroine (or anti-heroine?) is now apparently pregnant with what you have to assume might end up being a half human/half car baby. The movie doesn’t quite go that far, but it might as well.

This twist actually ended up making this movie a good companion piece with another horror flick that came out right around the same time, LAMB, which I’ll also review for Horrorfest 2021. So, while RAW and TITANE make a good double feature, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to do a LAMB and TITANE double feature, too.

Horrorfest 2021: Raw

Raw (2016)
Written and Directed by Julia Ducournau
Starring Garance Marillier, Ella Rumpy and Laurent Lucas
France/Belgium

Previously a vegetarian, a teenage prodigy discovers an insatiable desire for raw meat, eventually including human flesh, as she makes her way through initiation week as a new student at veterinary school.

RAW has been on my list of movies to watch for a while, and I figured now’s as good a time as any since writer/director Julia Ducournau’s new flick, TITANE, just came out. Why not see both in one night? Make it a body horror double feature!

Turns out, everyone’s right: this movie’s good. It ends up playing as a sort of coming of age story, with the raw meat/cannibalism thing standing in for any number of scary changes that might happen to you as you go through puberty or move away from home for the first time or enter into your first sexual relationship, or whatever the case may be. 

Of course, you might say, yes, but there’s nothing wrong with any of those things, but eating raw meat is harmful to yourself and eating people is frowned upon. And to that, I say, you’re right! But sometimes you can make the best points by super exaggerating, especially in fiction. And sometimes the way something feels is more important than the reality of the situation. Sometimes, a perfectly normal thing that you’re going through might cause you to feel shame or feel like you’re out of control or like you’re being drawn to something dangerous, even if you shouldn’t feel that way. But when you’re a teenager you don’t really have a lot of first hand experience with things, other than what others have told you you’re “supposed” to feel, and if you’re not feeling that, then what’s wrong with you? Probably nothing. Probably…

Horrorfest 2021: The Fear Street Trilogy

The Fear Street Trilogy (2021)

Based on the books by R.L. Stine

Directed by Leigh Janiak

USA

Fear Street Part One: 1994

Written by Phil Graziadei and Leigh Janiak

Starring Kiana Madeira, Oliva Scott Welch, Benjamin Flores Jr., Julia Rehwald, Fred Hechinger, Ashley Zukerman, Darrell Britt-Gibson, Maya Hawke, Jordana Spiro and Jordyn DiNatale

Fear Street Part Two: 1978

Written by Zak Olkewicz and Leigh Janiak

Starring Sadie Sink, Emily Rudd, Ryan Simpkins, McCabe Slye, Ted Sutherland, Jordana Spiro, Gillian Jacobs, Kiana Madeira, Benjamin Flores Jr., Ashley Zukerman, Oliver Scott Welch, Chiara Aurelia and Jordyn DiNatale

Fear Street Part Three: 1666

Written by Phil Graziadei, Leigh Janiak and Kate Trefry

Starring Kiana Madeira, Ashley Zukerman, Gillian Jacobs, Olivia Scott Welch, Benjamin Flores Jr. and Darrell Britt-Gibson

THE FEAR STREET TRILOGY is an impressively ambitious series of direct-to-Netflix movies based on the works of young adult horror writer R.L. Stine. I remember the series of books from when I was a kid, though I didn’t read many of them. They always looked cool, though. Here we’ve got a horror tale that spans many decades, even centuries, in small town Shadyside, where it seems like bad stuff never stops happening, usually in the form of spree killers who pop up every decade or so. Annoyingly for the denizens of Shadyside, their town is right next door to the prosperous Sunnyvale, where everyone’s rich and no one’s a spree killer.

We start in 1994, where our heroine is a high schooler dealing with the confusion of her relationship – she has a girlfriend who is less open about her sexuality. Her nerdy brother is obsessed with studying the history of crazy crimes in their town, and it isn’t long before bodies start piling up and there seems to be a supernatural element, revolving around a witch who was burned there hundreds of years ago.

You might call it pandering, but the 90s installment had me VERY early on with the endless series of great needle drops, ranging from tunes you’d expect to others I thought were slightly more obscure, but was pleased to hear anyway, because I’m an old man who is trapped in the past.

Speaking of the past, part two takes us to the 1970s where a bunch of Shadyside kids and Sunnyvale kids are at the same summer camp. This middle installment is the most straight forward of the three, because it follows the template pretty accurately for a late 70s/early 80s teen slasher flick. There is some other more complex stuff delving into the witch mystery and history of the town a little more, but ultimately this middle section is the least interesting of the series.

Finally we go back to 1666 for the final installment, where we finally meet the witch in question who turns out to be the victim of foul play. Even though you know there’s got to be a mystery, I was still surprised with the outcome. The finale switches back to the 90s again where the teen heroes (and some allies they pick up along the way) put an end to the curse of Shadyside forever.

When the whole thing came to a close I had to applaud the filmmakers for the insane amount of imagination that went into this thing – sure, it relies a lot on the famous clichés and themes of many different kinds of horror stories/movies, but it is not content to just re-tell those stories. There’s always a twist, an added element or an interesting character to make things fresh and interesting.

Horrorfest 2021: Bad Hair

Bad Hair (2020)
Written and Directed by Justin Simien
Starring Elle Lorraine, Jay Pharoah, Lena Waithe, Kelly Rowland, Laverne Cox, Chante Adams, James Van Der Beek, Usher Raymond IV, Blair Underwood and Vanessa Williams
USA

When there’s a shake up in management at an African American-centered MTV-esque cable channel (think late 80s/early 90s BET), a young assistant has to change her image in order to keep her job. First stop: a high priced salon to get her hair done. After a nasty childhood incident where she tried to straighten her hair, our heroine has opted to let it go natural. Now it’s either get a super pricey weave or her glamorous new boss, an ex top model, might get rid of her.

So, how’s this a horror movie, then? Well, without giving away too much, the narrative includes traditional African American folklore from a book of slave stories, including one about evil blood thirsty hair with a mind of its own. So, there’s a lot going on here – the movie’s funny because the “bad hair” premise is funny, but it has more going on than that. There’s so much about this woman’s self image, her struggle to follow her dreams but also fit in but also please her academic father, and then on top of all that the movie does not at all ignore the implications of racism in everything within this society, right down to how someone wears their hair and what lengths they have to go through in order to torture their hair into the shape others want it to be.

I’m probably not articulating it super well, but I will say writer/director Justin Simien (DEAR WHITE PEOPLE) definitely deals directly with all of the implications this premise brings up, and that makes this much more than what you assume a movie about killer hair might otherwise be. Plus, it’s shot on film, which is rare these days.

Horrorfest 2021: The House That Jack Built

Trick or treat! Time for Horrorfest, where I watch and review 31 horror movies I’ve never seen before in the 31 days of October. Some years I have themes. Remember the Wes Craven year? And the Hammer year? And the Universal year? And the other Universal year? Of course you do! This year, I don’t have a theme! Spooky! Anyway, let’s get to it.

The House That Jack Built (2018)
Written and Directed by Lars von Trier
Starring Matt Dillon, Bruno Ganz, Uma Thurman, Siobhan Fallon Hogan, Sofie Grabol, Riley Keough and Jeremy Davies
Denmark/France/Germany/Sweden

This is a slow moving and brutal study of a serial killer who views his killings as works of art. It is narrated by the killer himself, seemingly being interviewed by someone (or something – I don’t want to spoil it, but you find out in a pretty crazy ending).

Now, this sounds kinda pretentious, and maybe it is – this is Lars Von Trier after all! But, I got the impression that the movie’s in on the joke and is actually sort of making fun of the protagonist. In other words, it allows him to go on at length about his philosophies on art, but doesn’t necessarily take him seriously. There seems to be an undercurrent of, “Hey, this is all bullshit.” Which is a good take on the subject – if it tried to play off that killing can actually be art, then it’d just be edgy schlock.

Of course it’s really just a metaphor for the creative process, but, even then, it’s nice that it kind of takes the piss out of the creative process. The creative process is important and all, but you don’t want to let it get too precious, or else you’ll never end up creating anything. You’ll just be sitting around thinking about how precious the creative process is.

The main thing with this movie, though, is Matt Dillon’s performance – he plays the serial killer, and it’s worth watching for him alone. Sometimes I forgot it was even him as he melted into this monstrous (and banal) character. So, good job, Matt Dillon!

Romancefest 2021: Love and Basketball

Written and Directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood

Starring Omar Epps, Sanaa Lathan, Alfre Woodard, Dennis Haysbert

USA, 2000

This love story set in the world of basketball follows a couple from childhood to adulthood, dividing their lives, relationship and career into four "quarters" -- before high school, when they first meet as kids; during high school, when they're both playing for the school teams and hoping to get into USC; college, when they're both playing for USC and after college, when they both go pro.

Their lives are intertwined from the first day they meet, as her family moves in next to his. He's the son of a pro NBA player who wants to follow in his father's footsteps. She's a huge Magic Johnson fan who wants to be the first woman in the NBA.

One things that goes a long way to making this movie more memorable than most of its kind is that it takes people's jobs and careers into account. And I don't mean just token mentions, or plot devices like someone has to stay late at the office or go on a business trip or something like that. I mean like the movie really takes the goals and ambitions of the two leads into mind, and shows the true consequences, hurdles, successes, etc. that might come along with them, in a very specific way. 

Although this movie is not so tied to the sports backdrop that the outcomes of games become important plot points, it is super realistic about the world of sports, and that in and of itself is inherently interesting because you don't often see that in movies. You might get glimpses of it, but this is a movie where the writer/director clearly understands her subject and exploits her knowledge of that subject to make the movie's point of view as fresh and unique as possible.

Romancefest 2021: Portrait of a Lady on Fire

Written and Directed by Celine Sciamma

Starring Noemie Merlant and Adele Haenel

France, 2019

This movie was in theaters right around the time everything shut down for the pandemic, so I never got around to checking out until now. Highly critically acclaimed, this is the story of a young painter in the 18th century who travels to an island in Brittany to paint the portrait of a young woman on the verge of being married off. She refused to pose for the previous painter who visited, and her sister possibly killed herself shortly before that to avoid being married off. So, this young woman isn't coming into the happiest of circumstances in the lonely estate on the windswept island.

I knew the broad strokes of this coming into the movie, and based on the old dark house, the ominous warnings of the backstory and the images I'd seen of women in period costumes, for whatever reason I assumed this was going to be a movie about treachery, secrets and back stabbing. That some horrible secret would be learned and it would destroy everyone's lives, or everyone would be poisonous to each other, stuff like that.

I was happy I was wrong. I specifically liked the middle passage of the movie where, left in the home by themselves, the painter, her subject, and the maid, all sort of form their own little family together, enjoying time in the house together, time on the island together, helping each other with their problems, taking things into their own hands, feeling some sense of freedom.

The painter and her subject eventually admit they're in love with each other and begin a secret relationship, which is doomed due to the timing and circumstances. Still, they have this brief window where they're able to freely express their love for each other, and even before this, they have an unspoken love/lust for each other, as they seduce each other just be stealing glances or probing each other with conversation. Just finding someone to talk to can be so exciting.

Along with all of this, the movie is a beauty to behold, not just thanks to the locations and the actresses but also because of the way the director is able to make painting cinematic. We get tight closeups of the painter's canvas, and get a clear sense of how the layering of colors works, what the brush on the canvas really feels like. The thing you never notice about paintings until you see them in person is the fact that they're three dimensional, that texture is involved. This movie gets that texture across in a way few do, which sets it apart and makes it memorable.

Romancefest 2021: The Broken Circle Breakdown

Directed by Felix van Groeningen

Written by Carl Joos and Felix van Groeningen

Based on the play by Johan Heldenbergh and Mieke Dobbels

Starring Johan Heldenbergh and Veerle Baetens

Belgium, 2012

This movie bounces around chronologically through the relationship of two Belgian bluegrass musicians who meet, fall in love, make music together, make a child together, build a life together and then lose everything when the child dies of cancer.

It sounds depressing, and it is, though it does not wallow in misery quite the way that I thought it might, going into it. Showing not just the trials of caring for a child with cancer, but also the prologue to that and the aftermath, especially in no particular order, helped put things into a little bit of a context that offered more than just misery, though the movie, to its credit, also does not condescend.

One interesting thing about this movie is that it takes a couple that might otherwise be idealized in other media, whether it's a music video or even an indie flick, and shows them as real people. We've got a couple of quirky Belgians who love Americana, live on a farm, make their own updates to their ramshackle house, hang out with their friends from the band doing impromptu bluegrass jam sessions around the camp fire. In the wrong hands, this would all turn into a festival of twee, but this movie is not about that -- it's about how the trappings of one's life, no matter how specific, are not the point. The point is, it's still a life.

That said, I can't think of a more specific take on this than looking at it through the lens of a Belgian bluegrass musician who romanticizes America, especially when politics and religion come into the equation. I was having trouble putting this into words the other day, but I read a blurb about this movie that put it nicely: he's an atheist romantic and she's a religious realist. In other words, he's aggressively torn up about this terrible situation to the point where he has to scream about these injustices into the void. He behaves completely emotionally over a logical conclusion: there is no afterlife. 

She, on the other hand, believes in spirituality, and is able to accept what has happened and try to move on. He suspects, for instance, she might entertain the fantasy that their daughter might come back to visit them in the form of a bird, and feels the need to scream at her that that's not going to happen. On the other hand, even though you might argue that's a fanciful belief, she is able to somewhat coldly and logically move on with her life.

Cold is the wrong word. Obviously she's torn up, just as he is. It's just that he screams his passion from the roof tops and she keeps hers inside. It's two extremely different ways of dealing with grief and of course you could argue that the best way to do it is somewhere in the middle there. Maybe if they could have stayed together, they would have balanced each other out, eventually.

There aren't any easy answers, because this movie is as messy as real life, and based on characters rather than plots. There is, however, lots of great bluegrass music, performed by the actors themselves, and even if you don't want to sit through the movie I recommend checking out the soundtrack.

Romancefest 2021: Il Mare

Directed by Lee Hyun-seung

Written by Yeo Ji-na, Kim Eun-jung, Kim Mi-yeong, Wona Tae-yeon

Starring Jun Ji-hyun and Lee Jung-jae

South Korea, 2000

The premise to this time travel story might sound familiar to you: a woman in living in the present and a man living in the past, separated only by a few years, find they're able to communicate with each other through a seemingly magical mail box located at a house by the sea she just moved out of and he just move into.

Communicating, seemingly impossibly, through time, they begin to fall in love with each other, try to figure out ways to meet, find it's more complicated than they realize, and then attempt to exploit the time traveling letters to try to change their pasts or learn about their futures.

If this sounds familiar it might be because you saw the American remake, THE LAKE HOUSE, with Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock. I've actually never seen that movie, but I guess I remember enough of the advertising to feel like this premise seemed familiar to me.

This original version is pretty good -- it might be a little overdone in places, but hey, it's about how love crosses the gulf of time, so you can excuse it a little. Ultimately the time travel rules aren't totally figured out, because although the ending is sweet, and sort of inevitable, it does make you wonder -- if this really happened, how come she doesn't remember it? The movie tries to have it both ways with causality and predestination -- if you travel through time, can you change the course of history, or by the nature of time, has everything that's going to happen already happened, and there's no way to change it?

Of course the answer is that there is no answer. So you can't really fault the movie for not having one.

Romancefest 2021: Cold War

Directed by Pawel Pawlikowski

Written by Pawel Pawlikowski, Janusz Glowacki and Piotr Borkowski

Starring Joanna Kulig, Tomasz Kot, Borys Szyc, Agata Kulesza, Cedric Kahn and Jeanne Balibar

Poland, France, United Kingdom, 2018

In post WWII Poland, a musician is working with a crew to record and archive the rural folk songs of the region, and put together a singing and dancing folk music troupe made up of locals. One of the young women who auditions sticks out from the rest, partly because she's only posing as a country girl to escape her troubled past in the city, and partly because the musician is falling in love with her.

The two begin a romance, and as the folk ensemble gains popularity and gets chances to play East Berlin, it also draws the attention of the government, who want to use it as a pro-Stalin, pro-communist propaganda tool. Under increasing pressure, the musician arranges to escape with his love across the border to freedom -- but when it comes time, she doesn't show.

The rest of the film follows the two as they come into and out of each others lives, always drawn back together because of their love but kept apart because of the state of the world. 

Thematically the film sort of reminded me of PHOENIX, also about how WWII destroyed people's families and relationships, and how the echoes of that destruction continued even after the war was "won." Of course, that movie's more of a thriller and this one's straight up drama.

The most striking thing about the movie is the beautiful black and white photography. Pawlikowski could probably make a movie about anything and as long as he shot it this way, I'd still like it.

Romancefest 2021: Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring

Written and Directed by Kim Ki-duk

Starring Oh Yeong-su, Kim Ki-duk, Kim Young-min, Seo Jae-kyung, Park Ji-a, Ha Yeo-jin and Kim Jong-ho

South Korea, Germany, 2003

This beautiful and quietly haunting film tells the story of two Buddhist monks, a young apprentice and his older mentor. They live together in small monastery floating in the middle of a lake. The lake is surrounded on all sides by mountains, and is seemingly only accessible to the outside world via winding foot paths. The story covers most of the young apprentice's life, divided into episodes reflecting the different seasons of the year -- he's a child in the spring, a teenager in the summer, at the beginning of adulthood in the fall, and well into adulthood come winter.

It is difficult to talk about this movie without giving too much away, because not much happens in it and what does happen and how it develops is surprising. The way the story unfolds is not commented upon much by the characters in the movie, so most of the reward comes from attentively watching and drawing your own conclusions.

It is also difficult to talk about the tone of the film, because it is so hypnotic you sort of need to see it to believe it and understand it. I can tell you the seasons are all represented beautifully, that nature has never looked so perfect, and that every scene looks like a painting, but it's still not doing the movie justice.

You might be wondering -- what's this have to do with romance? Isn't this Romancefest? Well, yes -- and no. The Summer segment, in which the apprentice is a teenager, does feature a story in which love (and lust) blossoms. And, the consequences of this inform the rest of the movie. But the real romance is really between the viewer and the movie -- it is so beautiful and perfect, you fall in love with it.