August 2008 - Horrorphile

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Horrorphile - August 2008

Black Christmas (2006)

August 29th 2008 04:42

As my True Believin’ regular readers will be will aware I’m not that fond of the remake. Of course there are exceptions, but they are generally far and few between. Off the top of my decapitated head the truly great remakes number less than five; John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982), Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead (2004). Gee, that’s all I can think of. I’m a little fuzzy-brained this week, got a nasty head cold.

Bob Clark’s Black Christmas (1974) is a seminal modern horror movie. It pre-dated the birth of the slasher genre by several years, if you count Halloween (1978) as the date stamp for the stalk’n’slash flick, although arguably Mario Bava’s Twitch of the Death Nerve (1971) is the true bloodied blueprint.

Black Christmas 2006 Kristen Cloke, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Michelle Trachtenberg, Katie Cassidy

Kristen Cloke as Leigh, Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Heather, Michelle Trachtenberg as Melissa and Katie Cassidy as Kelli

Screenwriter and director Glen Morgan, who along with James Wong created the hugely successful (and entertainingly visceral) Final Destination series, has produced a worthy remake to Clark’s original. Black Christmas (2006, Black X-mas as the promotional abbreviation), captures much of the original’s disturbing tone and content, and is just as stylishly shot. The eye candy – eye being the operative word – is delectable, just as the killings are vicious and horrific. Squeamish beware: the horror movie that presents the audience with ocular violence ticks my red box of wincing fun.

Black Christmas 2006 Andrea Martin and Lacey Chabert

Andrea Martin as Mrs. Mac and Lacey Chabert as Dana

The girls of Sorority House Alpha Kappa Gamma are preparing for snowbound Christmas celebrations, however one of them Clair (Leela Savasta) has just been murdered upstairs in her room as she was writing a Christmas card to her older half-sister Leigh (Kristen Cloke). The others, Melissa (Michelle Trachtenberg), Heather (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), Dana (Lacey Chabert), Megan (Jessica Harmon), Lauren (Crystal Lowe), and house mother Mrs. Mac (Andrea Martin, from the original movie), are all downstairs, while Kelli (Katie Cassidy) is outside in a car talking with dodgy boyfriend Kyle (Oliver Hudson).

Crystal Lowe as Lauren

Meanwhile at the local insane asylum Billy Lenz (Robert Mann) is being served his Christmas dinner. Billy is serving time for having killed his drunken homicidal mother and her lover when he was twenty, after years of abuse; including incest and witnessing his mother murder his father. Billy even cannabilised on his mother’s flesh, baking cookies from her skin. Billy escapes and returns to the family home, which happens to be the sorority house, but not before he learn he has an in-bred daughter, Agnes (Dean Friss), born from his mother’s abuse.

Robert Mann as Billy

Black Christmas is a tale of Noël noir revenge, as each of the sorority sisters are picked off in gruesome fashion, most of them losing their eyes in the process. But is it just the work of twisted Billy? Will any of the poor girls survive the night and make the dawn of Boxing Day? In Glen Morgan's screenplay there is much exposition on the backstory of Billy, which only adds further darkness to the current festivities.

Karin Konoval as Billy's mother

Black Christmas features fluid camerawork and striking cinematography, a hallmark of director Morgan’s visual style; most of the movie, much like the look of Dario Argento’s witchcraft flicks Suspiria (1977) and Inferno (1980), is shot in primary colours – blues, reds, yellows – often provided by the Christmas decoration lights. The cold snowy exteriors creates a palpable sense of claustrophobia, which in turn is heightened when Billy infiltrates the sorority house and hides under the floorboards and up in the attic (where he was imprisoned as a boy by his mother and lover).

The acting is solid for a movie of this ilk, with notable performances from Karin Konoval as Billy’s mother in the flashbacks, Kristen Cloke as Leigh and Dean Friss as Agnes. Also memorable is Crystal Lowe (Wrong Turn 2: Dead End) as sourpuss Lauren, but (ahem) they may have something to do with her having a shower scene. Shame Mary Elizabeth Winstead, from Final Destination 3 (2006) and Death Proof (2007), wasn’t given more to chew on, while Lacey Chabert and Michelle Trachtenberg have certainly grown out of their adolescent television roles.

Black Christmas didn’t receive very good reviews, but I think the movie is definitely a cut above the rest of the contemporary slasher movies, partly because Glen Morgan chooses to stick closely to the tone and execution (pun intended) of traditional slasher flicks, rather than opting for that oh-so-annoying post-modern self-referential bullshit a la Wes Craven’s Scream(1996). The version of the movie available on DVD in Australia is the UK cut. I plan to purchase the US “unrated” version which features alternate death scenes and a wholly different ending. Why the filmmakers opt for this kind of wayward delivery of a movie is beyond me. Are the Brits and Yanks sensibilities really that different when dealing with horror movies??

Here's the trailer:

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The Cottage

August 28th 2008 01:29

I’d been anticipating this movie ever since March when I was in London at the beginnining of my honeymoon and a double decker bus drove by with a banner for The Cottage (2008). I was like “Oooo! That looks good!” I assumed it would eventually arrive down under, although I hoped it would get a theatrical release. One can never tell these days. I guess it didn’t do the kind of box office business the distributors had hoped for. Apparently the same thing has befallen Neil Marshall’s Doomsday (2008) movie (mediocre box office = DVD only release for Australasia). I hate that shit.

The cottage ... but not the farmhouse

Writer/director Paul Andrew Williams made his debut with the critically-acclaimed drama-thriller London to Brighton. Now he turns his attention to the horror-comedy. For the most part he’s pretty successful. The movie sports a strong central cast, some decent gags and well-executed ultra-violence. But it also falls into the silly pit on numerous occasions and has characters that run dangerously close to annoying (but I’m assuming that’s partly the point). Most importantly, the psycho villain just isn’t that scary, but more on him a little later.

The Cottage Reece Shearsmith, Andy Serkis and Steven O'Donnell

The three stooges: Peter (Reece Shearsmith), David (Andy Serkis) and Andrew (Steven O'Donnell)

Brothers David (Andy Serkis) and Peter (Reece Shearsmith) have kidnapped Tracey (Jennifer Ellison), the foul-mouthed daughter of a powerful gangster who owns a strip-club David frequents. They’ve taken their hostage to a large remote cottage in the countryside for the night and have arranged for Tracey’s crooked step-brother Andrew (Steven O’Donnell) to collect one hundred grand from the boss in ransom money and deliver it to them. Little do they know that the crime lord has had two Chinese hitmen tail Andrew.

Jennifer Ellison as Tracey

To add fuel to the fire of disaster Andrew is a complete moron and he fucks up royally; when he arrives with beers to celebrate, David reveals that instead of cash in the duffel bag there are only wads of toilet paper. To aggravate matters Peter has dropped his mobile phone in the nearby pond and Andrew’s phone battery is dead (David doesn’t own one). David has to drive to the local village to make a phone call. When he returns Andrew is out cold, Peter has vanished and Tracey has escaped.

An at-the-end-of-his-tether David and Andrew traipse off through the woods in search of Peter and Tracey and eventually arrive at the neighbouring farmhouse. It is here where hell really breaks loose. I should also stress that from the get-go (as you’d probably have guessed) The Cottage uses the Murphy’s Law narrative spanner and throws it in the works at regular intervals.

David Legano as the farmer

Tracey discovers one of the farmer's secrets

Both Serkis and Shearsmith are excellent as the bickering chalk’n’cheese brothers. The motivation that drives them is acquisition: Peter wants the deed to their dead mother’s house which is in David’s name, but David won’t give it up until he’s got the cash to buy a super-yacht so he can bugger off outta Britain. Ellison’s Tracey has stepped straight out of the Ladettes to Ladies reality show; plaits, tracky-dacks, huge cleavage and a Liverpoodlian tongue on her to rival a trooper, and she’s not a compliant hostage by any means. As for Andrew, well, to put it bluntly: he’s a fuckwit, and O’Donnell plays him to the hilt. The two hitmen (Logan Wong and Jonathon Chan-Presley) are a mildly amusing distraction at best.

Errrrm, that looks sharp!

The true nastiness at the dark heart of this comedy of errors comes in the form of the disfigured psycho farmer (David Legano). He’s basically a British Leatherface, and Peter, Tracey, David and Andrew all fall foul of his house of horrors. The problem I had with the farmer is the special effects prosthetic makeup that covers his head was unconvincing. The injuries the character’s sustained are the result of a freak machine accident, but the head-mask looked way too rubbery. I was expecting the character to take it off to reveal and a genuinely scarier persona underneath, especially when it’s revealed he actually makes skin-masks from his victims’ faces.

The farmer has a trophy

The final confrontation between the farmer and David and Peter is all too silly, and the “plausibility” factor is finally thrown to the dogs, but director Williams has kept an ace for the final shot, which fits the black humour edge like a glove. Of note: there’s also a rather unnecessary post-credit sequence which features an uncredited Steven Berkoff as the crime lord (curiously his only line of dialogue is in the DVD deleted scenes, as it is apparent one of the featured extras playing a goon corpsed – pun unintended - on both takes, rendering the shot unusable).

The Cottage Andy Serkis and Reece Shearsmith

Peter attempts to un-pin his brother

The Cottage is derivative, but definitely entertaining for those who like a healthy helping of black pudding mirth with their crazed bloody murder; a sharp spade and pick-axe are put to very good use!

The Cottage David Legano and Reece Shearsmith

Who's a naughty boy then?

Here's the dinky little "Old McDonald had a farm ..." trailer:

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Bad Moon

August 27th 2008 01:25

I'd like to say that any werewolf movie is a good movie, but that's just not the case. Let me elaborate: I get excited at any cinematic attempt at capturing the lycanthropy folklore, or re-envisioning the mythology. I love werewolves. There’s something primal, yet elusive, sensual, but base. I love the contrasts; t battle of control over the body and mind, undercover of the night, the influence of the moon, the raging hunger and dangerous desire, the animal instinct and the powerful pheromones.

Screenwriter Eric Red penned one of my favourite road movies, which also happens to be a psychological thriller, and a serial killer horror movie. Diabolically brilliant, The Hitcher (1986) - which I’ve still yet to review – directed by Mark Harmon, is a tour-de-force of mood and relentless tension. Pared back dialogue, but still a vivid narrative, Red’s tale of the demon from Disneyland is without peer.

Red next penned the excellent vampire movie Near Dark (1987), directed by Kathryn Bigelow. Bad Moon (1996) was fourth movie as director, which he scripted based on a novel by Wayne Smith. It’s a werewolf movie, but not your average angry lycanthrope flick. What sets it apart is that the protagonist is a German Shepard. Yup, it’s a dog’s hero journey.

Bad Moon Michael Pare and Mariel Hemmingway

Michael Pare as Ted and Mariel Hemmingway as Janet

When the movie opens Ted (Michael Paré) is engaging in some hot lovin’ jungle action with his girlfriend Marjorie (Johanna Lebovitz) in a tent in the rain forests of Borneo. Unfortunately there’s a large ravenous werewolf on the hunt nearby, and suddenly the tent is torn asunder and poor Marjorie is ravaged. Ted, survives, and manages to blow the head off the damn beast, but not without a nasty laceration to the shoulder.

Mason Gamble as Brett

A little time has passed and Ted is back living in the Pacific Northwest and staying with his sister Janet (Mariel Hemmingway) and her son Brett (Mason Gamble). They have an intuitive protective dog, Thor (real name Primo), who immediately susses out Ted for who he really is. Ted is struggling with the curse. He’s desperate to maintain some kind of normal semblance of a life. He moves to an airstream caravan out of town on the outskirts of the wilderness. But the full moons continue (at alarming frequency), as do the killings.

The novel Bad Moon is based on is called Thor. It’s told entirely from the dog’s POV. Highly unusual, but then I’m sure as prose it probably works fine. As a movie Eric Red does a valiant job, and he’s aided by a fine canine performance from Primo. The same can’t be said of Michael Paré and Mariel Hemmingway, both of whom can barely act their way out of paper bags. The question: where are they now? is painfully pertinent.

A big bad wolf and a dummy of Johanna Lebovitz as Marjorie

The werewolf POV shot through an anamorphically squeezed lens looks great, and not too dissimilar to the under-rated movie Wolfen (1981). However – and this is the movie’s great failing – what really kills this movie is director Red’s ill-conceived over-exposure of the werewolf itself. And the reason this fails is that the special effects just aren’t good enough. Steve Johnson, an accomplished animatronics man and also a dab hand at prosthetics, has designed a very scary-looking werewolf (Neil Marshal’s designers on Dog Soldiers must surely have been influenced by it), but the creature is frequently over-lit and those animatronics don’t work fluidly enough. There’s also a very dodgy looking transformation sequence that tries to combine low-rent CGI and animatronics, which only shows up the movie’s budgetary constraints.

Brett gets up close and personal with the big bad wolf

The werewolf-inflicted wounds are very good, and the overall atmosphere of the movie is consistent. But it’s a short movie (barely 80 mins), and much of the narrative seems to be taken up with kitchen sink melodrama between the fractured “family” of Janet, Ted, Brett … and Thor. The movie demanded more action, less conversation. If Eric Red’s name wasn’t attached to the movie, you’d be hard-pressed to recognise the writing to be from the same penman as The Hitcher or Near Dark. As novel as the perspective is, perhaps this is a movie that should’ve stayed as a book. It seems An American Werewolf in London and The Howling are still the benchmarks.

Here’s the original trailer, which sports the dreadful tagline: "It doesn't have to be halloween to be this scary":

Here's Ted's transformation scene which starts off just okay, but goes lame very quickly. Like the trailer it makes the movie look like a comedy:

As a contrast, here’s the sexy and savage opening sequence in a rare uncut form, as the movie was originally slapped with an NC-17 (Warning! Not work safe!):

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[REC]

August 26th 2008 01:20

Damn, the Spanish are good. And I’m not just talking about the architecture, the tapas, the vino and the cerveza. They make bloody good horror movies too. They possess a bold and feverish approach which seems to often elude Hollywood and beyond. Not always, but often.

[REC] (2007) can be compared to numerous existing horror movies, primarily the work of George Romero; I’m talking about the flesh-eating undead. But [REC] also nods its head to the infectious rage disease of 28 Days Later (2001), whilst the movie’s cinema verite visual stylistic takes a few pages from the books of The Blair Witch Project (1999) and Cloverfield (2008). [REC] is flawed, but it’s a rough little gem

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Horror QUIZ #26: Mastermind Series - IV

August 22nd 2008 05:34

Here's the score: name that flick. But the answers are a little more comprehensive than previous. I've raised the ante a tad: identify the movie from the still under its original language title (if it wasn't originally filmed in English), also the country of origin, the year it was released, and any major alternate titles it went under).

I don’t make it easy, but some of them might be a little more familiar than others. This is the quiz to sort the men from the boys, the women from the girls. So, get those visual memory gears grinding and see how you fare

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A Bloody Night with a Chainsaw Maid as your Bloody Date!

August 20th 2008 23:48

My buddy Ricardo gave me a (severed) heads up on an amazing claymation short film called Chainsaw Maid. Very little credits, appears to be the work of a Japanese dude who goes by the name of Takena, probably made sometime during the last couple of years.

I searched youtube and found two more of his little horror treats; Bloody Date and Bloody Night. All are around five and six minutes long with no dialogue, only the most rudimentary sound effects and Casiotone-styled musical notes, but the movies are brutally, hilariously effective nevertheless

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In the Cut

August 20th 2008 01:45

Call me morbid but I much prefer Susanna Moore’s original novel ending to the compromised Hollywood ending of Jane Campion’s film adaptation of In the Cut (2003). There is a powerful, disturbing sense of poetry to the novel’s dénouement that is completely stunted by the movie’s ending, but more on that later.

I’m not a fan of everything that accomplished ex-pat Kiwi director Jane Campion has made. I enjoyed her first feature Sweetie, and her television mini-series re-cut as a feature, An Angel at my Table, was a vivid account of the life of New Zealand writer Janet Frame. The Piano is my favourite film, but the dramatic stylistics and artful intentions in that movie tends to polarise audiences and critics

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Hellboy II: The Golden Army

August 19th 2008 05:06

I’m not familiar with the graphic novel created by Mike Mignola, and I had trouble with the first Hellboy (2004); I found it wildly uneven in tone, and several of the characters really annoyed me. At the time I saw the movie I wasn’t as accepting of director Guillermo del Toro’s unique blending of comedy and action, pathos and irony.

Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008) is again screen-written and directed by Guillermo del Toro, with a story conceived by creator Mignola and del Toro. It’s a spectacular visual and aural assault on the senses and I can safely say is a superior movie to the original, which makes it a rare beast indeed

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Matador

August 18th 2008 04:24

“When two heavenly bodies meet their light seems to go out, but in their brief convergence they acquire a new luminosity, black and ardent.”

Matador (1986) is my favourite Pedro Almodóvar film. It is also his most stylised in terms of thematic content: sex and death. It’s a perverse comedy (like many of his movies), yet it’s his darkest in tone. A maimed ex-matador and an obsessive lawyer become fatally embroiled in a death wish; a pas de deux, the ultimate orgasm – au petite mort

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Horrorphile’s 2nd birthday presents MY NIGHTMARE MOVIE ARCHIVE

August 14th 2008 02:34

Yes, it’s time for festive blood to be spilled: my second Orble birthday! Horrorphile turns 2! The terror twos! ARGHHH!!! IT’S ALIIIIIIIIVE!!!

Last month I celebrated fifteen years of writing film criticism. My very first review was of Like Water for Chocolate published in a superb independent newspaper called City Voice (Wellington, New Zealand) back in July ’93. I was their resident film critic for four-and-a-half years before leaving for Sydney. Sadly the newspaper went under in 2001. I still look back fondly on those early years; the highlights included interviewing Guy Pearce and Roger Avary, and giving Independence Day such a scathing review that Hoyts Cinemas refused to run advertising with the newspaper. Thankfully my editor Simon Collins championed my cause

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POSTER GALLERY 13

August 12th 2008 23:11

Lucky thirteen! It’s somewhat pertinent that this month’s poster gallery is #13, since today is the 13th and tomorrow is Horrorphile’s 2nd birthday. And as you know when making lists 13 is my Horrorphile rule of (severed) thumb.

I’ve bannered the post with George Romero’s take on the vampire genre, since he was visiting Australia in the last month as part of the Melbourne International Film Festival. I didn’t get to meet him (I shed a tear or two), but I tip my hat to the man, he’s in the directors’ pantheon of modern horror

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The Silence of the Lambs

August 12th 2008 00:14

Jonathon Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs (1991) based on the best-seller novel by Thomas Harris is the only horror movie to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards. It’s usually referred to as a psychological thriller, but it’s a horror movie. If I start to really twist the genre then I’d say Best Picture winner No Country for Old Men is a post-modern horror-revisionist Western, but I’m sure some people would claim I’m clutching at straws.

Although the character of Dr. Hannibal Lecter had already been portrayed by Brian Cox in Michael Mann’s under-rated Manhunter (1986, based on Thomas Harris’s Red Dragon novel) it is The Silence of the Lambs that cemented his character in the audience’s psyche; chiefly due to Anthony Hopkins bone-chilling performance as the respected psychiatrist-turned-sociopath ic murderer-and-cannibal. He won an Oscar for his work, as did Jodie Foster as plucky FBI Agent Clarice Starling (or as Hannibal so fondly pronounces it, “Clar-reese

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P2

August 11th 2008 02:30

Co-produced and co-written by the French new wave duo of modern horror, Alexandre Aja and Grégory Levasseur, the young guys responsible for Haute Tension (2003) and the remake of The Hills Have Eyes (2006), as well as the new supernatural horror Mirrors (2008) and the upcoming 3D remake of Piranha. Hollywood has seized them and P2 (2007) is yet another notch on their bloodied belts, albeit directed by colleague Franck Khalfoun.

The movie is painfully slight and sports more sillyisms than you can throw a heavy duty Maglite at. The title alone is lame. Why not call it The Parking Attendent? Or what about Bad Santa? Hmmm, that title’s already taken

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Palabras Encadenadas (Killing Words)

August 8th 2008 01:10

“On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts” --- Thomas de Quincey

The Spanish are very good at their sex and death games. Just look at the bullfight. It’s all about carnality and mortality. It has a homoerotic undertone, and it’s man vs. animal, but it’s essentially phallic symbols and penetration, combined with the tease, the pursuit, and the submission

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Tetsuo II: Body Hammer (super-remix-review)

August 7th 2008 01:10

Visionary lunatic Shinya Tsukamoto who made Tetsuo: Iron Man (1989) in black and white 16mm comes charging back full-force, both barrels blazing, with a re-fit/re-boot re-envisioning entitled Tetsuo II: Body Hammer (1992). It’s not so much a sequel as more of the same cyber-surrealist nightmare, but this time in muted, yet vivid colour, 35mm, and with more elaborate special effects.

I was lucky to have seen this movie on the big screen back around the time it was first released, late at night during a film festival in Wellington, New Zealand. When the title credit hammered across the screen in emblazoned huge letters I knew I was in for something special. Tetsuo: Iron Man had screened earlier in the festival, and that had already screwed (and bolted) with my mind. Now I was about to be further cyber-raped by Tsukamoto’s intensely bizarre audio-visual assualt on the senses

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Tomie

August 6th 2008 06:25

Tomie (1999) is the first in a series of movies centred round a rather nasty young lady who goes by the titular name of Tomie (Miho Kanno). Loosely adapted from a Manga comic by popular artist Ito Junji and screen-written and directed by Atura Oikawa it’s a rather unassuming (bordering dangerously on mediocre) demon-ghost tale that somehow slowly burns its way onto your retina and sears into your mind’s eye.

Budding photographer and student Tsukiko (Nakamura Mani) is receiving hypnotherapy to help her deal with amnesia and a potentially traumatic incident buried deep in her psyche. Meanwhile a detective, Harada (Tomorowo Taguchi), is pursuing a series of murders and finds himself always one step behind the mysterious and elusive killer

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GI Joe STOP-MOTION remake of THE THING

August 5th 2008 09:43

Big props to my cine-buddy John Doe for giving me a severed heads up on this choice little clip; it’s a 6-and-a-half minute music clip that doubles as a compressed re-imagining of John Carpenter’s The Thing (which in itself was a remake of the 1951 B-movie The Thing From Another World).

The brilliance of it is that it uses stop-motion animation and GI Joe action figures! The music is courtesy of a French outfit who go by the name of Zombie Zombie (touché!) and the track is called Driving This Road Until Death Sets You Free. A very prog-rock-fusion title if ever I heard one

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WICKED NASTY TEASER TRAILER TRASH

August 4th 2008 06:23

I’m dealing with Mondayitis. So what better substance abuse than posting a trailer to a new piece of deep trash. Wicked Lake (2008), director Zach Passero's debut, is a low-rent indulgence in backwoods violation mayhem that should’ve been shunted straight to DVD, but apparently has managed to secure a theatrical mean season Stateside.

In a nutjob, err nutshell; four girls gone wild head to the woody hills for a little carpet lickin’ r&r, however their fun time is interrupted by four demented men who have a little last house on the left intent. Cue misogynistic behaviour from hillbillies ("Suck the nub!"), and then at the stroke of midnight, cue ladies who lunch

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