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“Night brings terror. Strange, alien forms move restlessly across the face of the earth. Fear, horror and death follow in their wake. The sky is dark; the moon has not yet risen; the stars seem too frightened to shine ..." --- Drake Douglas (introduction to Horrors)

Horrorphile - January 2008

What are some EXPLOITATION-HORROR movie essentials?

January 31st 2008 05:13
trick or treat
Keeping on the grindhouse tip, I’ve made a list of thirteen essential elements (liable to cause argument) that would feature nicely within the context of a sleazy, nasty, horror movie. I had dirty, reprehensible, misanthropic fun here.

So if you had to pick four of these to feature in a movie that you’d like to see, which ones would you pick? And then give your piece of midnight movie filth a title.

1. A psychopathic smack addict always shooting up in different and more extreme parts of their ravaged body, until they resort to a needle in the eye.
2. A stripper with a big bush and huge fake tits stealing from her sleazy, sociopathic boss.
3. A killer wearing the skinned face of a victim makes strange grunts and moans, and is attacked by the skinned victim who’s still alive!
4. A huge homosexual vampire stalks the NY underground gay scene, yet always vomits up blood after the kill.
5. A sorority house full of horny girls is attacked by a bunch of lesbian bikers.
sorority girls
6. Zombies overrun a small town, but are kept at bay by a young man armed with a huge razor-bladed bulldozer
7. A deep red fog rolls in spreading a hideous flesh-melting contagious disease, survivors flee, but some are already infected.
8. Head villian gets a machete straight through the head, cleaving his menacing face in half.
9. Cute boy and girl creep through scary cemetery, smoke a joint and make out in an open crypt while strange noises surround them.
cemetery

10. Mad scientist tries experimental “progressive” neuro-surgery on humans, but his mutant assistant turns out to be an even crazier psychopath when he indulges in necrophilia with the dead abandoned victims.
11. Deep in the jungle a bunch of drug-addled cowboys hold fort while local cannibals attack.
12. An evil supernatural force descends upon a forest mansion causing the holiday couples to become sex-crazed killers, eventually only one couple is left, and they both commit suicide by hari-kari.
13. Gangs of murderous thugs go on the rampage during Halloween, with horrific tricks in store for the rich families.

Well I’m using #5, #9, #13 and #8.
lesbian biker

My twisted horror flick is gonna be called Tricks, No Treats.
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The Mutations AND The Incredible Melting Man

January 30th 2008 01:54
The Mutations movie poster
In conjunction with the exclusive limited run two week season of Grindhouse (2007) the Chauvel cinema here in Sydney has screened four grindhouse “classics” as part of their annual cinematheque programme. I managed to catch two of them; The Mutations (1974) and The Incredible Melting Man (1977).
The Incredible Melting Man newspaper ad
I had read about The Mutations (known in the States as The Freakmaker) many years ago in a science fiction cinema book I owned as a lad. An English film starring Donald Pleasence as a mad scientist and Tom Baker (pre-Doctor Who) as a deformed traveling circus operator. Directed by legendary cinematographer turned director Jack Cardiff it’s an unintentionally hilarious descent into extreme silliness; a curious re-fashioned re-boot of Freaks (1932) meets Frankenstein (1931).

The Mutations Donald Pleasence and Tom Baker
Prof. Nolter (Donald Pleasence) with his circus freak accomplice Lynch (Tom Baker)
The film is neither scary nor repulsive as a horror movie, yet it creates an oddly unsettling, strangely claustrophobic atmosphere. Perhaps this had something to do with the scratchy, washed-out 16mm print I was watching, but it added a certain “edge” to the movie, a macabre visual tone. The opening time-lapse photography sequences of plants growing and flowers blooming set to a brooding electronic soundtrack was quite something.

The Mutations Donald Pleasence and Tom Baker
The mad scientist applies his magic while the freak looks on
When I say the movie wasn’t repulsive, I was lying, actually it featured some real life “freaks”, just as Tod Browning’s cult film had. One man, Popeye, could actually pop his eyes out of his head like some thyroid extremist; a truly ghastly sight (pun unintended). There was also alligator woman, pretzel boy, the bearded lady, the human pincushion, monkey woman, frog boy, and the de rigueur dwarves and midgets.

The Mutations O.T. and Kathy Kitchen
The Human Pincushion (O.T.) and midget Kathy (Kathy Kitchen)
The Mutations Willie Ingram
Popeye (Willie Ingram) does his thing
Professor Nolter (Pleasence) works at the university teaching biology to a group of students who look far too old to be still in school. Behind the scenes he’s experimenting with trying to create genetically-engineered hybrids of humans and plants, taking the self-sufficiency of plants and combining them with the abstract thought of humankind. With the help of circus freak Lynch (Baker) who abducts students and brings them to the doctor’s lab (filled with various “intelligent plants”), under the pretense that the good doctor will cure him of his grotesque deformity, where Nolter is determined to break on through to the other side.

The Mutations Tom Baker and Julie Ege
Lynch steals Hedi (Julie Ege) for the professor
Of course it all goes horribly awry, with some very silly special effects make-up, and some absurd dialogue and scenarios. It’s one of those horror curios that demands to be seen, if only to see Tom Baker in an elephant man facial prosthetic frothing “I am not a freak!”, and to see Donald Pleasence utter an unconvincing scream as he’s devoured by a carnivorous man-plant. Oh, and not forgetting the spectacle of Popeye too!

The Incredible Melting Man Alex Rebar
Astronaut Steve West (Alex Rebar) is not too happy with his reflection
The Incredible Melting Man I saw when I was barely out of puberty late one night on television (In New Zealand we had The Sunday Horrors, great for those B-grade cult rarities). From memory it was tacky (pun intended), but reasonably good fun. But oh no, on watching the movie again, it quickly dawned on me this movie was actually much, much worse than I ever remembered. In fact, so utterly dreadful is this Z-grade effort that I was caught like a deer in the headlights, unable to take my eyes off the screen. My fiancé and her friend, whom I had managed to talk into joining me, were suitably unimpressed, despite my pre-screening warnings that the movie was going to be “bad”. Bad was an understatement, to say the least!

The Incredible Melting Man Alex Rebar and Samuel Gelfman
The melting man grabs a bite to eat
Written and directed by the inept William Sachs the movie is a textbook example of how not to direct a horror movie. To be more precise, this is how not to direct a movie. Period. Every basic rule of cinematic language and technique was broken, but not in an experimental, progressive way. Sachs simply had no idea how to direct a movie; he even crosses the line, twice! Extraordinary that it ever got released. That’s the real horror.

A young Rick Baker supplied the movie’s special effects; unfortunately they’re not very special at all. Apart from the titular character’s head collapse at movie’s end, the melting effects are wholly unremarkable, basically a latex full-head mask, with hand and feet gloves, that have been wetted and applied with a little flesh slime before each take. Oh, and there’s a floating decapitated head as well.
The Incredible Melting Man Alex Rebar
The melting man, sans arm, is still hungry
The synopsis is pretty dire too: Astronaut Steve West (Alex Rebar) returns from a mission to Saturn (despite the glaring factual error that it’s impossible to actually land on the gaseous giant), but is afflicted with some kind of cosmic radiation which causes his flesh to slowly melt. His fellow astronaut comrades have all perished. He escapes the clutches of the hospital his mind in meltdown also, resulting in homicidal, cannibalistic behaviour (apparently he needs the human cells to stay alive). A government official (Myron Healey) and West’s doctor (Burr “I’m Dr. Ted Nelson!” DeBenning) make a pathetic attempt to capture him. Eventually he is cornered, but brute strength enables him to escape once again, only to succumb to the final gloopy ravages of his Saturn disease. A cleaner arrives on the scene and shovels up the remains as a radio voiceover announces a new mission to Saturn is about to commence.

I’m not being harsh when I say The Incredible Melting Man is not even fun for popcorn jeers, it takes itself way too seriously to be appreciated on a so bad-it’s-good level. It’s trash so low you might suffer from the bends watching it. In fact it really is only good for one thing; reminding the viewer of another B-horror, infinitely better: The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957).

Here's an original short, but effective, TV spot for The Mutations:


Here's melting man Steve West losing an eye and scaring a poor wee girl:

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Horror QUIZ #18: Mastermind Series - III

January 29th 2008 01:47
The third in my name-that-movie-from-a-single -still series. A quiz for the serious-minded horror movie buffs. You need to be on the money here; original complete title, or foreign title if the movie was originally released in a foreign tongue, any alternate titles (if it had any), and year of production and/or release.

Of course a couple of these might seem damn easy, but then, as my papa used to say "It's only easy when you know the answer." I suppose I could have made it tougher; name the director and country of origin as well, but hey, I’ll leave that for the next Mastermind level further down the track.

So let the blood be spilled!

1.


2.


3.


4.


5.


6.


7.


8.


9.


10.


11.


12.


13.


13 … Brilliant! The Scarlet Severed Hand trophy for you!
9 – 12 … Well, well, well, very impressive, you know your horror schtick!
5 – 8 … You’ve spent some time in the Dark, good work, but no bloodied cigar for you!
1 – 4 … Best you stick to watching the daytime soaps.

1. Death Ship (1980) 2. L'Uccello dale Piuma di Cristallo (1970, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage) 3. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994) 4. Blood on Satan's Claw (1971) 5. Cannibal Ferox (1981, aka Make Them Die Slowly/Woman from Deep River) 6. Interview with the Vampire; The Vampire Chronicles (1994) 7. Dead & Buried (1981) 8. Dust Devil (1992) 9. Final Destination 2 (2003) 10. H.G. Wells' The Food of the Gods (1976) 11. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986) 12. The Faculty (1998) 13. Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)
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Cloverfield

January 24th 2008 02:18
Cloverfield movie poster
I do like a good monster flick. To be more precise I’m partial to a big monster movie. Cloverfield (2008) has a pretty big monster; in fact, it would probably rate as one of the very biggest monsters to ever grace the silver screen, although to be more realistic grace is far from being one of the monsters attributes. This leviathan is about letting loose foghorn roars and bringing skyscrapers down.

Directed by unknown Matt Reeves, but conceived and produced by mate J.J. Abrams (the creator of television’s hugely popular Lost series, and also the man behind the big screen re-boot of Star Trek due at the end of the year), Cloverfield is nothing new, well, certainly not in the premise department: enormous beast emerges from the Manhattan harbour, capsizing a tanker in the process, and then proceeds to cut a trail of urban destruction through downtown New York City eventually ending up in Central Park


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Grindhouse

January 23rd 2008 04:57
Grindhouse movie teaser poster
Finally a chance to see Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriquez’s tribute to the sleazy exploitation flicks of the 70s and early 80s, where the decrepit cinema palaces of the 30s and 40s in downtown Manhattan would grind out as many double feature sessions of lurid and ultra-violent low-budget flicks as possible, with the prints nearly always in disrepair.

In America the Grindhouse (2007) double feature – Planet Terror followed by Death Proof – bombed at the cinemas. Cinemas were frustrated in having to fit a 3-hour programme into their daily screening schedule. Your Joe Average cinemagoer was reluctant to have their bums on seats for such a lengthy time, especially watching so-called “trash”, let alone what it was costing for a babysitter


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Some horrors WILL, some horrors WON'T ...

January 22nd 2008 06:19
Turistas Melissa George
… Some horrors kick some bloody butt, and some horrors really don’t.

So what makes a horror a good horror, while so many are bad, in all the wrong ways? Many horror filmmakers think they can get away with a lot; mediocre to lousy acting, cheap special effects, shooting in available light, because they think as long as the movie is “nasty” and “violent” and “hip” and sports some gratuitous nudity then they’ll be able to sell it and have it distributed no probs


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Repulsion

January 21st 2008 04:01
Repulsion movie poster
Let it be said here and now, I’m a huge fan of director Roman Polanski’s oeuvre. Sure, he’s made a couple of clunkers, what director hasn’t? But overall Polanksi’s command of cinema is exceptional. His clever use of mise-en-scene and of sound, excellent eye for casting, an appreciation of the finer points of black comedy, a curious fascination with sexual dysfunction, and taste for the macabre; all these come together in the best of his films.

Repulsion title card
Repulsion (1965) his second feature, and his first in English, garnered him a lot of attention. Partly due to the film’s provocative subject matter, but also in the way he handled it. Repulsion is a psychological horror wrapped in the fabric of an art film, just as Cul-de-Sac, the movie he shot back-to-back with Repulsion, is a black comedy of errors masking another art film


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Horrorphile's BLOODY BEST of 2007

January 17th 2008 23:25
28 Weeks Later poster art
Nudged and winked at by John Doe’s top films of 2007 I thought it best if I offered my opinion on the bloody best of last year. Not that there’s a wealth of movies to choose from, slim pickings really, but a couple of doozies.

I’ve decided I should narrow the top bunch down to horror horrors, excluding a few of those movies that I’ve reviewed that wouldn’t be described as horrors per se by the majority, but which I’ve labeled either a post-modern horror or a kind of horror hybrid


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The Dead Girl

January 16th 2008 23:23
The Dead Girl movie poster
When The Dead Girl (2006) was first released theatrically my fiancé was wanting a movie recommendation to take a friend to. I suggested The Dead Girl on the basis of the cast, the title, and the basic premise which I’d read somewhere. I hadn’t seen the movie, but something told me it would be very worthwhile. My partner and her friend thought it was excellent, a job well done, I thought to myself.

I finally ended up seeing it on DVD a week or so ago (been kicking myself I never saw it on the big screen) and have decided it has to be one of the best and most powerful movies of recent years, certainly one of the finest acting ensembles in a long time. The longer the movie reverberates in my mind, the stronger and more powerful the film becomes; like No Country for Old Men (2007), it is a stunning example of brilliant filmmaking; screenplay, acting, directing, editing, cinematography, soundtrack, etc


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Feast

January 16th 2008 03:37
Feast movie poster
“They’re hungry. You’re dinner.” The tagline to Feast (2005) pretty much sums up the tone of this unabashedly over-the-top gore-fest black comedy. It’s a bloody treat too; low-budget, but wildly inventive, and sporting some of the best non-CGI special effects since The Evil Dead (1982).

A severed tongue-in-cheek screenplay by Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton that plays with both the monster and slasher sub-genres, while twisting clichés and convention and tearing them up. Feast is a rip-roaring extravaganza similar to the lurid horror excesses of From Dusk Till Dawn (1996), but none of the slapstick. It also sports one of the best B-list and up-and-coming ensemble casts I’ve seen in a while


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The Bridge

January 15th 2008 05:21
The Bridge movie poster
I missed seeing this extraordinary documentary at last year’s Sydney Film Festival, so recently I caught up with The Bridge (2006) on DVD. Curiously it reminded me of another provocative and disturbing doco I did see during the Festival; Zoo (2007).

Like Zoo, The Bridge, is a deeply compelling film about a deeply disturbing subject made with intelligence and a delicate sense of style. Haunting and poetic, The Bridge resonated with me for along time after, just as Zoo had done. Whereas Zoo was about aberrant love (bestiality), The Bridge is about nihilistic despair (suicide), two films exploring the darkness of the human condition


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1-18-08 ... Colossus ... Monstrous ... CLOVERFIELD!

January 13th 2008 22:55
One Cloverfield's early teaser images
Rather ironically a huge SuperTrash monster flick that had been very successfully viral marketed is about to be released, Cloverfield, and I’ve only just heard about it. Which rock have I been under?!

Since July of last year producer J.J. Abrams (TV’s Lost) has been leaking teasers and internet tentacles that hint at what his monster movie is about. Basically a massive leviathan emerges from the watery depths surrounding lower Manhattan and wreaks destruction on par with 9/11


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POSTER GALLERY 8

January 11th 2008 05:16
I’m going old school this time around. I’ve selected only Golden Age classics, with a hint of fromage. From a time when illustration was paramount, vivid colour was king, and bold typeset was de rigueur.

I love the old art deco style graphic designs, there’s something undeniably creepy about them. But enough from me, bring on the glamour horror


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No Country for Old Men

January 10th 2008 00:41
No Country for Old Men movie poster
The Coen brothers have made some exceptional films. They make films for movie buffs, or to be more precise, they make movies for cinephiles. Generally they excel at the art of cinematic storytelling, producing a body of work to rival most, if not all, of their contemporaries. However, it’s by no means a flawless resume, some of their films haven’t done much for me; Miller’s Crossing was too dense, The Hudsucker Proxy irritated the hell out of me, O Brother, Where Art Thou? bored me to tears, Intolerable Cruelty was insufferable, and I didn’t even bother seeing The Ladykillers, it just looked bloated and ridiculous. I'm probably being overly harsh, but in recent years I’d become concerned the Coens were losing their edge.

I can quite comfortably say the brothers have re-claimed their mojo. No Country for Old Men (2007) is the best film they’ve made in years; in fact, I’d go so far as saying this is one of the best films they’ve ever made, up there with Blood Simple and Fargo. It’s cinematic storytelling par excellence. And to throw a slant on the perspective, I look at this film as a post-modern horror movie


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Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

January 9th 2008 00:16
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street movie poster
Now my friends, let’s get somethin’ straight. I don’t like musicals. Never have, never will. I can tolerate the odd one, if the mood and atmosphere is right, perhaps a song or two tickles me fancy, but generally, if a movie’s a musical you won’t find me ‘avin’ a butcher’s hook …

But, there are exceptions to the rule, and this ‘ere is one of ‘em: Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007). Directed by Tim Burton and starring Johnny Depp. Well, well, well, who would’ve thought? It works a damn bloody treat, goes straight for the jugular, if you’ll pardon the pun


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Wind Chill

January 8th 2008 04:45
Wind Chill movie poster
I do like a good ghost story, but they’re a dying breed. Most modern horrors these days simply try and out do each other on the blood and gore and the I’m-so-bloody-clever stakes. Those Saw movies have got a lot to answer for.

One such ghost story that has always stuck in the back of my mind was The Changeling (1979) which I saw on VHS when I was a young teenager. But that's for another time


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Vacancy

January 7th 2008 05:07
Vacancy movie poster
There’s nothing new in Vacancy (2007), but it’s well made nevertheless. It’s very Hitchcock with lashings of Psycho-esque scenarios, yet it manages to look and feel remarkably fresh and compelling. Director Nimród Antal (yeah, I know, what kind of name is that?!), is a young American of Hungarian descent who began his career several years ago with the highly stylised romantic thriller Kontroll, which was set in the Budapest subway system.

Vacancy takes place on a dark highway where a disgruntled couple, David (Luke Wilson) and Amy (Kate Beckinsale) Fox appear to be at the tail end of their marriage. She’s on medication to curb her depression following the death of their child, and he’s desperate to try and save the shreds of their marriage. But he left the interstate and took a short cut and swerved to avoid a raccoon. Now the car’s in bad shape, so it looks like they’ll be staying over night in that dilapidated motel


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