Horror movies with balls

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

January 22nd 2008 06:19

… 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.

Unfortunately that is the case more often than not. In the last few years as the horror movie became fashionable again, and in some cases (ie the Saw franchise) a serious cash cow, there have been more horror movies released than any other genre. About 70% of them are shunted straight to the video store shelves with a sizeable amount of the post-production budget spent on shooting an alluring DVD cover. And therein lies The Rub.

Turistas has lots of bikini action AND claustrophobic underwater cave sequences

I won’t be the first to admit I’ve been suckered in by the packaging of a movie; the poster art and/or the DVD cover, only to discover (and kick myself for it) that the movie is utter shite! Crap that makes my deep trash guilty pleasures look like works of high art. But then there’s the other side to the coin, which features shoddy-looking cover art, even a corny movie title, and low and behold, the movie actually works, and in some rare cases, actually kicks ass. But these latter examples are a rare beast.

Hatchet sports funny-looking tits and really annoying characters

A couple of choice examples: Turistas (2006) and Hatchet (2007). I passed over the straight-to-DVD release Turistas for weeks, simply because the cover art looked dreadful, the title, for a Hollywood film, seemed pretentious, and the premise sounded tedious. Hatchet I did a teaser post a month or so back, expressing interest in what sounded like (from what I’d read) and looked like (from the stills) a good bang for buck slasher flick.

Yes, you should all die horribly, every single one of you

I couldn’t have been more wrong. Turistas turned out to be solidly acted, well shot, and reasonably impressive in the sustained tension and execution of violence. Actor-turned director John Stockwell made his name on the surf’n’derriere flicks Blue Crush and Into the Blue, but holds his own with a tale of gullible tourists finding themselves in a lot of jungle trouble at the expense of vengeful surgeons.

The two lead male actors search for motivation

Hatchet, written and directed by Adam Green, turned out to the biggest pile of crap I’ve had to sit through in a while. Okay, so it had a couple of money shots; the killer axes a fat guy repeatedly through his shoulder, eventually splitting him in half, and shortly after grabs a woman by her head and violently prizes her upper and lower jaw apart causing her head to tear asunder. Nice.

The two lead female actors realise just how scary-bad the movie really is

But that was it. The movie before and after these two moments was dreadful. Tourists in New Orleans go on dodgy swamp ghost tour and are picked off one by one by a hideously deformed, psychopathic man named Victor Crowley. Victor uses his hatchet a couple of times at the most, so the title is almost superfluous. The characters were obnoxious or boring, acting was mediocre at best, the dialogue was adolescent, the huge mutant killer was absurd and very not scary, and the plotting pretty non-existent. This is a movie that supposedly, according to a quote on the DVD cover, was the hit of last year’s Tribeca Film Festival …?! Are you kidding me? What the fuck kind of criteria are De Niro’s judges using?! At the Austin Fantastic Fest actor Kane Hodder, who plays the hulking killer Victor Crowley (he also played Jason Voorhees in several of the Friday the 13th movies), won best actor twice (Jury Prize and Audience Award). They must have all been drunk as skunks.

John Carl Buechler, the man behind the special effects makeup, is a veteran, having done the special effects makeup work for countless, mostly gloopy B-movies, including Ghoulies, TerrorVision, From Beyond, Prison, and a couple of the Halloween (1978), Friday the 13th (1980) and A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) sequels, to name but a few. His work here is, for the best part, under-used, and he’s no Greg Nicotero that's for sure.

Robert Englund, may a croc bite your butt off

In name Hatchet sounds like classic old school horror fare. Robert Englund (aka Freddy Kreuger) has a cameo in the movie’s opening scenes. He’s quoted on the cover stating words to the effect of; “First there was Jason, then there was Freddy, now a new modern horror villain to join the ranks.” How much did the producers pay you to spout that bullshit Bob?

No one comes close to Michael Myers in Halloween. And no one ever will.

Well maybe Antoine Chugahr, but he’s a whole new kettle of very bitter fish.

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Posted By: Bryn - Category: vitriol

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Comments

6 Comments. [ Add A Comment ]

Comment by Damo

January 22nd 2008 07:57

I think if I ever get the budget to make a movie it would be a horror for one reason.
Even crap horror sells.
So I would make back the money I spend then make the epic.

Just thinking like a struggling film maker would.

Comment by D. Armenta

January 22nd 2008 19:01

The Florida Keys and Everglades
The Black Sheep Chronicles
What constitutes bad manners?
The male mystique
Debate Fan
L.A.M.P.

What the ...?!! Are those prosthetic boobs? The nipple's just stuck on there....in the wrong place, too!

Comment by Cibbuano

January 22nd 2008 23:34

Hunt Famous
Orble Post of the Day
Fat Cult
Techbreak

I think horror would be tough... you'd get all excited about the gore and the good screams, spending your budget on those key scenes... if the rest of the movie falls apart, though, you might be halfway through post-prod before you realize it's all crap...