April 2008 - Horrorphile

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Horrorphile - April 2008

... and for a few BLOODIED MORE

April 30th 2008 00:57

A further handful of potentially potent new movies that are hitting the big screens and not-so-big screens now and in the near future:

The Broken finds Lena Headley as Gina, a woman who sees herself driving past on a busy London street. Creepily intrigued she follows the car to her own apartment and from there slides into a dark, unhinged reality that will haunt her most horribly. This is a psychological horror-thriller from second time director Sean Ellis.

The Dark Lurking is set 800 feet below the surface of the Antarctic where a subterranean research station has gone offline. Hundreds of ravenous and constantly mutating creatures are on the loose and eight researchers must find their way up through thirteen levels to reach safety. A low-budget Australian production described as Alien meets The Evil Dead directed by Greg Connors and starring Anthony Edwards.

Funny Games U.S. is controversial German director Michael Haneke’s American remake of his own movie Funny Games (1997), which was a movie I had a lot of trouble with. The Dutch director of The Vanishing (1988) remade his own film for Hollywood, and compromised the ending so radically he basically eviscerated any real horror the original possessed. I have a feeling Haneke will attempt to keep his English-language version of Funny Games as close to the original as possible, which won’t make it any easier to digest. We’ll see.

100 Feet is the new film from writer/director Eric Red who wrote The Hitcher (1986) and wrote and directed the little seen werewolf flick Bad Moon. Starring Famke Janssen as Marnie, a woman who kills her abusive husband in self-defence, then sentenced to house-arrest, only to discover her dead husband’s malevolent ghost is in the house dead-set on making her life an absolute hell.

The Tattooist is co-written by Kiwi Jonathan King who gave us Black Sheep and directed by Peter Burger. It’s a supernatural tale about a deadly Samoan spirit released through the ancient art of the Pacific tatau. It stars American Jason Behr and New Zealand veteran Michael Hurst. It’s going straight to DVD in the States, but hey, I’m not surprised. Hopefully we’ll get a theatrical release down under.

Mother of Tears: The Third Mother, the hugely anticipated third part to Italian horror maestro Dario Argento’s trilogy of witchcraft. This has had its international release thwarted, possibly due to the less-than-stellar reception in the homeland. It will have a limited U.S. theatrical release in June, with the DVD coming out sometime later. With the track record of Argento’s movies releases in Australasia it is highly unlikely we’ll get to see it on the big screen which is a real shame, even if it does bark like the hound from hell.

Twilight is one I’m not sure about at all, perhaps because it’s plot reminds me a little of my own vampire movie I made fifteen years ago; a young girl named Bella falls in love with a vampire, which sparks a rival vampire clan to pursue them, forcing Bella to decide if she too should become one of the undead. Based on the young-adult fantasy novels by Stephanie Meyer, directed by Catherine Hardwicke (Thirteen and Lords of Dogtown), and co-starring the talented young Nikki Reed (who co-starred and co-wrote Thirteen). It'll probably suck, but hey ...

To finish off on a bitter note, here’s a comprehensive list of remakes I unearthed that are currently in states of pre-production, principal photography, post-production, or have just been released. It’s truly painful; It’s Alive, The Thing, The Stepfather, Scanners, Rosemary’s Baby, Piranha, Near Dark, Motel Hell, The Birds, Night of the Demons, My Bloody Valentine, Friday the 13th, Hellraiser, The Brood, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Evil Dead, The Entity, Don’t Look Now, The Changeling, Alice, Sweet Alice, Battle Royale, Long Weekend, The Crazies, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Suspiria, Raw Meat (aka Death Line), Hell Night, The Witches … even Attack of the Killer Tomatoes fer Chrissake!

And it gets worse; the extremes of Last House on the Left, Cannibal Holocaust and the dodgy pseudo-doco Faces of Death are also being remade. Nothing is sacred anymore in the realm of horror. If it can be exhumed and re-animated, then it shall be, but only because there is money to be made.

And mark my words, Alien and Phantasm will be plundered soon enough. Oh, the inhumanity!

Enough tears! Here's the trailer for The Dark Lurking:

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Some things WICKED this way come?

April 29th 2008 00:38

Ever since the resurgence in modern horror movies took audiences by the throat and throttled them you can count on numerous new titles being released every month, mostly straight to DVD, but some manage to squeeze a short theatrical season if they’re lucky. Who knows when this glut of turgid filmmaking will subside?

It seems clueless producers and the ilk (who actually fancy themselves as zeitgeist puppeteers) have the notion that horror movies are the easiest and most profitable genre to plunder. Well, on one hand they’re right; horror movies can be made cheaply and effectively, and they can, if the marketing campaign is savvy and the movie was cast just so, make a killing at the box office. But more often than not the filmmakers botch it up from the get go.

Horror movies might appear to be a stroll in the park at night for greedy executives, but what they don’t understand is that horror movies are actually one of the most difficult genres to get right. What I mean is the successful combination and execution of the key elements; content, cast, tone, dialogue, special effects, soundtrack, ending. I suppose you can apply this school of thought to every cinematic genre, but for horror it’s that much more important, especially when you’re making it on the smell of an oily rag.

A hungry zombie in Romero's Diary of the Dead

It is imperative on a low-budget horror movie to have these factors of the highest calibre humanly possible. This means an interesting/intriguing premise, a group of good actors, consistency of tone (ie dark and nasty, playful and schlocky), sharp, concise dialogue, impressive special effects (if you’re using them), resonant music, and a memorable ending.

A lot of filmmakers think with horror movies you can get away with average to cringe-inducing dialogue and acting, graphic, but really shoddy special effects, and mediocre to poor lighting, as long as there’s some nudity, drug use, brutal violence, excessive profanity, and, of course, some kind of overtly nasty premise.

Wrong!

But time and time again we see lame and uninspiring remakes of movies that were great, or at least pretty good, the first time round, or we have directors like Uwe Boll soiling the shelves of the video store.

I few new titles, that have either been recently released or are about to be, have caught my eye. They sound promising, but whether they’re any good we’ll just have to wait and see. And I’m not talking about the remakes of Prom Night (1980), Friday the 13th (1980), or My Bloody Valentine (1981).

Jennifer Ellison shovels her food in The Cottage

The Cottage, starring Doug (Pinhead) Bradley and Andy (King Kong, Gollum) Serkis, is an over-the-top UK comedy about a group of kidnappers who cross paths with a psychopathic farmer. Expect much gory mayhem and rural fromage from acclaimed second-time director Paul Andrew Williams.

Diary of the Dead is zombie maestro George Romero’s answer to the disappointing box office he received with Land of the Dead; a low-budget, inventive, pseudo-doco about a group of young horror filmmakers dealing with trying to make a movie, and the initial outbreak of the zombie plague. This has been getting rave reviews, I can’t wait!

Hunting for the Tasmanian Tiger

Dying Breed is Australian Jody Dwyer’s feature debut and uses part of the real history of Tasmanian cannibal Alexander Pearce who was hanged in 1824 after escaping from a penal colony with seven other inmates only to emerge from the impenetrable forests alone, but with chunks of human flesh in his pockets.

That's gotta hurt

Frontiere(s). Rated NC-17 in America, which is often the kiss of death for box office (but is actually the kiss of life to horrorphiles), this French/Swiss co-pro directed by Xaxier Gens deals rather frankly with a gang of thieves who flee Paris during the violent aftermath of a political election and seek shelter at an Inn, only to discover, much to their abject horror, it is run by a group of sadistic neo-Nazis. This sounds very confronting and drenched in atmosphere.

Midnight Meat Train is based on a short story by Clive Barker about a NYC photographer tracking down a cannibal serial killer, it has an eclectic cast which includes Brooke Shields, Tony Curran, and Vinnie Jones. It’s an American production helmed by a Japanese man, Ryuhei Kitamura. “The most terrifying ride you’ll ever take” says the tagline. Bold statement, but I’m feeling lucky.

Outpost In war-torn Eastern Europe, a world-weary group of mercenaries discover a long-hidden secret in an abandoned WWII bunker. Methinks this is another flesh-eating feature, seems cannibalism is the new black in horror (suddenly I have a flash of Cannibal Holocaust being remade and my stomach turns!) Directed by another newbie Steve Barker, it’s a UK production that’s being receiving solid reviews for its acting and screenplay. Not to mention the marrow-sucking.

The Wolf Man Okay, so it’s a remake, but it looks like this could howl and whine with the best of them. Directed by hirsute-loving Joe Johnston, written by Andrew Kevin (Se7en) Walker, and starring Benicio Del Toro as the man who bays at the full moon. It co-stars Anthony Hopkins, Emily Blunt and Hugo Weaving. Get excited, get, get excited!

And finally, with severed tongue-in-cheek we have ...

Zombie Strippers According to imdb.com the plot goes something like this: In the not too distant future a secret government re-animation chemo-virus gets released into conservative Sartre, Nebraska and lands in an underground strip club. As the virus begins to spread, turning the strippers into "Super Zombie Strippers" the girls struggle with whether or not to conform to the new "fad" even if it means there's no turning back. It’s a comedy directed by Jay Lee and starring Jenna Jameson and Robert Englund. ‘Nuff Said.

Here's the trailer for Midnight Meat Train:

And here's the trailer for Zombie Strippers:

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A DAUGHTER'S NIGHTMARE!

April 28th 2008 01:43

I read in the news this morning the appalling story that has emerged from Austria regarding a father who imprisoned his daughter for twenty-four years in the home cellar and fathered several children with her!

According to the prosecution spokesman a 42-year-old woman, Elizabeth Fritzl, had accused her father, Josef, 73, of putting her to sleep with an anaesthetic, then handcuffing her in a locked basement. This was back in 1984 when Elizabeth was just 19. Apparently Josef had been sexually abusing Elizabeth since she was eleven. \

The case only came to the attention of police after one of the children, 19-year-old Kerstin was admitted to hospital in critical condition. Police discovered Elizabeth and three of the other siblings in the underground chamber yesterday.

A normal Austrian home, but who knows what's in the cellar these days ...

The basement had several rooms each 170cm high and was equipped with water and a television, however it was obvious to authorities the children had been living in a state of grim captivity.

Josef has a wife, Rosemarie, who apparently had no idea about the underground chamber, which beggars belief. Was she deaf and blind?!

Elizabeth and five of the children are currently in hospital being treated by a team of psychologists, while Josef is being interrogated by police.

How ghastly is that?! Truth is stranger and more nightmarish than fiction! It boggles the mind how screwed up some people are … And they get away with it for so long! It’s a real-life Flowers in the Attic taken to horrific extremes.

It’s extraordinary how inhumane people can be to each other, and even more disgusting is when it is crimes committed within the family.

Of course, being the twisted opportunist that I am, I immediately thought of the cinematic possibilities. This is a true crime tale just begging to be made into a horror movie, and a dark one too.

Possible titles that spring to mind; The Family, Dolls in the Cellar, Domesticity, My Heart Belongs To Daddy.

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The Shining

April 24th 2008 05:39

I first saw Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980) many years ago on VHS. I remembered watching the trailer on television as a twelve-year-old and the images of a terrified Shelley Duvall against a wall clutching a kitchen knife while a maniacal Jack Nicholson with a homicidal glint in his eye smashes through the adjacent bathroom door with a large axe were burnt onto my retina.

The movie didn’t quite live up to the expectations I had of a thoroughly harrowing horror movie experience. I found the visual style clunky, the dialogue rigid, and the production design both garish and jarring. Then I read Stephen King’s original novel and found it to be one of the most frightening and intense novels I’d ever read. I noticed on another viewing of the film that Kubrick had penned the screenplay adaptation with Diane Johnson. Later still I found out Stephen King had been commissioned to write the adaptation but that Kubrick had rejected it, much to King’s chagrin. I’d love to read King’s original script, since Kubrick and Johnson made a few radical changes which have always been a point of contention with King fans

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The Faculty

April 23rd 2008 02:57

I can’t believe it’s been ten years already since Robert Rodriguez’s nifty little sci-fi/horror gem! The Faculty (1998) was great fun the first time round, and it’s still a lot of schlocky fun now. I bet Tarantino wouldn’t be able to make a horror as inventive and genuinely tense as The Faculty, even now. In fact for the Grindhouse experience he opted for the chicks with dicks/muscle car option, leaving Rodriguez to pull out all the horror stops, but that’s another kettle of blood’n’pus, and I’ll be reviewing Planet Terror in full in the very near future.

Written by Kevin Williamson, who also penned the annoying Scream (1996) and the lame duck I Know What You Did Last Summer, The Faculty is deeply derivative, but wears its influences and inspirations shamelessly on its school uniform sleeve, but it works, oh yes, it works

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Kids

April 22nd 2008 05:06

I reviewed Kids (1995) early in 96 during its theatrical run in New Zealand. At the time I was resident film critic for an independent weekly newspaper called City Voice. My review heading was “Totally Fucked Up!” in big letters. I had convinced the editor to run with the profanity as it was integral to the film’s subject matter and was an important sub-text, albeit in your face. He ran with it.

When the movie came out it was considered pretty radical. An urban nightmare wake-up call for adults. I found it both disturbing and compelling. The pseudo-documentary look and feel of it, the use of non-professional actors in many of the roles, and the raw depiction of the adolescents’ attitude toward sex, these elements made Kids a very potent attack on any kind of moral complacency evident in adult audiences

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El Orfanato (The Orphanage)

April 18th 2008 00:53

A well-made ghost story is a hard movie to come by. Sure, there are more of them than you can shake a broomstick at, but the ones that are genuinely enthralling, frightening, atmospheric are a rare breed of supernature. Haunted house stories are even harder to ply, but when they’re done well, they can be utterly chilling. The Abandoned was one such movie.

El Orfanato is another, and even stronger. Not only is it a superbly told drama; it’s a haunted house and ghost story par excellence. It does have some holes, but then don’t all haunted houses have cracks in the ceiling

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STRANGE DARK DREAMS

April 16th 2008 05:23

Pulling inspiration from John Doe’s superb review of David Lynch’s seminal Blue Velvet, and stirred on by the excellent analysis of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s infamous El Topo by The All Seeing Eye, I found myself swimming in the turbulent and troubling deep waters of cinema’s darker, weirder moments. What were the strangest?

There were only two directors groping and pulling me down into that whirlpool and into the abyss; Jodorowsky and Lynch

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Posted By: Bryn - Category: lists

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Beowulf & Grendel

April 15th 2008 00:55

Beowulf & Grendel (2005) is a co-production between Canada, Iceland and the Uk, made three years ago. It enjoyed a brief moment in the sun, playing at numerous Canadian film festivals and then a very limited theatrical release in the States and Europe. It suddenly surfaces on DVD down under in the wake of the Robert Zemeckis CGI affair, and is arguably a better movie.

It manipulates the original epic poem considerably and doesn’t follow Beowulf into middle age (his confrontation with the dragon), but it looks far more authentic than the animated version. This is mostly due to the stunning Icelandic landscape, suitably wind-frozen weather, and excellent art direction and costuming. It also helps having Stellan Skarsgaard, Gerard Butler, Sarah Polley, and Tony Curran in the cast

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Skinwalkers

April 14th 2008 08:09

In a word? Dreadful. In a sentence? How could they fuck up yet another werewolf premise? Skinwalkers (2006) was produced by the After Dark Films production house, the same people responsible for the Horrorfest: 8 Films To Die For festival now in its third year. Most of the movies that have screened as part of that festival have been shite. Skinwalkers, although linked to Stan Winston (he co-produced it) and of a bigger budget, is still a bad movie.

It's a shame because Canadian De Niro lookalike Elias Koteas is in it, and I’ve always enjoyed his work, especially in Atom Egoyan’s Exotica and David Cronenberg’s Crash. The lead is played by uber-babe Rhona Mitra (the woman who should’ve played Lara Croft, instead of Angelina Jolie, but I digress). With these two at the helm the movie should’ve been so much better, but they struggle with risible dialogue and cardboard characters. In fact the entire screenplay is a load of hogwash

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Fido

April 11th 2008 03:43

I’ve been away for the past five weeks on an awesome honeymoon, so excuse the absence of reply comments and lack of posts of late.

I’ve been waiting for this flick for a while. Fido (2006) is a Canadian movie that was released in the Northern hemisphere early last year. Like so many movies with big names these days, this one goes straight to DVD here down under. It’s a shame because this movie would’ve played better on the big screen, even though, ironically, it’s set in a 50s world which features the wonder of the television set in the background

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Horror QUIZ #23: Odd Film Out

April 7th 2008 23:42

This one’s a little Sesame Street. You have to pick the movie that’s not like the others. I know there’ll be the smart alecs out there who’ll find something – anything – to differentiate one film significantly from the others, but I’ve carefully chosen these movies; three of them will share a quite specific similarity in subject matter, sub-genre, production statistic or credit, or a certain narrative element, or maybe something else entirely. So how clever are you at picking the odd one out?

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