February 2010 - Horrorphile

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Horrorphile - February 2010

VOTE FOR YOUR FAVOURITE ZOMBIE MOVIE - Poll closes March 31st

February 28th 2010 23:39

Now that your favourite vampire movies have been selected it’s time to really peel back the undead flesh. Who are your favourite gut-munchers? Which putrid flesh excites you the most? What cinema evisceration exhilarates you the most? How revved up do you get when you hear the call of “Zomieeeeeeeeee!” ...?

Below is a list of many of the most influential and admired zombie movies ever made, including some considered so bad, they’re good. It’s funny how zombie movies command that kind of dodgy respect. I’ve included some zombie movies that don’t even use the word “zombie” in the entire movie, and some which feature an infection that doesn't create the undead, but turns the victim into a zombie-like flesh-eater; the lines of ghoulish distinction are pallid at best. Of late, both creatures of the undead – zombies and vampires - have made a return in fine form to the big screen and in your living rooms.

So let’s get the ball rolling, the bones a-cracking! Cast three votes for your top favourite zombie movie, two votes for your second favourite, and one vote for your third favourite. And in-keeping with the pattern of the previous poll, let me know which zombie movie you consider the worst, and I don’t mean so bad it’s good, I mean so bad it damn well reeks.

The Beyond
Braindead
Burial Ground: The Nights of Terror
Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things
Dawn of the Dead
Dawn of the Dead (2004)
Day of the Dead
Dead and Buried
Dead Snow
Deadgirl
Dead Set
Dellamorte Dellamore
Diary of the Dead
Fido
Gates of Hell (AKA The City of the Living Dead)
I Walked with a Zombie
Land of the Dead
Let Sleeping Corpses Lie
Night of the Creeps
Night of the Living Dead
Night of the Living Dead (1990)
Planet Terror
Pontypool
Quarantine
Re-animator
[REC]
[REC] 2
Resident Evil
Resident Evil: Apocalypse
Resident Evil: Extinction
Return of the Evil Dead
The Return of the Living Dead
The Serpent and the Rainbow
Shaun of the Dead
Slither
Tokyo Zombie
Tombs of the Blind Dead
28 Days Later
28 Weeks Later
Versus
White Zombie
Zombieland
Zombie Flesh-Eaters (AKA Zombi 2)
Zombie Holocaust (AKA Dr. Butcher M.D.)
Zombie Strippers
other [please name]

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Posted By: Bryn - Category: set-pieces

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YOUR FAVOURITE VAMPIRE MOVIES

February 28th 2010 22:16

The results are in! My True Believin’ fellow horrorphiles have spoken! Your favourite vampire movies have been decided upon! And there are no big surprises either.

Two movies - eighty-five years apart – share the top spot.

Nosferatu, A Symphony of Horror (1922) and Let the Right One In (2007).

These two movies masterpieces received the same number of votes and were way out in front. A silent classic of the German Expressionist movement directed by F.W. Murnau and loosely adapted from Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula, and a Swedish modern twist on the eternal plight of the undead directed by Tomas Alfredson based on the novel of the same name by John Ajvide Lindqvist.

The runner-up was Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992), with From Dusk Till Dawn (1995) and Interview with the Vampire (1994) equaling third spot, and Near Dark (1987) and 30 Days of Night (2007) equaling a close fourth.

Although I’m not a fan of Interview with the Vampire, the adaptation loosely represents one of my favourite vampire novels, Ann Rice’s The Vampire Lestat (along with Dracula, Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend and Stephen King's 'Salem's Lot). It’s a shame that Ann Rice’s original choices for the roles of Louis and Lestat never came to fruition; when Hollywood was pushing to make Interview with the Vampire back in the early 80s Rutger Hauer was top of the list to play Lestat, with Eric Roberts as Louis. They would’ve been perfectly cast.

It’s good to see that cinema vampirism’s lush romanticism and savage bloodlust is portrayed in equal measures by the above six movies. There’s iconography and irony, tragedy and comedy. And blood, lots of blood.

And the most loathed vampire movie, you ask? Another two drew equal: the cartoon mess called Van Helsing and that current sparkly series of anemic adolescent angst known as Twilight.

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Alice in Wonderland

February 26th 2010 04:39

Let’s get one thing straight! This is most definitely Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland (2010), and shouldn’t be confused with Lewis Carroll’s novels Alice's Adventures in Wonderland or Through the Looking Glass, as Tim Burton – and just as importantly, his screenwriter, Linda Woolverston, have taken great liberties with the famous tales, transposing the central characters and particular incidents into a playground realm for Tim Burton to manipulate his own tall stories. As a stand alone movie Alice in Wonderland is only partly successful, and as an adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s work it isn’t anywhere near as engaging as it should be. And therein lies the Rub.

Mia Waskowska as Alice

I’ve always had a problem with Tim Burton’s movies, well most of them. The ones I’ve enjoyed the most have been Peewee’s Big Adventure (which worked a treat back in my more hedonistic uni days), Mars Attacks! (I love how darkly funny and menacing it is), Ed Wood (his most emotionally resonant), and Sweeney Todd (normally I can’t stand musicals). I was never really a fan of Beetlejuice, Batman, Edward Scissorhands, Sleepy Hollow, Big Fish, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and I hated his take on Planet of the Apes. Batman Returns was okay (but that was probably because of Michelle Pfeiffer’s droll performance).

Johnny Depp as The Mad Hatter

I’ll admit I was excited when I first heard that Burton would be helming his own version of Alice in Wonderland, just as I was excited when I heard Guillermo del Toro was going to direct The Hobbit. They both had extraordinary imaginations and are capable of conjuring the most amazing imagery and fantastical realms. But very quickly into watching Alice in Wonderland, I realised the same problem I have with all those other movies of his, I was no waving with this one; it was failing to properly engage me, the storytelling, even the characters, despite how richly etched they are, were hollow, lacking soul. It’s like watching moving pictures, literally.

Alice in Wonderland Helena Bonham-Carter

Helena Bonham-Carter as The Red Queen

To be honest, Avatar is partly responsible for my reaction to Alice in Wonderland. James Cameron’s masterful 3D immersion experience, stunning production design and art direction make Alice in Wonderland’s phantasmogorical underland seem flat, safe, even twee, in comparison. The colours are vibrant, but the 3D experience was borderline pedestrian; there was nothing truly remarkable. It was a case of everything feeling strangely familiar, my expectations hit a plateau early on when Alan Rickman’s tiresomely morose voice, as the hookah-hooked blue caterpillar, hit my ears. I literally rolled my eyes.

Crispin Glover as the Knave of Hearts

Crispin Glover, with stretched limbs as the Knave of Hearts, seemed stuck in some kind of peripheral universe. Anne Hathaway, as the White Queen, skimmed along the surface of things, while Stephen Fry, who voiced the Cheshire Cat, was one of the few genuinely curious, even spooky, characters, floating in and out of existence with that frightnight grin. Johnny Depp, as the Mad Hatter, and Helena Bonham-Carter, were very watchable, easily delivering the goods. Depp, with his disconcerting eyes (one pupil dilated, the other not) and sliding accent, gave the Hatter some serious chutzpah, while Bonham-Carter, with bulbous head on a tiny body, was easily the funniest character on screen, often stealing them.

Anne Hathaway as The White Queen

Up-and-coming Australian actor Mia Wasikowska, plays a 17-year-old Alice, who returns underground, but cannot remember being there as a 7-year-old, although all the other creatures recognise her. She’s escaping her engagement to toffee-nosed Lord Ascot (Tim Pigott-Smith), and follows the White Rabbit down the hole. It is this scene and the one immediately after, where Alice finds a tiny door, is forced to Drink Me, shrink, then Eat Me, grow huge, collect the key, then Drink Me and enter the realm of Underland, or Wonderland, as Alice calls it, that are lifted straight from Lewis Carroll’s first book. The initial encounters with some of the other characters are similar to the novels, but the narrative veers off Carroll’s beaten track.

Alice in Wonderland Twiddledum and Twiddledee

Alice in Wonderland isn’t a failure, but it’s far from the expected brilliance many thought Burton would inject into this mythical and brilliant tale of identity, growing up, and the power of the imagination. The Jabberwock was a major disappointment. My favourite scene has to be Alice’s first (to be precise, her second) encounter with the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party (the jittery March Hare was utterly, and hilariously, bonkers!). But I just want Burton to make an adult horror movie; I know he’s got it in him! Enough with the PG-rated fantasy affairs that dabble with darkness but never actually make the descent. My suggestion is if he’s not going to make something wholly original he should adapt an H.P. Lovecraft tale, embrace his inner cosmic horror, and aim for a hard R-rating … now there’s an idea!

Here's the trailer:

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Posted By: Bryn - Category: movie reviews

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RICHARD STANLEY'S TEN FAVOURITE ITALIAN HORROR MOVIES

February 24th 2010 03:44

Ex-pat South-African director Richard Stanley, an auteur of sorts, burst onto the scene back in 1990 with his rogue sf-horror Hardware, a low-budget shocker that quickly gained a cult following. He followed up with an hallucinatory desert vision of a demon in human guise, Dust Devil (1992), however the movie was plagued with executive interference and distribution hell, yet still gained a fervent cult following.

In 1996 Stanley was hired to direct the big budget remake of The Island of Dr. Moreau, a cautionary tale of human-animal hybridization. It starred Val Kilmer and Marlon Brando (and an unrecognizable Eric Roth under elaborate makeup). Legend has it that Brando, playing the extreme eccentric, clashed with the director so swiftly and profoundly that Stanley was fired from production after only a handful of days shooting. Apparently Stanley snuck back onto the set disguised in a dog-man mask

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Posted By: Bryn - Category: lists

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THIRTEEN DEFINING MOVIE MOMENTS OF EXQUISITE AGONY

February 18th 2010 04:05

I was given the best book for my birthday, The Book of Lists: Horror, which was published 2008. One of the three authors, Amy Wallace, co-edited the original bestselling The Book of Lists with her brother and father back in 1977. I love lists, and as an adolescent I relished reading the weird and wonderful selections published by the Wallace family; one that stands out in my memory was the macabre list of Possible Jack the Ripper Victims (in gory detail).

I was very impressed that Amy Wallace had the inclination to delve into the Darkness and compile a thoroughly delectable array of inspired tastes and insightful opinions from a small pool of horrorphilic staff writers and numerous renowned figures from the horror arts and entertainment (chiefly writers and directors). And the gallows humour is mixed beautifully with scholarly indulgence

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Horror QUIZ #30: What Movie Is That Tagline From?

February 16th 2010 22:35

I’ve always wanted a job as the person who creates the all-important alluring tagline for a movie. There are so many memorable ones, like “In space no one can hear you scream”, or “They’re here”, or “A romantic comedy. With zombies”. So here's a selection, most of them perhaps not quite as easy as the ones I just mentioned, some perhaps easier.

How good are you at identifying the movie from the tagline

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Posted By: Bryn - Category: quizzes

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A SEVERED-TONGUE-IN-CHEEK GUIDE TO SURVIVING (or not) A ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE

February 15th 2010 22:59

I got a severed-heads up on a couple of amusing piss-takes on zombie culture from the brilliant Canadian rag Rue Morgue. The first is a “public safety” 50s-styled news-reel (like the famous Duck and Cover from the Atomic Age) that gives a guide on dealing with zombie integration. The second is a "Dummies Guide"-styled flow-chart detailing how everything goes to hell when a zombie apocalypse erupts on society.

Have a mischievous chuckle … but remember to take note

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Posted By: Bryn - Category: set-pieces

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The Horseman

February 10th 2010 07:00

A grimy darkened street, a siren wails in the background, voices call out, a young girl walks nervously along the edge of the brick wall, past graffiti-strewn rollerdoors. She stops behind a large garbage container; she counts out her remaining dollars, tears rolling down her cheeks. She wipes them away and walks off. A van drives down a lonely stretch of road. The young girl is on her mobile making a life-changing call. The van pulls into a rural driveway and pulls up beside a small nondescript home. The young girl is being lead up some stairs in a warehouse, she looks nervous. The driver of the van is at the front door of the home, dressed as pest control. A man answers the door; the pest controller is ushered in and proceeds to beat the living daylights out of the man. He wants the truth: who was responsible for his daughter’s sexual degradation and subsequent death by overdose. His name is Christian and he’s about to descend into hell and take as many of the bastards down along the way …

Peter Marshall as Christian

Young filmmaker Steven Kastrissios has delivered a powerhouse debut feature about as brutal and relentless a revenge flick as I’ve ever seen. The Horseman (2008) takes no prisoners and pulls no punches; it’s a hardboiled journey into the darkness of the soul where vengeance offers little in the way of consolation, only provides distraction from the pain of the loss of one so dear. It’s a low-budget, but technically superb movie. All of the production values are top notch; the making of featurette on the DVD reveals how the production team had employed ingenuity on such a tight budget and schedule using strictly local (Queensland) talent.

Caroline Marohasy as Alice

The Horseman apparently is reference to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse; Christian must therefore be Death. Or perhaps War. He’s certainly gone into battle against those he sees are to be held accountable, but he’s also a determined harbinger of death. His teenage daughter Jessica is dead after having performed in a porn video and taken drugs with the men who performed in it with her. Christian proceeds to murder these men and those that were involved in the video’s distribution in an act of cleansing the world from these ruthless, heartless pornographers

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Posted By: Bryn - Category: movie reviews

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The Wolfman

February 8th 2010 23:50

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
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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

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Posted By: Bryn - Category: movie reviews

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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

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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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March 2010

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February 2010

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January 2010