Horror Movies - Horrorphile

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The Wolfman (2010), is Universal’s remake of their classic tale of the curse of lycanthropy, The Wolf Man (1941), and it certainly bears a striking similarity to much of the original’s look and premise. It has also been one of the most hotly anticipated horror movies (first announced four years ago with Benicio Del Toro, it’s final release date kept getting pushed back). I was at one of the very first screenings in the world last night (it doesn’t open in Los Angeles ‘til Friday) and although I enjoyed myself, I was impressed and disappointed in equal measure.

The first disappointment came a while ago when I read that director Mark Romanek had left the production. He’d have certainly injected the movie with some suitably dark subtextual storytelling skills, and arguably, he’d have elicited more passionate performances from his three leads. Replacing him was Joe Johnston, director of such juvenile fare as Honey, I Shrunk the Kids and Jumanji, a director known for his commercially reliable use of lush special effects-driven pedestrian storytelling. He doesn’t fail to deliver precisely that with The Wolfman.

Benicio Del Toro as Lawrence Talbot

But Johnston isn’t the only one to blame for the movie’s trappings. Screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker (Se7en, 1995) wrote early drafts, and then David Self (the dire The Haunting, 1999) was brought in. The screenplay has no real intrigue, sports cliche-ridden dialogue, and rapidly descends into farce (with a particularly risible confrontation between father and son that defines hair-raising silliness). The screenplay makes notable changes from the original movie, yet still credits Curt Siodmak as the screenplay inspiration.

Anthony Hopkins as patriach John

Lawrence Talbot (Benicio Del Toro, with way too much eye-shadow), a thespian nobleman, has returned to the dilapidated Blackmoor estate of his estranged father Sir John (Anthony Hopkins channeling Van Hesling fer Chrissake) after his sister-in-law, Gwen Conliffe (Emily Blunt in sustained misery) has written in desperate need for support to search for her missing fiancée, Ben, Larry’s brother. But John quickly informs Lawrence that Ben has been found dead … and badly chewed.

Emily Blunt as Gwen

Larry is keen to get to the bottom of it and visits the local gypsy camp that Ben had dealings with. The full moon gleams in the dark night sky and the nomadic community is set upon by a savage and ferocious humanoid beast that tears people and campsite apart, and manages to give poor Larry a nasty chomp on the shoulder. A gypsy woman, Maneva (Geraldine Chaplin, looking creepily skeletal-faced in her twilight years), ignores protests and insists on stitching Larry’s wound and sending him on his way. Fate has a funny way of intervening.

Hugo Weaving as Inspector Abberline

Set in 1891 England (rather than the original Wales) the cinematography is suitably Gothic and oppressive, with the palette being predominantly charcoal-coloured and deeply tenebrous. The most impressive design element is the werewolf transformation process. I’m not talking about the finished look, which is a very obvious tribute to the look of Lon Chaney Jr. as the original Wolf Man. That was fine for 1941, but I’m afraid the tribute was ill-conceived, as it just looks darn silly now. Benicio snarls like a dog-man and I just wanna chortle. It gets even worse when we see the werewolf bounding along the Victorian rooftops at breakneck speed on all fours, completely CGI-ed. I felt like I was watching Rise of the Lycans (2009), Van Helsing (2004), or Twilight: New Moon (2009). What a major disappointment!

Geraldine Chaplin as Maneva

Rick Baker, the legend who did the special effects work for An American Werewolf in London (1981), was adamant he be the man for the job when he first heard Universal were going to remake The Wolf Man, since watching that movie as a boy was his primary source of inspiration. Although responsible for the finished werewolf look (Benicio in prosthetic makeup), he apparently wasn’t involved in the actual transformation which is seen about three times during the movie, the most spectacular is a scene where Lawrence is strapped to a seat in front of a large room of psycho-analytical geeks. The look of the werewolf as he’s changing is profoundly more menacing and nightmarish than the end result, which is another major disappointment that they didn’t stay in the moment. However there are some great gore set-pieces, and thank God they didn’t opt for a PG-13 movie!

More cat-like during transformation, but way scarier than the end result

Danny Elfman delivers one of his more tolerable scores (that curiously reminded me of Howard Shore's LOTR score), and, although the movie has been Benicio Del Toro’s pet project for many years (he acts as one of the producers), it is Hugo Weaving who delivers the movie’s best performance as wry Scotland Yard Inspector Abberline. Anthony Hopkins always looks and sounds great, but he hasn’t given a truly memorable performance in years (one could argue he’s been playing Hannibal and/or Van Helsing for nearly twenty years). I’m a big fan of Emily Blunt, but her morose and drab presence failed to move me after so much anticipation.

Lawrence heads back to the Talbot estate to confront his father

The Wolfman is one for Del Toro completists and the werewolf lovers, but don’t expect the animalistic lupine menace of Dog Soldiers (2002) or mythological re-invention of 30 Days of Night (2007). We horrorphile True Believers were counting on a new modern classic, but, as I should’ve known; great trailer = not-so-great movie.

Here's the trailer:

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A Lizard in a Woman's Skin

February 4th 2010 23:48

The late Italian director and legendary gorehound Lucio Fulci is best known for his Romero rip-off Zombi 2 (1979, AKA Zombie Flesh Eaters), as it was known in Italy, where Dawn of the Dead (1978) had been re-titled Zombi ... yes, confusing, I know. However Fulci had been making movies for years before he descended into the surrealist, phantasmogorical mire of his 70s work. Before supernatural incoherence completely overwhelmed his sensibilities he made a handful of giallo psycho-thrillers, the Italian "yellow" brand of lurid murder mysteries, lurid being the operative word.

Lizard in a Woman's Skin Florinda Bolkan

Florinda Bolkan as Carol Hammond

Lizard in a Woman's Skin Anita Strindberg

Anita Strindberg as Julia Durer

A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin (1971) is the best known of his giallo movies, but it’s not his best movie. Made with the English-language market in mind, the movie takes place in London and features less Italian actors than normal. In the US it was cut and re-titled Schizoid, while in France it was known as The Whores Go to Hell. Fulci directs more competently than his latter work, but the inherent trappings of the murder-mystery genre weigh heavily on the movie and despite some alluring elements the movie is overlong and frequently tedious. Still, a brilliant title, a sensational pursuit set-piece, and several sensationalist, sexadelic dream/nightmare sequences lift the movie’s game considerably.

Silvia Monti as Deborah

Lizard in a Woman's Skin Florinda Bolkan and Anita Strindberg

Carol is seduced by Julia ... In reality or her dreams?

The plot is at once ludicrously simply and painfully convoluted; and therein lies the Rub. The giallo movies reply on way too much dialogue and supposed detective work, and precious little action and suspense. Dario Argento made the two finest giallo movies: The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970) and Deep Red (1975). But Argento injected his murder-mysteries with shards of the supernatural, and drenched his movies in the most memorably creepy atmospheres. Curiously it wasn’t until Fulci launched into his full-blown horror movies that he began to command a most impressive hold on surrealist atmosphere, with his rough-cut diamond from Hell, The Beyond (1981), being the flawed jewel in his crown.

Acid-soaked hippies gaze on

Carol Hammond (Florinda Bolkan) is the deeply troubled daughter of a prominent English politican, Edmund Brighton (Leo Genn). She has frequent reoccurring phantasms in which she is emersed in bisexual bacchanalian scenarios soaked in the inhibition-stripping LSD surrounds of the late 60s swinging London. Her husband Frank (Jean Sorel) seems strangely detached from her predicament, yet Frank’s teenage daughter Joan (Edy Gall) is more supportive.

Carol stabs away in a nightmare frenzy

Carol’s apartment building neighbour Julia Durer (Anita Strindberg), is a hedonistic sex kitten with the huge false eye-lashes and pneumatic breasts to prove it. She hosts the drug-fueled all night parties that are playing havoc with Carol’s fragile psyche. Carol has been visiting a psychoanalyst to help determine the true nature of her disturbing dream/nightmares. To thicken the plot there's adulterous play at work between Frank and his striking secretary Deborah (. It’s only a matter of time before all these factors come to a head, and when Julia is found brutally stabbed to death, spreadeagled on her crimson, crushed velvet bed spread, the whistle-happy investigating Inspector Corvin (Stanely Baker) has his work cut out for him.

Psycho-delic victim

Murder mysteries always rely on a few red herrings to keep the narrative interesting, and Lizard in a Woman’s Skin is no exception. There’s Frank, of course, and Deborah, and a hilarious hippie couple, Hubert (Mike Kennedy) and Jenny (Penny Brown, whom rather tickled my fancy). Did Carol actually commit the murder she dreamed about? Certainly her letter-opener is missing, and turns up in the dead neighbour’s bedroom (embedded between her uber-pert bosom to be precise). Carol has a perpetual expression of guilt and anxiety etched onto her face (which becomes rather boring after a while).

The controversial dog sequence

By the last scene where the murderer is finally agreed upon I’d given up caring. But along the way I had marveled at the fantastic location shooting in and around parts of London I hadn’t seen used before. Fulci and his camera-operator had a field day with all the crash zooms, wide-angles, low angles, and tracking shots. Also a young Carlo Rambaldi, the legendary special effects wizard, came to attention when authorities arrested Lucio Fulci on the grounds of suspected illegal animal slaughter after the movie was released, due to a scene where Carol stumbles into a sanatorium experimental laboratory where dogs have been strung up, surgically clamped and disemboweled, yet kept alive and whimpering. It is an utterly hideous image indeed. Rambaldi was brought into court, with fake dog prop, to prove it was all just a rather convincing special effect.

Penny Brown as hippie Jenny

A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin is more a curiosity than anything else; it pushes some boundaries for its time with nudity and gore, provides a modicum of interest on a murder mystery level, and features a jazzy score from Ennio Morricone, but is too bogged down in the police and domestic banter to let the real action speak volume. Giallo movies demand a fast pace, with more action and less conversation. The best detectives shut up and get on with it, Fulci and his screenwriters should have paid heed.

Hippie Hubert (Mike Kennedy) approaches a wounded Carol

US movie poster

Italian movie poster

Here's the trailer:

Here's a more alluring trailer (it's unofficial, so not sure if it's fan-made):

A Lizard in a Woman's Skin DVD is courtesy of Umbrella Entertainment, many thanks!

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Sakebi (Retribution)

February 2nd 2010 05:27

Retribution (2006) is a J-Horror ghost tale that melds with a police crime story, written and directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, who made the original Kairo (Pulse, 2001). The literal English translation of the original title, Sakebi, means “shriek” or “the scream”, yet it is known as Dark Crimes (Argentina), The Ghost That Never Forgets (Peru), I Punish (Italy), and Victim of an Hallucination (Brazil). It’s international title is Retribution, which holds dear to its central theme.

Noboru Yoshioka (Kôji Yakusho) is a police detective based in Tokyo. He has a beautiful girlfriend, Harue (Manami Konishi), yet both have a very detached relationship (I actually thought she was a call-girl from the way they interacted). Yoshioka is investigating a murder, a woman in a red dress found head down in a small pool of saltwater on a disused landfill. He finds a button in another puddle nearby. Another murder has similar circumstances, a young man found head down in a container full of saltwater, also on the landfill. No leads, no substantial clues, but Yoshioka feels they are connected by more than just the elements.

Stranger still, Yoshioka feels he is being viewed as a potential suspect, since he owns a trenchcoat missing the same button, and he owns yellow cord like that which was used to strangle the young man. Creeping him out even further the detective starts having visions of the woman in the red dress. She is haunting him, but he doesn’t recognize her, he doesn’t understand her spectre’s motive. Who killed her? What is his connection? Even Yoshioka’s partner doesn’t have anything much to offer. They interrogate a man who confesses to murdering the woman in red, so why won’t the ghost leave Yoshioka alone?!

Retribution Koji Yakusho and Manami Konishi

Retribution is not for easy intellectual consumption, it’s one of the stranger, more complex tales of the supernatural I’ve seen. This is a ghost story that plays mercilessly on memory, identity, and guilt, and vengeance. For Yoshioka his past has come back to haunt him something wicked. But he’s none the wiser for the most part of the movie (and neither is the audience). Retribution has a bizarre end (and an even more bizarre alternate ending, which features in the DVD’s extras). It is at movie’s end that the real truth behind the original title is illustrated. I was right about one thing, a character whom I believed was more important to the narrative than what they appeared to be.

Director Kurosawa (no relation to the great Akira Kurosawa) infuses his story with a languid pace, but there’s briskness present too, no scenes feel extraneous or superfluous in any way. It’s intelligently directed with a solid visual sense, and some excellent special effects, including a man doing a very convincing jump off a three-storey building onto the ground, and some classic ghost behaviour. I was reminded of Ringu’s Sadako by the woman in red (identified first by police as F18, then later as Reiko) with her floating, vividly etched presence.

Retribution plays out like a puzzle, and puzzles by nature never piece together easily. I’m not entirely sure I understand what is going on with Yoshioka and the confrontation of his past, but for certain he makes some terrible realisations. The mind is a fragile creature, and trauma does strange things to memory, identity, and desire. A broken mind is a like a broken mirror; multiple reflections, shards of oneself. Kurosawa uses mirrors, open doorways in the background, and curtains to keep the viewer on edge. Yoshioka is a broken man slowly falling to bits, whilst the woman in red is a disquieting shell determined on bringing down those who abandoned her in her time of need. “I died, so everyone else should die too …” But has she forgiven Yoshioka for one crime, but not another …?

Solid performances and score cement Retribution as a top notch ghost story. Prepare to have your intellect tickled, your sensibilities teased, your nerves jangled mildly. I must make a point of watching some of Kurasawa’s earlier movies, in particular Pulse, Charisma, and Loft. I’m very surprised Hollywood hasn’t secured the rights for a remake to Retribution … Perhaps they have.

Here's the Japanese trailer:

Here's an excellent German trailer:

Retribution DVD is courtesy of Madman Entertainment, many thanks!

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Yogen (Premonition)

February 1st 2010 03:29

Premonition (2004), a supernatural J-Horror directed by Norio Tsuruta who made Ring 0: Birthday (2000), has a great premise and some excellent set-pieces, but is marred by overwrought acting and a very ordinary visual narrative that makes the whole movie feel like a television episode to some less-than-stellar Twilight Zone-styled series (which curiously it is: J-Horror Theatre Series 2).

Hideki Satomi (Hiroshi Mikami) is traveling in the car with his wife Ayaka (Noriko Sakai) and daughter Nana (Hana Inoue). His laptop runs out of battery power, and he urgently needs to email some work documents, so his wife returns to a payphone by the side of the country road where he can make the transmission through dial up

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Peeping Tom

January 28th 2010 03:12

Released the same year as Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960), Peeping Tom, directed by Michael Powell, was also a movie years ahead of its time, a psychological thriller that operates with the dark machinations and severity of a horror. Powell had garnered enormous critical acclaim for numerous films he made with Emeric Pressburger in the 40s and 50s, but he went alone on Peeping Tom, and it proved to be the kiss of death, effectively ending his career in England. He made several other features before his death in 1990, but none came close to capturing the disturbing slow-burn subversive power of Peeping Tom.

Carl Boehm as Mark Lewis

Mark Lewis (Carl Boehm) is a strange, lonely, sexually-repressed man working as a focus-puller for a British film studio. He moonlights shooting “cheesecake” pics in his mezzanine apartment for the seedy newsagent on street level below, whilst harbouring his own directorial desires; a documentary on the expression of extreme human fear. It is this unhealthy obsession with the elusiveness of mortality and his intent on capturing it on film that has lead Lewis to become a murderer.

Anna Massey as Helen

Maxine Audley as Helen's mother

His twisted state of mind, kept in check (just) by the mundane routine of his day job, and the amorous curiosity of his apartment building neighbour, Helen (Anna Massey), who lives with her suspicious blind mother (Maxine Audley), dates back to the psychological testing of his scientist father when Lewis was just a boy serving as his father’s subject for cold-blooded experiments in terror. Of course, now as a grown man, Lewis is a chip off the old block … but he’s fallen much further. Lewis is a determined documenteur, recording women’s contorted features and dying gasps on his portable 16mm camera after he stabs them with the blade concealed in his tripod. But like all obsessions, it will eventually consume him

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BLOWING MY OWN TRAFFIC HORN

January 27th 2010 05:51

It’s always curious to see where your readers are clicking around your blog. So here are a few Orble stats for the record. The Hit Count is the raw page views (although I’m not entirely sure what “raw page views” actually are), the Individual Readers are the number of individual readers as measured by the number of IP (Internet Protocol) addresses, basically an indication as to how many people are actually reading my blog. The Link Readers are those that arrived at my blog after clicking on a link, or who clicked on a hyperlink within my blog.

Apparently if a reader types in a web address, uses their favourites list, or clicks on a link in an email (like most subscribers do) they won't register as a click (link) reader. Therefore the true number of real people who are reading your blog is somewhere between the number of click (link) readers and the number of individual readers and is usually closer to the latter

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Reazione a Catena (Chain Reaction)

January 25th 2010 00:26

Reazione a Catena (1971), or A Bay of Blood and Twitch of the Death Nerve, as it is most popularly known, was Mario Bava’s most controversial movie. It is also his most influential, and is considered by horrorphiles as the blueprint to the modern slasher flick. Bob Clark’s Black Christmas (1974) was the first American movie to copy the stylistic of an unseen killer, using their POV as a visual motif, and featuring mischievous adolescents in peril who die in gruesome fashion. Then John Carpenter pared it back and made a box office killing with Halloween (1978) and the stalk’n’slash sub-genre was well and truly established.

Bava wanted another opportunity to work with actor Laura Betti, and the two of them cooked up a story concept (an elderly heiress is killed for control of her fortunes and thus relatives and friends attempt to reduce the inheritance playing field) which they named Odore di Carne (The Stench of Flesh). Later as the movie went into production it had working titles that translated as Thus Do We Learn to be Evil, and That Will Teach Them to be Bad. Finally the title of Reazione a Catena (Chain Reaction) was settled on for its premiere at the 1971 Avoriaz film festival. Bava’s old pal Christopher Lee was in the audience and was apparently so disgusted with the graphic violence that he left the screening in protest. The movie went on to win the festival award for Best Makeup and Special Effects (to the legendary Carlo Rambaldi

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VOTE FOR YOUR FAVOURITE VAMPIRE MOVIE - Poll ends February 26th

January 21st 2010 22:31

With Twilight angst still hanging in the air, and Daybreakers science fiction breathing at the door I thought I’d put a poll together to find out just what are my True Believers’ favourite vampire movies. But let’s face it, there are at least 170 movies featuring Bram Stoker’s character Count Dracula, let alone the number of movies featuring simply vampires and those that like to drink the blood of others.

I’ve put together a list of sixty-one titles, with an option of “other” for any title(s) I’ve not included that any reader wishes to vote for (there may be two or three I suppose). Vote three points for your top favourite movie, then two points for the next favourite, and one point for your third favourite. Type your selection with the points in brackets beside it ie Let the Right One In (3), 30 Days of Night (2), Nosferatu the Vampyre (1

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Cronos

January 20th 2010 23:40

Guillermo Del Toro’s feature debut, Cronos (1993), is a peculiar and arresting diversion on the vampire mythology with a stunning lead performance, fantastic production design, and a deliciously macabre sense of irony; up there in the pantheon of great vampire movies.

In 1536 an alchemist builds an extraordinary mechanism that encapsulates a truly exotic scarab, an insect capable of providing its user (parasite) with eternal life, as long as they continue to abide by its demanding usage. The Cronos Device, as its known, survives its maker until 1997 where it ends up in the antique store of aging Jesus Gris (Federico Luppi). Later, Jesus with his granddaughter Aurora (Tamara Shanath) as witness discovers the device’s gift of youthful vigor and is immediately addicted. Meanwhile a wealthy, greedy, but dying tycoon, Mr. De La Guardia (Claudio Brook), knows of the Cronos Device’s existence and he sends his disgruntled nephew Angel (Ron Perlman) out to fetch it, at any cost, before the blood congeals

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Daybreakers

January 20th 2010 03:47

We’ve been waiting some time for this movie. I seem to remember first hearing about production on this at least two years ago. I believe it was in post-production hell for quite a while, and it hasn’t done the movie any favours. Daybreakers (2010) tries way too hard and is ultimately mutton dressed as lamb.

Australian directors Michael and Peter Spiereg first came to attention with a low-budget zombie comedy called Undead (2003) which impressed some critics and minority audiences. It featured some inventive visual effects, but was too silly and pretentious for my tastes. The brothers background in visual effects carried over into their next feature when Undead, and their pitch for a science fiction-vampire tale, impressed Hollywood executives. But it took seven years to get the movie made

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The Wolfman	A Lizard in a Woman's Skin	Sakebi (Retribution)
Yogen (Premonition)	Peeping Tom	BLOWING MY OWN TRAFFIC HORN
Reazione a Catena (Chain Reaction)	VOTE FOR YOUR FAVOURITE VAMPIRE MOVIE - Poll ends February 26th	Cronos
Daybreakers	BLOODY DISGUSTING'S TOP 20 FILMS OF THE DECADE	Going to Pieces: The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film
The American Nightmare	HORRORPHILE'S 50 NIGHTMARES OF THE DECADE: 2000 - 2009	LET ME IN - teaser posters