The Last Broadcast.

Review #2624: The Last Broadcast.

Cast: 

David Beard (David Leigh), James Seward (James "Jim" L. Suerd), Stefan Avalos (Steven "Johnny" Avkast), Lance Weiler (Locus Wheeler), Rein Clabbers (Rein Clackin), Michele Pulaski (Michelle "Shelly" Monarch), Tom Brunt (Thomas "Tom" Branski), Mark Rublee (Clair Deforest), A.D. Roso (Detective Anthony Rosi), Dale Worstall (Dr. Dale Orstall), Vann K. Weller (forensic pathologist), Sam Wells (Sam Woods), Jay MacDonald (web designer), Faith Weiler (Joyce Dryer), and Marianne Connor (Mary Brenner) Produced, Written, and Directed by Stefan Avalos and Lance Weiler.

Review: 

"In The Last Broadcast, we play with the idea of the information age. We play with the way public opinion works. The media shows one side of an event and people are very quick to believe. The whole point is aiming something at somebody and saying,‘This is truth'." - Stefan Avalos

"Nothing’s admissible as evidence anymore. The moment you put a cut in or distort any semblance of

time, the truth is gone." - Lance Weiler

This is yet again another movie that I had vaguely heard of as a teenager because of a YouTube video*. And that included even before seeing The Blair Witch Project [1999] (in all of its disappointing glory). The Last Broadcast, just like The Blair Witch Project, had its own interesting road from low-budget filmmaking to online phenomenon.  Stefan Avalos decided he wanted to be a filmmaker by high school rather than stay on as a trained violinist. Avalos met Weiler when the former was a lab assistant and the latter was a student at Bucks County Community College. Each rose up in the world of getting to do film and most importantly, video. The thing that was cited in making it possible, apparently, to do stuff with video came with cheap video digitizers for computers and digital camcorders that people could buy (for a considerable price, anyway). For the film, various formats were used in filming ranging from 8/16mm film to VHS to even Tyco cameras. The budget was recorded as being $900 (not counting costs for shooting, post, or borrowed equipment); as it was done on video, it started with regional releases in March 1998 before it rose to a few more cities in October, as done through satellite streaming. Since the release of the film, Weiler has been involved in a variety of ventures, ranging from an indie thriller/alternate reality game in Head Trauma in the 2000s, digital fiction and so on. Avalos has also stayed involved in film, even directing a shot-on-video thriller The Ghosts of Edendale [2003] and the violin-focused documentary Strad Style [2017]. 

So, what's the movie about? Well, it delves into the "investigation" of the deaths of a couple of public-access television hosts (as played by Avalos and Weiler) and their sound man (Clackin) along with the accused man (Seward) that had been with them at the time of their travels into the Pine Barrens in New Jersey to look for, wait for it, the Jersey Devil. For 1998, there's also the moments spent with the "Internet Relay Chat", because the plan was to do a live show (TV, radio *and* the Internet). Beard plays the filmmaker exploring the matter, for which things get weird. I tried to give this one a shot, really. Honestly, there was a part of me that wanted to believe that this would rise above the level of The Blair Witch Project (even if out of spite). And then, well, nope. 86 minutes of meandering around, narrating over select footage that tries to play completely serious as if one stumbled onto an impression of Dateline before eventually reaching a twist ending that comes completely out of nowhere for the sake of having a twist. It just drones on and on and on and on, and you have to wonder if it actually would've been better if it had actually just focused on the two doomed hosts rather than just getting nips and tucks of "the surviving footage". There is no person to be invested in because goddamnit, Beard is just not the type of guy to want to see talk the same points. The monster is the thought in your head to actually sit down and watch it. I can't imagine that true-crime stuff is this repetitive.  You have a group of desperate people wanting to believe that a couple of things they heard/saw on the Internet is enough to maybe make a show that see it all go to hell...and all you get is the most mundane stuff to come through. You get the gamut of info about "the accused" though, from the landlady to the child psychologist because hey, did you know he claimed to have psychic powers? Or that maybe he's innocent (but he's dead anyway). Well, you sure will get to hear about it over and over, so have fun. Does the audience question what they see, ending included? No, not really, it just comes off as a lazy cheat fit for a student film, not one trying to actually play off of "reality". As a whole, The Last Broadcast is an accomplishment for cheap filmmaking and the bare minimum of telling something different in the video format and little else when it comes to horror.

Overall, I give it 5 out of 10 stars.

Next up: Critters.

*You guessed it, Cinemassacre's Monster Madness (1:05:24) - Monster Madness History of Horror (2007)

As for the idea of, well, who came first, Blair Witch Project (apparently conceived earlier than its 1999 release date) or The Last Broadcast. Both involved a documentary crew going out to a place with trees and mystery around it all that leads to danger. That's basically really the only similarity, because at least Blair Witch gives you "people" to follow with. It feels so good to close the circle of "found footage horror in a forest" that I inadvertently started for myself back on the original Halloween: The Week After with The Blair Witch Project on November 5, 2019, while 2021 saw me do Blair Witch and 2024 saw me do Blair Witch 2. Of course, I hear there may be a new Blair Witch movie in 2027, so maybe, just maybe, *one* of these found footage forest movies will be a good one.

*other various notes - Hollywood Effects on an Indie Budget - MovieMaker Magazine

Mary Reilly.

Review #2623: Mary Reilly.

Cast:

Julia Roberts (Mary Reilly; Sasha Hanau as young Mary Reilly), John Malkovich (Dr. Henry Jekyll / Edward Hyde), Michael Sheen (Bradshaw), George Cole (Mr. Poole), Kathy Staff (Mrs. Kent), Bronagh Gallagher (Annie), Glenn Close (Mrs. Faraday), Michael Gambon (Mr. Reilly), Linda Bassett (Mrs. Reilly), Henry Goodman (Haffinger), Ciarán Hinds (Sir Danvers Carew), Tim Barlow (the Vicar), and Stephen Boxer (the Inspector) Directed by Stephen Frears (#2333 - High Fidelity)

Review: 

I guess if anybody needed a re-invention of the old horror stuff, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde probably did merit consideration for the 1990s. Actually, the movie is based on the 1990 novel Mary Reilly by Valerie Martin, which was inspired by Robert Louis Stevenson's 1886 novella that I'm sure you know, well, didn't have a woman as among the key focus. Christopher Hampton (British playwright/screenwriter previous responsible for such works as Les Liaisons Dangereuses) wrote the screenplay and there were initial plans for Tim Burton (announced as early as 1993) to direct after he did Ed Wood, reportedly with Winona Ryder in mind for the lead. However, the ramifications of Wood being rushed to make a decision and the overmentioned Wood movie being put in turnaround led him dropping out. As much as TriStar Pictures wanted Daniel Day-Lewis to pair off with Julia Roberts, they got Roberts paired with John Malkovich instead. Amidst production delays from Tristar changing the release date over and over (to where it finally landed in February 1996 after production had started in 1994) to 25 drafts being written to quibbles over the ending (to the point where the studio tried making their own cut only to see test audiences not care for it either), the film plopped as a flop with audiences*.

There were various people in Stevenson's life that probably influenced him in making the original novella, whether that was the double life of cabinet-maker William Brodie or murderer Eugène Chantrelle. It probably would go hand-in-hand with Bram Stoker's Dracula [1992] and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein [1994] in deciding, hey, big Gothic re-inventions of old horror stuff that sees a desire of seeing repressed evil urges basically go for a desire to escape from a form of depression that sees the same type of things go awry. The result is the strangest type of disappointment: it isn't as nearly as the odd reputation that it garnered at the time, but it also isn't as interesting to actually hold up and defend besides calling it a close misfire. It aims for the horror of a woman living in the margins who has curiosity over what she sees from Jekyll and Hyde in sympathy and also revulsion. A good chunk of what Roberts does (besides wearing some scar makeup because hey, rat bites) is basically observing what is going around her that is very, very, very drawn out. Yes, even during the one transformation sequence of Hyde/Jekyll, she sits close by and watches, because heaven forbid anything of substance is allowed to just happen. If she is meant to be the face that drives a movie without saying much, I'd probably just take the bus and look somewhere else for presence. Whether by choice or otherwise, Malkovich mainly just comes off as awkward in the attempted display of a man in turmoil, with one side actually coming off as interesting (the bawdy, opinionated measure of a man that likes to kick people) and the other side coming off as a strange type of seething monotony that makes you ask the question, "Yes, and?". Every step of the way basically comes with weird caveats that tease rather than actually cut loose for 108 minutes that lets Close and Gambon basically sit on the sidelines for a painfully mundane movie (at least Cole gets to be a tiny bit jealous as the eldest of butlers). You get the occasional flash of blood and the idea of a body-count, but most times one is spent experiencing the day-to-day life of a person get upheaved by, well, things happening (oh but she doesn't hate the evil men in her life, that's a real keeper). You'd have better luck asking one of your parents how their week went. 

Sure, it has a certain type of look that actually seems pretty appropriate for the setting, but there is something about how the movie maneuvers that makes you feel as if you were watching a poor man's The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll (1960). It's the 1990s for God's sake, you can't even cut loose for a really sexually charged scene? I would even settle for a real head-popping scene, because if you're going to tell a "companion piece" to the most well-told, well-known thing in existence that ends (most of the time, anyway) with dire circumstances for Dr. Jekyll, you have to at least have something to stir that stands out! Working women get slaughtered, the tease of libido gets strung around, but hey, we get to see the poor little maid grapple with what the hell is going on with the sulk of someone who can't get out of a long-winding conversation at the store. As a whole, there are some interesting moments to be had in the horrors of being swayed one way or the other by a man in turmoil, but Mary Reilly trudges along with no sense of involvement of actually getting to where it wants to go without dragging its feet until only the devoted have given up. You can only go so far with a mediocre movie before it all turns to mush, and that I suppose is the real lesson to learn when digging for "horror" and turning up for this.

Overall, I give it 6 out of 10 stars.

Song of the day!

Next up: The Last Broadcast.

*There were, however, a few defenders of the film, mainly Roger Ebert - https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/mary-reilly-1996

I didn't have time to see it, but he did at least one interview on the circuit about the film around the time it was out - Stephen Frears "Mary Reilly" 1996 - Bobbie Wygant Archive - YouTube

Or, alternatively: 'Mary Reilly' star defies easy expectations

Messiah of Evil.

Review #2622: Messiah of Evil.

Cast: 

Michael Greer (Thom), Marianna Hill (Arletty Lang), Joy Bang (Toni), Anitra Ford (Laura), Royal Dano (Joseph Lang), Elisha Cook Jr (Charlie), Charles Dierkop (gas attendant), Bennie Robinson (albino trucker), and Walter Hill (victim in prologue) Written, Produced and Directed by Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck (#1704 - Howard the Duck)

Review: 

I guess it makes sense to pick a possible "cult favorite" every now and then. You might remember that Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck were a married screenwriting duo that had a notable connection in filmmaking when Huyck met George Lucas when each were students at USC and their film school. Huyck and Katz were hired by Lucas to work on a treatment for what eventually became American Graffiti. The resulting success on its August 1973 release came right as Katz and Huyck were to do their first film together with, well, Messiah of Evil. It was a low-budget movie that had several of their friends play bit parts (Walter Hill, Billy Weber, Bill L. Norton). Apparently, Katz co-directed the film with Huyck (sources list her as uncredited) in what was her only directorial credit. The movie either finished as it was planned or it was left* with a few scenes left to actually finish (honestly, the latter seems more there) before just being dropped into theaters in December 1974. There apparently were multiple titles that the film got released in for later years, such as "Return of the Living Dead", "Revenge of the Screaming Dead", "Night of the Damned", and "Dead People". Katz once called it a "real bowwow", although Huyck eventually warmed to the film, even attending a sold-out Q/A screening for it in later years. The following year after the release of Messiah, Huyck and Katz got tasked to do script-work on Lucky Lady [1975] before working on French Postcards [1979].

What's there to say that isn't merely just stating things that occur in the film? You might wonder what the film is about. Well, in the vaguest way possible, a woman tells of what happened when she visited a coastal town to see her artist father only to find a diary of his strange experiences alongside a few strangers that happen to need to stay at the place because of strange things that only get stranger (I suppose it's not a spoiler to say it starts at the loony bin). People gather around bonfires to stare at the moon while people's eyes weep blood and a "dark stranger" apparently may return 100 years after being a survivor of the Donner Party. Around that is a variety of things that happen from albino truckers to narration to basically carry what isn't evident. This is...one of those movies where you really, really need to experience the "atmosphere" and see if it actually will hit for you in the unsettling manner that comes through in all-consuming, all-bewildering dread. Hill doesn't really get much to actually say besides reacting to what is going on (around her and to her with the vomiting insects), which works in some ways to accompany her growing fear that doesn't exactly get a chance to really explode at what actually comes out in the art of unsettled lunacy. The best sequence might be in the movie theater with a growing array of people coming inside that actually shows some sort of terror on screen. You have to fill in some of the blanks with the looming terror because damned if the movie is going to allow you to have an easy time doing it, particularly when it ends just as abruptly as it starts, because nothing is that easy to resolve. As a whole, Messiah of Evil is basically a dreamscape type of movie, one that will either hit the chords required for off-putting interest in what is said and left unsaid or will pass through with the bare minimum of "well, that was a movie". For me, it was pretty okay, and I suppose that is a tacit endorsement worth checking out least once on a dreary night.

Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.

Next up: Keeping it a surprise.

Song of the day!

*Anita Ford claimed this as such: Anitra Ford's Personal Blog: Be afraid, very afraid -- for 6 minutes

Bordello of Blood.

Review #2621: Bordello of Blood.

Cast: 

Dennis Miller (Rafe Guttman), Erika Eleniak (Katherine Verdoux), Angie Everhart (Lilith), Chris Sarandon (Reverend J.C. Current), Corey Feldman (Caleb Verdoux), Aubrey Morris (McCutcheon), Phil Fondacaro (Vincent Prather), Juliet Reagh (Tallulah), Kiara Hunter (Tamara), Eli Gabay (Miguel), Matt Hill (Reggie), Eric Keenleyside (Sheriff Noonan), with John Kassir (the voice of the Crypt Keeper; Brock Winkless as puppeteer), and William Sadler (Mummy) Directed by Gilbert Adler.

Review: 

You might remember Demon Knight (1995) was actually pretty decent, all things considered for a siege horror movie that tried to make Tales from the Crypt a film franchise. Sure, the tease for a zombie tale around New Orleans ("Dead Easy") didn't come to fruition, because Universal Studios decided fairly late in pre-production to turn it all around. But surely there had to be something with a movie that had a story from Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale (a script that was written as old as the 1980s). Or not, because the story ended up being done by A.L. Katz and Gilbert Adler (Gale stated that the changes made were so bad that he never saw the film after the early cut). Producer Joel Silver got his way with casting, so instead of Daniel Baldwin as the lead and Robin Givens for the adversary...you get Dennis Miller paired against Angie Everhart. Adler had been a director on two episodes of the show (as well as producer) before directing this film, the only theatrical effort he has ever done (he has since been a producer on a litany of movies such as Valkyrie [2008]). 

The shoot and script of the film ended up going through the wringer with its key presences: Miller improvised nearly every line of his dialogue and even with a shoot that was rescheduled to work around his HBO show (effectively shooting on weekends), he was "too tired" at certain points to actually show up, for which some scenes were shot with a stand-in. Eleniak apparently wanted to take the movie seriously as an actress (to the point where she did not come out of her trailer besides filming) and reportedly wanted changes to the script to make her character not be a stripper but instead a religious advocate; she contended that her big line of contention was not wanting a "sexy" scene between her and Everhart specifically because it wasn't on the script while noting her disappointment at script changes that meant her character's secret past of being an ex-porn 300 pound star was deleted. On a budget of roughly $2.5 million, the movie barely made over double of its budget back. There were no more "Tales from the Crypt presents" movies, although Ritual (2002) later had a home video release with a newly filmed intro of the Crypt Keeper.

I should mention this is an 87-minute movie, but only 80 when taking out the credits. The first seven minutes show you an introduction involving the key from the last movie being used to help subdue a great vampire before you get interrupted with a three-minute interlude to see a mummy and the Cryptkeeper engage in a silly conversation about films. You get quickly to the title of the film involving a bordello and, well, vampire prostitutes. Unfortunately, you also get to Dennis Miller around the 21-minute mark. My first worry upon seeing his first scene was "oh God, is he going for a discount version of Jim Rockford from The Rockford Files?" It may interest you to know this is the first (and so far only) movie with Miller as a lead presence, and I'm sure at least someone in their mid-thirties or forties know about Miller as a stand-up comedian/talk show host in his heyday. With basically an hour of what you might term a performance, let's start with a ripoff of one of his jokes: the only difference between a bad performance and a tired performance is that in a bad performance you hear every single problem, and in a tired performance you see it. He really thought he could just yuk it up and coast on his lines ("I Feel like I'm in a bad Tales from the Crypt episode" - you are in a bad one!), and to call it embarrassing would be an understatement, because there is no semblance of charm found here. 

If you don't care about the lead in a vampire comedy, what's there to care about for the rest on down? Eleniak might actually be outclassed by Everhart (who has the excuse of little acting experience as a model), who at least gives you some sort of campy enjoyment whereas the other looks as if they actually would be better off being in a Baywatch episode. Feldman*, Sarandon, and Fondacaro just seem to have little to actually do before getting to bite the dust. My god, they made a movie with vampires operating a whorehouse and did the bare minimum! The attempted angle of positioning a seedy reverend getting in league with vampires to deal with sinners could've been something, but it all just comes off as lazy, as if they didn't have anything else to really go with the creatures besides killer tongues and not being captured on video camera. When you do a sequence of vampires getting taken down to "Ballroom Blitz" via holy water-filled super-soakers and just roll your eyes, you know you are in trouble. It isn't even worth getting down to the climax, where I guess it doesn't really matter to cut a heart of a vampire and take 'em out completely if it wasn't for the silly little matter of "surprise" endings (even Tales from the Darkside had better ideas). As a whole, there are a few decent effects and gore to accompany the movie, but Bordello of Blood never rises above lazy B-movie standards with actual commitment or charm to make it worth it. 

Overall, I give it 5 out of 10 stars.

Next up: Messiah of Evil.

Song of the day!

*The actual joke told by Miller as found on Wikipedia: "The only difference between group sex and group therapy is that in group therapy you hear about everyone's problems, and in group sex you see them."

*Feldman is a weird guy in many matters: this matter or the one non-laughing matter.

Hardware.

Review #2620: Hardware (1990).

Cast: 

Dylan McDermott (Moses "Hard Mo" Baxter), Stacey Travis (Jill), John Lynch (Shades), Iggy Pop (Angry Bob), Carl McCoy (Nomad / Zone Tripper), William Hootkins (Lincoln Wineberg Jr), with Mark Northover (Alvy), Paul McKenzie (Vernon), and Lemmy (Water Taxi Driver) Directed by Richard Stanley.

Review: 

I suppose it was eventually time to encounter a Richard Stanley movie, so why not go with his first one? Born in South Africa in the era of what he called a "police state", he was interested in filmmaking from a young age and studied at Cape Town Film School. When he was a teenager in school, he made a short film called "Incidents in an Expanding Universe" that was set in a dystopia that provided some steps into what became Hardware. He moved to London in his twenties and did work directing music videos before traveling to Afghanistan to document the Soviet-Afghan War (specifically by joining a guerrilla Muslim faction) that saw him see plenty of danger for him and his camera man. With Hardware, it came out of the process of wanting to actually get one of his scripts made that happened to take comments into account for what people "wanted", which namely ranged from a chainsaw to a fire stunt that saw him apparently write it in a week (he later stated that he was in a "pretty hellacious frame of mind at the time"). The film was shot in an abandoned place called the Roundhouse in east London (with the opening in Morocco) and ultimately found a place of distribution with Miramax. Even with cuts made to dance around an X rating, the movie was a mild hit (on its reported budget of over $1 million) and Stanley directed three further features over the next few decades, most notably with Color Out of Space (2019). Stanley kept busy, of course, writing various unproduced screenplays (one of which apparently being "Hardware II") along with directing a documentary on the life and times of Otto Rahn. 

Red skies, bills involving clean breaks with procreation, and a world seen and heard through a screen, it's a future not all that distant from what we wish to tell ourselves, as if "stupid, sadistic, and suicidal" actually could be a mantra. Is it a familiar type of "cyberpunk"? Maybe. Is it a familiar type of slasher? Probably. Is it still my kind of movie to at least give credit to? Oh you bet. Around the time of release, Fleetway Comics sued the filmmakers for plagiarism because of perceived similarities between the film and "SHOK!", a 1981 short story (as written by Steve MacManus and Kevin O'Neill) that had appeared in a spin-off publication of 2000 AD; as with Hardware, both happen to involve the remains of a droid from a devastated zone getting into the hands into a sculptress that re-assembles and traps her in her place (one goes for body heat, one is weak to moisture). Whether having inspiration from Soylent Green, the novel Damnation Alley, or with Saturn 3, I had plenty of interest in actually seeing the movie because of the dreary charm that comes through in a world where there just isn't anything to really latch onto for hope besides just aiming to drive out the noise. It's the illusion that there even is a fight worth having when a killer robot is just going to grind you away (in packaged fascism) that is probably more fit now in our rusty times. McDermott and Travis have their own differing way of interacting with the world of sludge that sees them engage in, well, passion (as seen by a delightfully disgusting Hootkins) before it gives way to a monster flick. I think I enjoy it more within its latter half of the 94 minute runtime when it gets to the cruel showcase of mayhem, ranging from a pervert viewing a real bug-eyed presence to a solution drenched in moisture and actual futility. As a whole, Hardware is bleak, unsettling, familiar, and the kind of movie fit for all times in the decayed corners of a world going down the tubes.

Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.

Song of the day!

Welcome to Halloween: The Week After - Crazy Eights. All the way to November 7, we will be clearing the road with horror movies that I couldn't quite get to in October and hopefully have some fun with it. But first, let's take a tiny detour in curiosity with the next movie:

Bordello of Blood

Ravenous (1999).

Review #2619: Ravenous.

Cast: 

Guy Pearce (Captain John Boyd), Robert Carlyle (F.W. Colqhoun / Colonel Ives), David Arquette (Private Cleaves), Jeremy Davies (Private Toffler), Jeffrey Jones (Colonel Hart), John Spencer (General Slauson), Stephen Spinella (Major Knox), Neal McDonough (Private Reich), Joseph Runningfox (George), Sheila Tousey (Martha), and Bill Brochtrup (Lindus) Directed by Antonia Bird.

Review: 

"Ravenous’ is more about social misfits than the whole seductive nature of power. I would like to think that someone who enjoyed it only as gallows humor would start to think. The metaphor of power and a society where we’re encouraged to be competitive is, to me, not a great society. As a European, observing early Californian history and making a film about that — I kind of believe Europeans were responsible for a lot of stuff that happened here. Robert Carlyle’s character represents that. The Europeans practiced genocide. I think the good things about America — we’re (Europeans) not responsible for.”

A long time ago, in a frontier not too far far away, there were people in this world that came out of a travelling party with survival coming by the one thing you could not expect, at least if you believe what survives in historical fact. Alfred Packer claimed that he survived a number of days on roots within a brutal wilderness of what was not quite the state of Colorado in the winter of 1874. Aside from being a petty thief, Packer was not exactly a consistent man with his stories of survival, so it perhaps came as the tiniest bit of surprise that it wasn't so much a man making a tall tale of survival to cover a robbery but instead a claim that he survived on the bones of his party members (to say nothing of the Donner Party from three decades prior, where a group of pioneers saw 30+ people perish and a few bones missing along the way). Anyway, Ted Griffin was a first-time screenwriter that had graduated Colgate University. All of a sudden, Ravenous was one of three screenplays that got sold to a studio in a week, with Fox 2000 slating a director with Milcho Manchevski (director of Before the Rain [1994]) by 1997. Shooting was done in Mexico alongside Slovakia that saw production squabbles between its producer and Machevski to the point where an attempted replacing with Raja Gosnell went nowhere. Antonia Bird was brought in to direct because of the recommendation of her business partner, Robert Carlyle. Bird was involved in theatre from the age of 17 with Coventry Rep and directed a total of four films (Priest [1994], Mad Love [1995], Face [1997]) alongside the various TV and theatre involved as both producer and director. She did not get everything she wanted for the finished film, as post-production saw a voiceover included alongside the quotes you see in the introduction (i.e: "He who fights the monster must make sure not to become a monster."- Friedrich Nietzsche is then followed with "Eat me!"- Anonymous) that she felt was "superfluous". Even with a budget of $12 million and an initial release in over a thousand theaters, Ravenous was not a hit at the time of release. 

This ended up being Bird's last feature film as a director, as she spent the rest of her time as a TV director until her death in 2013 at the age of 62. Such a pity for a movie with interest in the intensities of competitiveness. What Bird saw the movie as was the perils of consumption and all that comes with a focus on two people that happen be the embodiment of drug pusher and junkie (in a sea of folktale movies, going with a version of the Wendigo myth from native Algonquian folklore is pretty interesting). It isn't exactly a fight for survival in the woods type of movie, it isn't exactly a fight for revenge, it isn't exactly the kind of movie for everyone...and it is still pretty damn fun. It's the type of movie to absorb in all the absurdities and pleasures that come with its atmosphere and tremendously game cast that remind you as many times as possible that one really should eat to live as opposed to living to eat when it comes to horror and pitch-black humor (did I mention the off-kilter playing of music in banjos, violins and more from Damon Albarn and Michael Nyman?). This is the kind of movie that does wonder about people who maybe see others as mere meat slabs. Pearce is given a pretty thankless task if you want to play devil's advocate: a weary junkie with nowhere to actually run. It isn't a road to seeing him becone a hero, it is a road of actually knowing what one is beyond a string of meat and desires, where one must see if they can actually atone with all that they did. Undeniably, Carlyle runs away with the show with his devilish qualities worth seeing as basically a vampire, one that believes it is more courageous to walk with him than to walk against him. He plays around with who he is to others around him with a type of confidence that could only come from someone who really has lived the tricks of the trade and decided he liked the taste too much to let it go. The body count actually is a bit considerable despite the careful pace (in fact, you might be more squeamish about seeing meat than blood, save for one scene), and Jones* manages to play off the general absurdity of his situation in wayward elegance for a few chuckles (McDonough is not in it much, hut his intensity is worth a look). It is a movie filled ominous delight over what happens when power truly does seep into the flesh and the inevitable crash of junkie and dealer in lyrical darkness that is actually pretty fun. It takes plenty of time to get there among flesh, blood, and the stark terror of the frontier, but the ride is worth it at least once, I believe. 

Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.

Song of the day!

Happy Halloween. Hell of a time for a triple header, we will see you later for Halloween -The Week After: Crazy Eights.

*I would be remiss not to mention that Jones would later be charged in 2002 for crimes involving a minor involving posing for photographs that saw him sentenced to probation and become registered as a sex offender for life.

Basket Case.

Review #2618: Basket Case.

Cast: 

Kevin Van Hentenryck (Duane Bradley and Belial Bradley), Terri Susan Smith (Sharon), Beverly Bonner (Casey), Robert Vogel (Hotel Manager), Lloyd Pace (Dr. Harold Needleman), Bill Freeman (Dr. Julius Lifflander), Diana Browne (Dr. Judith Kutter), Joe Clarke (Brian "Mickey" O'Donovan), Ruth Neuman (Duane's Aunt), Richard Pierce (Duane's Father), Sean McCabe (Young Duane), Dorothy Strongin (Josephine), and Kerry Ruff (Detective) Written and Directed by Frank Henenlotter (#2215 - Frankenhooker)

Review: 

"There's a fine line between horror and comedy. And part of the fun with Basket Case, you never knew what punchline you were going to get. Whether the punchline was going to be a comical punchline or blood in your face. And I think they’re both equally valid and, in some cases, the blood in your face is equally funny. I always enjoyed blurring stuff. "

​

I figured, if you're going to have a curious type of Halloween, you have to go back to the well of quick budget movies that splatter all over with a certain type of charm all over the guts. Frank Henenlotter had been influenced by exploitation and sexploitation movies that he had seen in his younger days for what he became as an adult, for which he spent many of his days after turning 15 on 42nd Street in New York. When he was doing production on the short film The Slash of the Knife [1976], he met Edgar Ievins, a producer, and the two tried to come up with something that could be done on some money. He walked around Times Square and wrote the screenplay from that atmosphere that he experienced (incidentally, he was influenced enough by Herschell Gordon Lewis to where he dedicated the film to him). Various cast members had either worked previously on Slash or were students of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts (according to Van Hentenryck, they had to be careful in rehearsals, as they had no times for re-takes). The creature effects and makeup were created by Kevin Haney and John Caglione. The film opened on New Year's Eve of 1981 on limited release before getting a theatrical release by Analysis Film Releasing in April 1982 (complete with blowing up the 16mm print to 35 mm). For the most part, the film was a decent hit on the various circuits it made, for which it served as a midnight movie in various places. Two sequels to the film followed in 1990 and 1991, each with Van Hentenryck in the lead role. Basket Case was restored and selected for preservation by the Museum of Modern Art in 2017, which Henenlotter noted was a moment of humility and pride for him.

When the film was at the backends of the Cannes Film Festival, the film did earn one noted quote about its quality from film critic Rex Reed*, who was asked by someone what he thought of the film, for which he said it "is the sickest movie I've ever seen", which earned a place on movie posters (whether the quote was actually said by Reed as a spur of the moment or was arranged is up to you, but a few words that don't initially sound like an endorsement, well, sure sounds like something...). There's a bit of the eternal misfit in all of us. The joker, the smoker, the one that lurks in our mind and lurks in the shadows. It just happens to be down and dirty in the atmosphere that you just don't see or feel now. It isn't a curious thriller involving a Siamese twin such as say, Sisters (1972) because it instead is one hell of a slasher with tremendous gusto of violence that happens to be darkly amusing in what it shows in the dynamic of these two beings that truly cannot live without the other. It's a bond drenched in blood that probably has more heart in it than one might want to admit, even when considering one side likes to scream (and telepathically communicate, naturally) more often than not. Van Hentenryck and his awkward stiffness does make for a fairly compelling lead among a sea of offbeat one-note characters that makes his torment of outsider/killer all the more harrowing in its naturalness (to a point) in the face of something that could've easily been straight evil or, well, even more campy. It may be a madhouse, but you get your shots of puppet/stop-motion mayhem that makes for the appropriate "oooh" when the time comes to show it, even if its route of getting there is a curved road of amusement (i.e. it's not enough to have a revenge plot, one must dump information in a drunken stupor as well). With a production budget of less than $50,000 that led to a few obvious low-budget quirks, you've got a winner with this film if you stomach what it wishes to hustle in demented sleaze filled with the energy and audacity to show a man and his basket go all the way possible in man-made horrors for devastating effect. 

Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.

Song of the day!

*Honestly, given how full of shit Reed was at times, this is pretty funny.

Linked: Basketcase (1982) Monster Madness Sigh. I miss the old Monster Madness. Unrelated note: it's time for Ravenous!

Kuroneko.

Review #2617: Kuroneko.

Cast: 

Kichiemon Nakamura (Gintoki), Nobuko Otowa (the Mother), Kiwako Taichi (Shige), Kei Satō (Raiko), Hideo Kanze (the Mikado), Taiji Tonoyama (the farmer), Yoshinobu Ogawa (Raiko follower), and Rokko Toura (a warlord) Written and Directed by Kaneto Shindō (#2500 - Onibaba)

Review: 

In the times of feudal Japan, there was plenty of time to see the lands visited by samurai within civil war, whether that involved the time revolving somewhere before/after the first millennium or in the later later times. People once could see people with hikimayu involving plucked out eyebrows for smudges to go along with painted teeth (I say this because you'll see it in this film alongside others such as Rashomon [1950]). But all of that pales in comparison to a ghost story that deals with the forgotten type of people within alleged conquest and mythmaking, the type of people that live and die in the margins because there are only so many people in the world before it all seems futile. In that sense, it probably seems apt that Kuroneko (the translated title is "A Black Cat in a Bamboo Grove") came around just a few years after the vitality and urges that came out with Onibaba (1964), which you might remember had peasant women survive on the killing and robbing of samurai; Otowa starred in both movies (as she had done in various other films that ranged from Story of a Beloved Wife [1951] to A Last Note [1995]). At any rate, here's a movie with dead peasants that come around to lure samurai into the bamboo groves with a certain type of futility to it all. 

Of course, it isn't a simple period (jidaigeki) horror movie, because even the onryō (vengeful spirits) are thought to be really interesting things to focus attention on beyond simple revenge stories, to the point where there exist three people that were called the "Three Great Onryo" with Emperor Sutoku, Taira no Masakado, and Sugawara no Michizane. It's not enough to see retribution in the physical sense, you might as well feel the torment in the psychological far more than anything. Of course, this happens to involve plenty of shots that deal in the distance of where things lurk, whether that involves hovering or those that loom over the bamboo or, in some other odd way, upon the soul. The most straightforward moment of the film is in its start involving the pillaging of the two women by the samurai that naturally lead to the process of death and life being twisted into pieces for those to seek blood through what might as well be a dance of death (anything could be a dance of death if you want to be a 1st-year blowhard, but it's a bit more literal here). It eventually dispatches with seeing select samurai take a one-way ticket to hell because of the eventual reveal of Taichi beyond being a man of names and "virtue". It is a pretty harrowing movie to sit through in the dance of death and perhaps some sort of sympathy for their impossible pursuit of all swordsman to meet their preferred fate that may see their blood drip into hell. Even hacking off an arm isn't the straight-forward easy thing to dealing with spirits, because even purification proves to be a probing case of cloying voices, tricks, and other odd things. It's the kind of "enigmatic" type of horror that is worthy of actually allowing oneself to see it all the way to the end of its 99 minute runtime where all eventually leads to the same place regardless of one's alleged place in society reigns: dust that blows in the wind until the last measure of memory and spirit is extinguished. In general, this is a movie fit for those who dig atmosphere where spirits reign free to pursue a dance of death that is unsettling and all the more curious to actually watch play out in devilish charm.

Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.

As per tradition for the past few Halloweens, it's time to have a big show of reviews for the big day. Next up: Basket Case.

Song of the day!

Supplemental song

Alligator.

Review #2616: Alligator.

Cast: 

Robert Forster (Detective David Madison), Robin Riker (Dr. Marisa Kendall; Leslie Brown as young Marisa), Michael V. Gazzo (Chief Clark), Dean Jagger (Slade), Sydney Lassick (Luke Gutchel), Jack Carter (Mayor Ladue), Perry Lang (Officer Jim Kell), Henry Silva (Colonel Brock), Bart Braverman (Thomas Kemp), James Ingersoll (Arthur Helms), Royce D. Applegate (Callan), and Angel Tompkins (Newswoman) Directed by Lewis Teague.

Review: 

It wouldn't be a proper time to enjoy horror without at least one creature feature, particularly in the era of everyone seemingly trying to get in on Jaws (1975). For all of the movies involving bears, whales, spiders, and piranhas, it probably isn't surprising that there had to be one involving alligators and the old urban legend about them being around in sewers (you hear a few people say every now and then that they found one) that Brandon Chase apparently was inspired to jump on the idea-wagon as a producer. Lewis Teague had all of two films as a director when he was hired with Dirty O'Neil (1974) and The Lady in Red (1979), with the screenwriter for the latter film being John Sayles (who you might remember as the co-writer of Piranha [1978]). Teague hired Sayles to deliver re-writes to the script, namely because the original draft apparently had the title creature thrive on beer from a sewer near a brewery; as such, Sayles received co-credit for the story with Frank Ray Perilli while Sayles did the screenplay. A 36-foot alligator was made out of rubber with a frame of aluminum for which two men could get in to carry the weight and move. Of course, a real alligator moves low to the ground that look a bit different from the test of the actual suit, so Teague elected to try and treat it less of a scary film and one filled with some wit, which had to basically double up for the fact that they couldn't use the creature as much as they wanted (or, in some cases, using a real gator on miniatures). Filmed around the Los Angeles area to double for a setting in the Missouri area, the movie made a bit of money for the time and Teague would end up doing a few other movies involving pets with Cujo (1983) and Cat's Eye (1985). Incidentally, when Quentin Tarantino was doing preparation for casting with Jackie Brown (1997), the type of character that Forster had played in Alligator helped stir him into casting Forster.

Sure, the movie doesn't have the fortitude to really get many fearful moments out of an really large alligator (in this case one enhanced by eating disposed animals that had growth formula in them) eating people with such a ravenous bloodlust, but it is damn fun to watch play out. You've got a well-paced runtime (91 minutes), a fairly game cast that plays it casual without going for all of the obvious jokes, what's not to like? It actually does feel like a companion to Piranha, namely with how higher-ups try to react to the bubbling developments of man-made horrors with subterfuge that at least ends the way you would hope would happen in the real world: being punished for doing so. Of course, with the gator, it just happens to go all across the city, whether that involves the streets or the suburbs or the high-rise to really show that it's an equal opportunity eater. It eats politicians, kids, and cops all the same. Forster and Riker do in fact make a capable duo together, mainly because each are fairly competent for their jobs even in the face of absurdity, whether that involves dubious history with partners for a cop or the doubts of being taken seriously as, well, a scientist. Forster has a weary type of casual nature that is inviting from the get-go, a man who reflects on his balding hair (as suggested by Forster himself) and moves along to the beat of his own drum for wiseass charm. Things can try to shake him (smarmy reporters, sneaky alligators), but he just moves along without looking like he wants to be anywhere else or just crack all the jokes. There are a few pitch-black moments involving the mayhem of alligator-on-people, mainly with the climax because if you're going to have something to culminate the endgame, you might as well involve a whole party to see the fruits of man-made labor before trying to suggest the idea that the nightmare isn't all the way over. Entertaining without straining itself in a monster mash with charm, Alligator is a movie fit for all seasons.

Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.

Song of the day!

You're Next.

Review #2615: You're Next.

Cast: 

Sharni Vinson (Erin), Nicholas Tucci (Felix Davison), Wendy Glenn (Zee), A. J. Bowen (Crispian Davison), Joe Swanberg (Drake Davison), Margaret Laney (Kelly Davison), Amy Seimetz (Aimee Davison), Ti West (Tariq), Rob Moran (Paul Davison), Barbara Crampton (Aubrey Davison), L.C. Holt (Craig / Lamb Mask), Lane Hughes (Tom / Fox Mask), Simon Barrett (Dave / Tiger Mask), and Larry Fessenden (Erik Harson) Directed and Edited by Adam Wingard (#1672 - Godzilla vs. Kong, #1753 - Blair Witch, #2192 - Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire)

Review: 

"I think people are tired of being punished by violence and so forth. While “You’re Next” is a super violent film, we approach it completely differently. It’s not about showing you the extremity of violence or how much it hurts or whatever. It’s about showing it from a different perspective and actually just trying to make a fun horror film."

Sure, why not? I honestly had this movie vaguely stuck in my mind due to a review I heard about it many, many years ago*. And it happened to dovetail with the thing known as "hey, it's on a movie pack with a bunch of other movies, why not?". You're Next was the fifth full-length feature film from Adam Wingard, and this one happened to be written by fellow collaborator Simon Barrett, who had written A Horrible Way to Die [2010]. Apparently, the thing that spooked Wingard the most in horror was home invasion movies (citing Them [2006] and The Strangers [2008]), so Barrett took it from there, where he wrote a script that was inspired by Agatha Christie mysteries alongside screwball comedies (he later noted after filming a possible subconscious inspiration from A Bay of Blood [1971]). The cynical mindset of Barrett (as stated by Wingard himself), along with some improvisation with the dinner conversation scene, also played key to the movie. The movie originally premiered in 2011 in film festivals, for which Lionsgate acquired distribution rights, but business snafus (namely a studio merger) led to the movie being shuffled around and only released in theaters in August 2013. Years later, Wingard stated that he considers the film as being part of the same continuity with The Guest [2014] and Onslaught [2026] as a sort of "trilogy", for what it's worth.

Really it all comes down to just how much you can stomach of the characters and the pursuit of having fun with a survival movie that basically throws the premise upside down. Being a cross between Home Alone and The Strangers (and perhaps The Last House on the Left) can only go so far for those who find something in its slasher entertainment or bits in pitch-black comedy. I was fine with it, although it definitely wears its quirks (flawed or not) on its sleeve for 94 minutes. It's basically the kind of movie you play with The Cabin in the Woods [2011] to see a sort of "modern" perspective of playing around with the slasher with some chuckles, although your milage may vary over which actually accomplishes that better. You get a considerable body-count and a bit of quick pacing to set up some fanciful murders that range from garrote wires to axes to, well, blender-bashing. So yes, it's a movie with a person trying to be among the last ones standing that, well, actually does sound like the type to maybe thrive in a survival film with masked killers that don't really talk much (what's there to know in an array of people that aren't really who and where they want to be). In that sense, Vinson is a dynamic choice to help carry the film with unshakable confidence that is basically present in only her when compared to the dry nature of the others (in some ways intentional, and in others being the result of a lack of things to really do). Sure, being the only generally likable person among the cast to have enough time (oh poor Crampton) could be a detriment to some, but I went with it because, well, mayhem does have some charm to it; smug is one thing, wisecracking is another, and I think it fits with the latter more than the former. The eventual reveal of the true nature of what's going on in the house is at least a little clever, mainly because it gives some curiosity over how things will play out when one becomes offbeat in the face of being complicit in crimes. The first death of the dinner table people is kind of funny in the actual buildup and I imagine the very last moment is meant to be darkly amusing. Sure, it lacks a real true faceoff for its climax, but I was at least satisfied with the journey in getting to the resolution with the best laid plans in fact going to hell. As a whole, You're Next is a horror movie that wants to play it both ways in mayhem in the home and dark humor. I found it just fine, and I suppose that is more than enough to carve out a worthy place on the shelf.

Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.

Song of the day!

*The review in question was this one by hey, Midnight Screenings; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgQL6U0BE6Q - which basically called it "post ironic, cute, hipster bullshit" that equated it to The Strangers crossed with Home Alone but not being effective to get away with being "cute". 

*Same pack with stuff such as It Follows, Cabin Fever, and a couple of others.

The Maze (1953).

Review #2614: The Maze (1953).

Cast: 

Richard Carlson (Gerald MacTeam), Veronica Hurst (Kitty Murray), Katherine Emery (Edith Murray), Michael Pate (William), John Dodsworth (Dr. Bert Dilling), Hillary Brooke (Peggy Lord), Stanley Fraser (Robert), Lilian Bond (Margaret Dilling), Owen McGiveney (Simon), and Robin Hughes (Richard Roblar) Directed by William Cameron Menzies (#448 - Invaders from Mars, #449 - Things to Come)

Review:

Oh sure, why not go with the gimmick movie? This was the final movie to be directed by William Cameron Menzies (for which the credit is listed as "production designed and directed"), who you likely remember from such films as Invaders from Mars and Things to Come; he directed fourteen movies, four as a co-director. With this production, the film was based on the story of the same name by Maurice Sandoz (which apparently had illustrations from Salvador Dali), with Daniel Ullman serving as screenwriter. While it ended up as his last directorial effort, he didn't leave film entirely, with his last fieldwork being the associate producer and designer on Around the World in Eighty Days [1956]. Suffering from cancer, Menzies died in 1957 at the age of 60.

It really does depend on how much you can forgive from the ending. No, really, you either are into the movie for the atmosphere of being entrapped in a tight space and wondering just what lurks in the dark, moving around that has such a grip on one guy. I wonder how the 3D was for the movie when it was released. Sure, you only get the smallest of gimmicky stuff with a bat flying at the camera, but it's mostly a movie trying to make you feel like you're at a haunted house, filled with fog, only men for butlers, odd little trees and locked doors (and, for a thankfully brief amount of time, a narrator to foreshadow some of the stuff that happens). And yet...it just doesn't come all the way together. Hurst and Emery can only carry the movie (one of 80 minutes) before you start to get restless at the fact that Carlson does not make for much of a spooked man. For someone who is meant to try and stop people from coming in, he has the qualities of a stone statue that don't make for particularly interesting drama. His peril (suddenly looking older because, well, castle-aging) is as intense as a wet sponge. The group of friends don't even lend themselves to a potential body-count or anything other than the most mild of "oh hey, that's a person" reaction. It's all mood-based vibes on feeling the atmosphere and crushing feeling of the unknown and oh good grief, at a certain point, that's just not enough. 

And then the moment of truth happens of when you get through a maze and figure out just what the hell is there. The following either sinks the movie into amusement or just takes the cake in sheer audacity, so the following lines will be marked in white for you to scroll if you are curious.

So, in the movie, a bunch of people eventually all come to the castle to confront the guy who basically ghosted them to live in the place with some servants. What they find is that there is a thing lurking around the manor at night while their doors are all locked. The thing that lurks in the castle is actually the real master of the castle, who is...a frog. No, really, the master is a person born in the 1700s that somehow never made it past an amphibious "embryonic stage" that made him only able to live a long time because he was a frog-like creature (who bellows like an elephant, by the way) that liked to swim in a pond. And then, with the powers of a frog (neat costume)...he gets spooked, runs and then falls from a balcony to his death when the others discover him. A *prideful* 200-year-old frog, dead from a fall. You see the frog-man for all of what, two minutes? He actually gets a gravestone at the end, stating "Sir Roger Philip MacTeam, Bart. of Craven, 1750-1953". Imagine if someone actually asked about that gravestone! I just couldn't help but laugh. You get looped in to watch a movie of shadows and fog with the bare minimum of curiosity of what's in the maze, and a damn frog is there! Maybe that Frogs horror movie made them scary, but shoot, who's afraid of frogs? My mom is one, but still...

Now, you might be wondering. How does the real master being...well, that...mean that a guy decides to drop everything and then go back to relative normalness when the macabre end comes? Well, it doesn't matter now, Carlson's character just...goes with it. I couldn't help but chuckle when the big moment came to go along with the eventual explanation, particularly for a movie that didn't even bother to have one of these people engage in real tension. They just...find the secret and then it solves itself in the most convenient way possible. Imagine if anyone else asks among the group about their experiences and they get...that for an explanation. As a whole, there are highlights to be found within its look and select moments from the crew of people having to deal in maze-bound terror, but I just wish I enjoyed it more. It's a curious movie, but it just wasn't for me.

Overall, I give it 6 out of 10 stars.

The Company of Wolves.

Review #2613: The Company of Wolves.

Cast:

Sarah Patterson (Rosaleen), Angela Lansbury (Granny), David Warner (Father), Tusse Silberg (Mother), Micha Bergese (Huntsman), Brian Glover (Amorous Boy's father), Graham Crowden (Old Priest), Kathryn Pogson (Young Bride), Stephen Rea (Young Groom), Georgia Slowe (Alice, Girl Killed by Wolves), Susan Porrett (Amorous Boy's mother), Shane Johnstone (Amorous Boy), Dawn Archibald (Witch Woman), Richard Morant (Wealthy Groom), with Danielle Dax (Wolfgirl), Jim Carter (Second Husband), and Terence Stamp (The Devil) Directed by Neil Jordan.

Review: 

"In a normal film you have a story with different movements that program, develop, go a little bit off the trunk, come back, and end. In this film, the different movements of the plot are actually separate stories. You start with an introduction and then move into different stories that relate to the main theme, all building to the fairy tale that everybody knows. The opening element of the dreamer gave us the freedom to move from story to story."

I figured that with all of the ideas around for anthology horror movies, what about ones that happened to stray a different path? In 1979, there was a collection of short stories published called The Bloody Chamber that had been written by Angela Carter. Among the ten stories included "The Company of Wolves"'. These were stories in which Carter aimed to "extract the latent content from the traditional stories", as opposed to what others might call adult renditions of fairy tales (such as "Bluebeard", Beauty and the Beast, and in the case of Wolves, "Little Red Riding Hood". This was only the second movie for Neil Jordan, who had studied literature and history before becoming involved in student theatre and later television in his native Ireland. He met Carter at a writer's conference, and she wanted to do a screen version of one of her stories rather than, say, a 30-minute thing for a TV company. Jordan later stated that to him, the film is a "fairy tale" while challenging the notion that it had to belong to any category of horror, fantasy, or as a children's film. With shooting in England that dealt with heightened sense of reality in mind (per Jordan's ideas) from production designer Anton Furst to go against a limited budget, most of what was desired came across on screen, save for the ending, where they wanted akin to diving onto a floor rather than, well, what you get with wolves and screams. Chris Tucker (of The Elephant Man fame) was behind the effects behind the wolf transformation scenes (most of the wolves used were actually dyed dogs). Carter was involved in one further adaptation with The Magic Toyshop in 1987 for cinemas/television prior to her death in 1992 at the age of 51; both of her screenplays were included in the collection The Curious Room.

Oh sure, "fantasy-horror" is one thing, but having a structure akin to a Chinese box (one box fitting within the next) is fascinating enough here for at least one check within its 95 minute runtimee. So, what are those embedded stories? Well, they come around as someone dreams from their country house about being in an old village with a forest that revolve around a few tales of a young groom with a unibrow (yes, yes, "eyebrows that meet", granny could only know so much) that has a call of nature to see him go away for a time, another involves a unibrow man that encounters a dark-suited man in a car (with one neat cameo) with a potion to offer, another story offers a woman appearing at a wedding party to put wrong to right (devastating fun), and the last tale involves a she-wolf who gets shot and bandaged before going back into the night. And in the midst of that, you get to see some time with Lansbury playing a superstitious grandmother for a good chunk of time. It's a macabre tale that some will probably read with "Freud" on the mind (who among us sees wolves in a sensual matter? well, I don't say that, but...) while others like me have a chuckle at the tales provided in offbeat charm. Patterson accompanied a friend to an audition and wound up being cast. Her vulnerability in the face of development of growing up and looking at the world as one to actually be involved in beyond seeing things as either made of snips (and sails & puppy dog tails) or sugar (and spice & everything nice).  It isn't a movie for going along with the narrative in a straight line, but the horrors of growing up and seeing the world around you for what it really, madly, truly, deeply, looks like. You look at the movie and feel entrapped in a dream that is worth seeing all the way through for what comes in and out in reading the film besides the head-rolling, wolf-splashing time seen here. Horror, fantasy, fairy tale(s), it's a good time for the season.

Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.

Song of the day!

*This is like when people discuss if Peeping Tom was actually a horror movie - stop lying to yourself! This is almost as annoying as those who don't like too much gore in their horror movies.

From Beyond.

Review #2612: From Beyond.

Cast: 

Jeffrey Combs (Dr. Crawford Tillinghast), Barbara Crampton (Dr. Katherine McMichaels), Ted Sorel (Dr. Edward Pretorius), Ken Foree (Bubba Brownlee), Carolyn Purdy-Gordon (Dr. Bloch), Bunny Summers (Neighbor Lady), and Bruce McGuire (Jordan Fields) Directed by Stuart Gordon (#2127 - Re-Animator)

Review: 

"The thing that was great about the Organic Theatre was that we did all kinds of plays. I'd like the same thing to be true about my movies. One of the great things about genre movies is that as long as you follow the rules of the genre you can do anything you want and say anything you want. There's a tremendous amount of freedom. I got into a conversation with a friend that the horror films are really the subconscious of the movies."

Sure, there was going to be another H. P. Lovecraft-based movie sometime after how fun Re-Animator (1985) ended up being. Stuart Gordon wanted to make a handful of Lovecraft movies, complete with having select people coming back with the cast and crew here. The script was written by Brian Yuzna (who had produced Re-Animator), Dennis Paoli, and Stuart Gordon, with Paoli writing the screenplay. With the choice to film cheaper, Gordon went with an Italian crew that saw shooting on a Rome soundstage. There were multiple crews heading the effects (John Naulin, Tony Doublin, John Buechler, Mark Shostrom), but even with that in mind, getting an R rating from the MPAA was annoying because of the total effect of the graphic moments rather than specific stuff before he cut select frames to secure it (these trims were eventually recovered and put into a director's cut release in the 2000s). It wasn't a major hit at the time, but so it goes. Gordon would work again with Combs on films such as The Pit and the Pendulum [1991] and also Crampton with the direct-to-video Castle Freak [1995] but didn't get to do a Lovecraft movie again until the 2001 Spanish movie Dagon. 

The original short story (as originally published in 1934) by Lovecraft was a first-person story dealing with one man's experiences with a scientist named Crawford Tillinghast that had a certain type of device that dealt with creatures and the deaths of servants before it gets resolved pretty quickly. Here, Combs plays Tillinghast as the assistant to who else but a man named Pretorius. It's got everything you would hope for in a medium-sized enjoyable movie that isn't quite as well-executed as Re-Animator, but it is a fun one. You've got a giant animatronic puppet, talk about "pineal glands", a truly dynamite trio to go through house-bound mayhem with a bit of brain-eating to go around. It's a delightfully looney type of slow bubbling fun that practically feels like candy for those with the time to let it sift through for 86 minutes. It's a game of trying to deal with the horrors of maybe just letting the machine that goes around delivering horror and pleasure in the alternate dimension go on that goes for the weird and hits for some dark amusement. Combs gets a chance to attempt calm in the face of danger and disturbing monsters that happen to lurk around in a different dimension that is easy to get on his side of apprehension. It probably helps that he is paired with Crampton and her own journey of discovery within the growing world of malformed desire and ideas of what they believe they want in the mind (this is a long-winded way of saying, yes, one can say technobabble and dabble with wearing an S&M outfit for a scene). Of course, the underlying glue up to a certain point is Foree, who really is quite charming in delivering measured humor in being gripped in the growing absurdity. Sorel appears from time to time and delivers a few deliciously sleazy moments fitting for the moment with kinks and slime to go around. The body-count is a considerable few given the amount of cast, but it's still pretty rewarding for those folks too. You've got some slimy flies to go along with the realization of the third eye and brain-eating to criss-cross with the terrors of being gripped in a machine that doesn't even need your consent to turn itself on. Getting through addiction of the senses or brain-eating is one thing, surviving the aftermath of that is another. The danger is that horrible stuff is just all around us and there probably is nothing you can really do about it when it comes to turning into sludge at the end of the road besides not being burnt dead sludge. In that sense, it's depraved in a way that is my kind of horror fun.

Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.

Song of the day!