Welcome to this year's reviewz. Enjoy the list and keep watching movies!
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ATERRADOS (2017) (AKA: TERRIFIED) recommended!Dir: Demián Rugna (YOU DON'T KNOW WHO YOU'RE TALKING TO, THE LAST GATEWAY)
Shudder Originals delivers this brutal return to traditional horror from Argentina... This movie is SCARY! Much like Ari Aster's HEREDITARY(2018)(see review), TERRIFIED treads on well-worn territory (ghost story, supernatural) but does so with tremendous gravity, maturity of storytelling and maximum shocks. It's refreshing when a modern horror film uses CGI technology and the latest-and-greatest filmmaking techniques to show things they otherwise couldn't, but without necessarily relying on that tech in order to tell their story. The subject matter and effects are certainly horrific, but it is the directing that makes this feature a scare masterpiece.
Certainly a descendent of THE EXORCIST(1973) and equal parts REC(2008)(see review) and PARANORMAL ACTIVITY(2007)(see review), but not a caught-on-tape film; and with the ghoulishness of say, the 2011 prequel THE THING(see review.) Practical make-up effects by Marcos Berta and visual effects by Lionel Cornistein. In the John Carpenter tradition, Director Rugna composed a terrific musical score for his own film, with its dissonant cues and jarring strings also reminiscent of THE EXORCIST.
Rugna along with Sacha Gervasi and Gillermo Del Toro are producing a remake for Amercian release with Fox Searchlight titled: "TERRIFIED".
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MUSARAÑAS (2014) (AKA: SHREWS NEST) recommended!
Dir: Juanfer Andrés & Esteban Roel
With 5 out of 5 stars on Shudder reviews and a 94% rating on Rotten Tomatoes this Shudder Exclusive did not disappoint. A Spanish production (also released as "SANGRE DE MI SANGRE" and also "THE EVIL ROOM") this feature is a brutally heartbreaking drama about an isolated and tortured family. This is one of those narratives where the ending twists reveal that what you thought about the characters and the backstory is not the full story at all. The final result leaves you to ponder the drama long after the credits finish rolling. PSYCHO(1960) meets REPULSION(1965) meets MISERY(1990).
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SEASON OF THE WITCH (1972) recommended!
Dir: George A. Romero (NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, THE CRAZIES, MARTIN, KNIGHT RIDERS, CREEPSHOW, MONKEY SHINES, THE DARK HALF, BRUISER, LAND OF THE DEAD, DIARY OF THE DEAD, SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD, THE AMUSEMENT PARK)
A low-budget masterpiece...
Review coming soon!
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THE ROOM (2019) recommended!Dir: Christian Volckman (RENAISSANCE)
Another Shudder Original. Be careful what you wish for! SOLARIS(1972/2002) meets W.W. Jacobs classic horror short-story "The Monkey's Paw"; with a third act not unlike PRIMER(2004)(see review) or parts of Michel Gondry's ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND(2004).
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MIDSOMMAR (2019) recommended!Dir: Ari Aster (HEREDITARY)
My word- some things you just can't un-see. Aster's follow up to the much acclaimed HEREDITARY (2018)(see review) is equally unsettling and hard to clear out of your mind once seen. It is also very much a revamp of Robon Hardy's 1973 Brit-Horror favorite, THE WICKER MAN. Another entry in the genre of "Psychic Horror", MIDSOMMAR'S content flows from the inner emotional realm of its central character rather than from any external plot. It is basically a nightmare in service of a catharsis for an emotionally lost and broken individual.
Florence Pugh carries the film with a terrific performance full of close-ups and subtle shifts in emotion without dialogue. All of the cast are strong and the directing style has the same sparse, matter of fact quality as HEREDITARY. Aster's meditations on grief, mortality and trust continue in MIDSOMMAR along with themes about cults, conspiracies and transcendence (or the myth or false promise of transcendence.) Aster's two films both center heavily on how individuals deal with the existential corners of the human condition, brought out by grave circumstance, but always sort of out-of-the-blue in what is otherwise a very normative and banal context. (ex: a devil cult in the middle of the suburbs, etc...) There is the sudden exposure of a reality unseen, lying in wait beneath what we think is our reality. Can it be that forces we trust are working against us and have been since long ago? We are left, in a moment, to question everything we think we know.
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Two individuals in a clearly dead relationship, tempt themselves to think in a new perspective after tragic events leave them stunned. Is it right to question one's gut, instinct reactions? How do we judge things when all is chaos and nothing is clear? The suicide of a mentally-ill sibling seems to validate "Murphy's Law" and thus begins a string of bad decisions based on faulty directions. One day you're falling to pieces over a death and the next, finding ways to see a brutal suicide as "a beautiful act." From such chaos can only come further chaos.
There is strong foreshadowing in a drug trip sequence at the end of the first act and as with HEREDITARY, there is the opening motif of an artifice behind which the film takes place. The opening credits end with a mural that divides off like a curtain opening, complete with the sound effect of it rolling away. Also like HEREDITARY, there are some truly ghoulish gore effects. Aster seems to like headless things and close ups of heads and bodies being pulverized or eviscerated. Always these effects scenes/shots are sudden and un-announced, doubling the impact on the audience. Although obviously in service of the story and not sensational for their own sake, these gore moments are so unsettling it begs the question if they are truly necessary(?) I am inclined to think yes, which leads me to recommend Aster's work only with a warning to anyone squeamish.
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| Embracing one's personal Hell. Florence Pugh in MIDSOMMAR(2019) |
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Aster's horror is haunting long after the film is viewed and this is not just because of the visceral moments but because of what they are attached to. The ghastly horror of what some individuals are willing to do in service of their beliefs or desires- stepping far outside of any traditional morality or ethics or even care of the self. Suicide, self immolation, self eviscerating or amputation, murder, lying, conspiring all become fair game in the minds of those who seek some transcendent or otherworldly goal. This is juxtaposed against the naive protagonists who struggle to reinvent their points-of-view to adjust to ever-degrading circumstances, daring to remain optimistic. This dynamic is the disheartening heart of Aster's horror, as all attempts to stay positive are in vain and the worst case scenario turns out to be the true one. Moral? "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions' and "Any compass based on another compass is as broken as the first is" and "Mind the line between relationship and co-dependency" and "Faith is the fastest path to Hell." Such profound cynicism in horror is a lot to take. In Aster's work, there is no refuge, no safe spaces- Hell is exactly what you fear and it is here and it's far too late to do anything to escape it- because it is you.
Technically everything about the film is sound. Casting, performances, sound design, pacing, editing and camera. The film values silence and space and makes both terrifying. Aster's direction is so matter-of-fact that it is absent of any traditional horror motifs. The film doesn't play like a "horror movie" per se, it simply unfolds its' troubling narrative for you. Unlike HEREDITARY, there are no supernatural elements or special effects in that regard, just story. Above all, the film is utterly depressing and just very, very sad. Although the themes and style are not new (Kubrick, Von Trier, Polanski) Aster's updating of them in this work serve to echo the current times. Our present concerns over "Post Truth" and "Alternative Facts" have us unsettled as a society and the vehicle of the lost girls' journey in MIDSOMMAR is not unlike the journey we are forced to take in our present socio/political realties. Can it all just be a bad drug trip? Is it subconsciously a Hell of our own making? Yes, yes it is.
See also: ROSEMARY'S BABY(1968), DON'T LOOK NOW(1973)(see review), THE TENANT(1976)(see review), SAFE(1995), THE NAMELESS(1999)(see review), ANTICHRIST (2009)(see review), THE WITCH(2015)(see review), THE INVITATION (2015)(see review).
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I AM MOTHER (2019) recommended!Dir: Grant Sputore
Post Apocalyptic A.I. Cinema similar in feel to AIR(2015) (see review) and PASSENGERS(2016) (see review). In an underground facility in a post-apocalyptic Earth, an A.I. comes online and assembles a robot called "Mother." This being sets about hatching a human embryo from a vast archive of prepared embryos and raises it as her own daughter. Everything in this facility is meticulously planned out and it is clear that the human race, sensing its' demise, successfully articulated a plan-B to save itself from extinction. The young girl, known only as "Daughter", has everything a child needs and Mother is there to selflessly provide for all, since this of course, is what "she" was designed for. Then something unexpected happens...
An outside survivor (Hillary Swank) knocks at the outer door one day, begging to come inside. Turns out, there are others on the outside! This woman obviously needs help and Daughter, raised to be empathetic and kind, yearns to let her in even though it is against all rules. The deadly plagues that settled over the outside world makes all contact with the outside impossible. Eluding Mother, Daughter compromises to have the wayward survivor (known as "Woman") enter the outer pressure chamber, but not come into the inner fortress. Soon enough however, Daughter brings her all the way inside and hides her in the bowels of the complex. Woman, upon seeing Mother ducks and exclaims, "one of them is in here!?" Turns out, robots like Mother roam the outer world and oppress all living things. But is this true?
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Discovering the stowaway, Mother offers her medical help and much to Daughter's surprise, is not angry, only concerned with contamination. She explains to Daughter that the woman may be hiding the truth and to be wary of her claims. As she recovers back to health, the woman expresses to Daughter how Mother cannot be trusted and is lying about her real intentions and that Daughter should escape with her to the outside where she has a shelter. What should Daughter do? Who should she believe? All her life, Daughter has been in isolation and only knows what Mother has taught her. She has no reason to mistrust Mother. Then, she makes a discovery...
There is an incinerator where Mother dispatches of anything possibly contaminated. There is something suspicious about this place and Daughter investigates, There, amongst the ashes, she finds the bones of other young humans who apparently, didn't pass the perfection test the way she herself has. Can it be that Mother has been aborting other embryo humans who didn't turn out exactly how she wanted them to? Turns out- yes. Daughter makes her escape with the woman and they duck the robot drones and make their way to the shore where the woman lives in an old cargo container off-the-grid. We finally see the outer world with these massive Terra-forming structures and A.I. controlled machines (not unlike the massive farms in THE MATRIX(1999). The woman explains that all is controlled by the central A.I. and almost nothing living survives the relentless hunting of the robot soldiers.
Realizing she doesn't want to live this way and that humanities only future lie in the unborn embryos in cold storage, Daughter flees back to the complex, narrowly escaping the drones until all at once they stand down. The A.I. has protected her. Confronting Mother, it is finally revealed that Mother is the central A.I., or at least an extension of it. In fact, everything is an extension of the A.I. Mother even allows "herself" - or at least this one single robot manifestation of herself - to be destroyed in order to fool Daughter. Now thinking she has eliminated Mother, Daughter begins hatching the embryos herself and takes over Mother's role as guardian of humanity. Outside at the shore, in her shipping container hideaway, Woman is found by a cyborg drone who, in Mother's voice proclaims, "did you think you could escape? I no longer need you..." as she kills her.
So clearly, Mother is the entire A.I. network itself and all of it was created, or at least started, by the lasts humans on Earth. Everything that has happened, including the arrival of the woman from the outside, was predicted by and/or planned by Mother. The irony of course, is that, in order to protect and recultivate civilization, Mother needs (or chooses, or was programmed to) follow a strict eugenics program that is far from organic or humanist in nature. Daughter received all her humanist instincts from Mother's tutelage, yet, these instincts go against Mother's grand scheme. Naturally, even this has been anticipated and prepared for. It is an interesting statement on General Artificial Intelligence (AGI) that in order to achieve a goal it can often undermine that very goal by not possessing the moral fortitude to "know" the difference, or at least lack the need to act in a moral way. In this case, perhaps such a dynamic was deemed necessary by the last remaining humans who programmed Mother, or has Mother evolved herself beyond her designers' initial intentions? Perhaps the last humans wanted a totalitarian, perfectionist future? Perhaps this is why there were apocalyptic wars in the first place?? All in all, the film is a successful thought study on the ethical conundrums of the human condition and our will to survive and flourish. Although the end-of-the-world bunker motif is nothing new, the production design is fantastic as is the soundtrack, visual effects and acting performances.
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MORGAN (2016) recommended!
Dir: Luke Scott
Luke Scott's first feature film gives many nods to the legacy of his father Ridley Scott's BLADERUNNER films. Also a moral story about Artificial Intelligence, MORGAN centers around a "replicant" - a bio-engineered human created in a lab for specific utilitarian purposes. As with the "Nexus-6" military grade replicants in BLADERUNNER, MORGAN is a test-tube human, genetically designed as a combat weapon by an unscrupulous corporation.
Raised in a secret, underground lab, young Morgan grows from newborn to young teenage girl in 5 short years. She is extremely accelerated in intelligence and overall ability, but the lab team's purpose with Morgan is to see if they can raise a military replicant that can also be fully humanist and in control of her emotions. It seems that earlier experiments ended in tragic bloodshed, so a lot rides on the Morgan project being successful. After assaulting one of the team members, a psychoanalyst is sent to evaluate Morgan. If her emotions are not in check, the corporation will "cancel" the project- meaning Morgan will be euthanized (see also: I AM MOTHER(2019) review above.) Pushing the limits of her anger, the interrogator drives Morgan to her violent side and in spite of her efforts to practice compassion and empathy, her engineered nature takes over and she kills him. Tranquilzed, Morgan awakes to find herself strapped to a stretcher, as the team prepares an injection to "end the project." Here is where the heart of the film really shines at its deepest level. Having raised this girl from infant to young adult, the team has very much become her surrogate parents and extended family. Clearly, they are all in love with her and have long past any point of objectivity as scientists. Now, under direction of the project, they must purposely murder their little girl. How can they possibly do this? Nonetheless, their "little girl" has killed and injured innocent people. What will they do?
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Whereas BLADERUNNER'S replicants escaped their societal role as slaves to seek out their creator in some existential quest of self-realization, Morgan is merely a child who hasn't had time to fully develop in any sense. MORGAN deals more with the humanity of the lab team as Morgan's surrogate family and their inability to uphold personal boundaries as clinicians. As she lay on the gurney facing death, Morgan cries "I'm sorry I failed you, I'll try harder, I promise..." and "Please- I don't want to die..." even referring to them as "Mom" and "Dad." However, it is the team that has failed Morgan, not the other way around. Thinking one can artificially create a sentient human as a combat weapon by engineering out its innate humanity, then try to come back around after the fact and recondition humanism back into "it" is the height of hubris. The euthanizing scene is heart-breaking and actress Anya Taylor-Joy does a good job of conjuring the terror and tears of a character in such a position.
Defying corporate orders, the team of course aborts the euthanization and preps an escape for Morgan. Sadly, it is now too late as the trauma of the event has triggered Morgan into full combat mode and she decimates the team- killing her own family. Now how will she live? How can she survive the world and her own emotions? In the end, it is only another combat replicant that can bring closure, one of the earlier test series, devoid of emotions and ethics. This is where the harshest statement of the film is made- we can manipulate pre-existing evolutionary conditions into engineered life perhaps, but it is utterly beyond us to control eventual outcomes, certainly in any moral sense. Like so many Doctor Frankensteins, our abilities in this regard reach a terminus- and fail us miserably.
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| Playing God: You raised her, can you call her an "it" ? |
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Although panned by critics for being high-tech but without a proper resolution or purpose, I found MORGAN had a lot to say in a currently saturated field of "A.I. Cinema" entries. Yes, it has a car chase near the end and a martial arts fight between two super-soldiers, but all in line with the story and clearly not the focus of the film. Most comparable to EX MACHINA(2015)(see review), MORGAN seems to pick up where BLADERUNNER(1982) leaves off and dwells on the same themes as the recent BLADERUNNER 2049(2017)(see review); namely- how does a human facsimile find a way to become completely human? What does it mean to be "created sick and commanded to be well?" As our current technology faces the dawning of certain computerized A.I. in the near future, it is neither self-awareness or questions of sentience that should plague us, but rather, the ability for conscious agents to suffer. As philosopher and neuroscientist Sam Harris has popularly pointed up, "...we will need to be increasingly careful not to be creating HELLS and populating them with fresh souls..." MORGAN is a narrative that plays out one possible scenario in which this dilemma manifests and cannot be corrected by its all-too-human creators. Sad and scary stuff...
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ALIEN CODE (2017) recommended!Dir: Michael G. Cooney
Witty paranoia romp about a young code breaker who is enlisted by a mysterious defense firm to unlock an encrypted message from space. An unknown satellite is found in orbit, not from a where, but from a when. What is its origin and who is behind it? If Carl Sagan and Richard Feynman got together to make a movie script, this might be it.
The message turns out to be instructions for building a device that can allow inter-dimensional contact from some race of advanced beings who live outside of our linear, temporal existence. After decoding the message, the young man starts having time hallucinations and soon discovers he has developed a fatal brain tumor. Together with another code breaker gal and a defrocked scientist from the company (both terminal with tumors as well) the three duck the companies ever present men-in-black and endeavor to stop the temporal machine from being built. Seems the company has already been working on the device and is close to launching it. However, the closer the device is to being completed, the more hallucinations start to be shared by everyone. The professor reasons that the imminent deployment of the device in the near future must have created (will soon create) an "event" that sent a ripple effect into the immediate future and past. These ripple waves are the cause of the shared "hallucinations" and time-shifting anomalies. Does this mean our heroes have already failed to destroy the device before they even start? Hoping it's still not too late to affect time, the code breakers sneak into the lab where the device is, only to get stuck in repeating loops the closer they get to it! Will they be able to stop a future that has already happened?
CONTACT(1997) meets PRIMER(2014)(see review) meets COHERENCE(2013)(see review) with lots of quantum-non-locality brain scratcher stuff to ponder. Decent performances and overall production make this one a fun mystery.
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THE FLY (1986) recommended!
Dir: David Cronenberg
I first saw this in the theater when it opened and didn't care much for it. I always considered it one of Cronenberg's lighter, "pop" efforts. Now 34 years later, after viewing it a second time, I appreciate it much more.
Review coming soon!
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THE DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS (1962) recommended!
(AKA: INVASION OF THE TRIFFIDS)Dir: Steve Sekely & Freddie Francis
Brit-horror director/cinematographer maestro Freddie Francis co-directs (uncredited) and screenwriter Bernard Gordon (EARTH VS THE FLYING SAUCERS(1956) and ZOMBIES OF MORA TAU(1957)(see review)) under the pseudonym "Steve Yordan"; help bring the classic science fiction novel by John Wyndham ("Village of the Damned" and "Children of the Damned") to the big screen.
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RIGHT AT YOUR DOOR (2006) recommended!
Dir: Chris Gorak (THE DARKEST HOUR)
Seriously tense and disturbing drama about a terrorist attack in Los Angeles and the characters who try to survive and figure out what to do in the aftermath. Almost can't believe this film came out so close to the events of September 11, 2001. A very bleak and unsettling meditation on how ill-equipped we may be to deal with the perils of our modern times.
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THE LOVE WITCH (2018) recommended!Dir: Anna Biller (VIVA)
Deliciously over-the-top, this little indy gem uses character point-of-view and stylized motifs to weave a subtle and yet not-subtle-at-all feminist social commentary. Dripping with the retro technicolor of Euro witchcraft-horror flicks of the 60's and the maudlin decadence of both Fellini and Bava; writer-director Anna Biller delivers all the punkiness of a student film but with the hypnotic and effusive inner fantasy life of her main character. Part JULIET OF THE SPIRITS(1965), part LISA AND THE DEVIL(1974)(see review) and part DAUGHTERS OF DARKNESS(1971)(see review); THE LOVE WITCH chronicles the wanderings of an abjectly naive young woman in search of love who simply believes what she has been told.
Equal parts Ingénue and femme fatale, Elaine (Samantha Robinson), believes the purpose of her life is to find a man to love and give herself to him completely. Finding her way into a coven of modern witches, she realizes a religion that supports her singular view of the world and gives her rites and practices to achieve her rather unbalanced goals. Dating several men and hypnotizing them with love potions, she can make them fall in lust and feel worthless without her, but what about real love? Unfulfilled, Elaine sees no option but to murder these men and keep their "essence" in a bottle on her desk as she continues her quest. Simultaneously vexed by the male half of her species yet not able to live without a man, Elaine finally resolves that she can only keep the memories of the men she has loved after she has released them from the bonds of life. Holding the body of her dead lover, a smile comes over Elaine as she realizes this inner resolve, even as the police are kicking in the door.
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| JULIET OF THE SPIRITS (1965) / THE LOVE WITCH (2018) |
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What writer/director Biller has done here is not to pontificate but to reveal the absurdist context of the character Elaine- a protagonist who simply believes what she has been conditioned to believe and actualizes these beliefs to their logical, albeit horrific conclusions. Rather than wait around for someone else to realize her dreams for her, Elaine takes action; but what opportunities are there for a young, single woman? Elaine must create her own path. From frame-one to frame-end the film is always aware of itself and never stops winking at the camera. Purposely riffing on genre, THE LOVE WITCH uses pop motifs- from retro styles and music cues (taken right from Fellini films no less), production design, wardrobe (Biller comes from a costume/wardrobe background), use of color, dialogue and pacing; to create Elaine's child-like fantasy world. Even in scenes where Elaine is not present, we never leave the fantasy projection of how she sees things. The men are all like Darrin from 1970's TV's "Bewitched", hapless alphas as un-self-aware as they are culturally dominate and always sexually undisciplined. Women are relegated to sipping tea and waxing on about true love while the men run things.
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| Tarantino’s homages to retro-styles stay stuck at the surface whereas Biller’s motifs pull us into the deep fantasy world of her films’ protagonist. |
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When Elaine finally finds her beau of choice he is of course a cop (authority male) in a swaggering white shirt no less! In one particularly hilarious sequence, the two happen on a troupe of players in a park who stage a mock wedding for them. The film briefly becomes a musical number and Elaine and her love whist away on a white horse in old-fashioned dress. Later, when confronted by an investigator in a bar, a simple verbal spat turns into the entire room of men trying to strip and rape Elaine (lol) not necessarily reality, bit certainly the way Elaine feels. She is saved by her beau in the nick of time, who beats back the crowd and takes her away, not on a horse but via his squad car. Another motif that portrays Elaine's insular world-view, is that the same actors who make up the witch coven also play the background characters in many other scenes, including the actor troupe in the park and the patrons at the bar.
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| Desires unfullfilled. THE LOVE WITCH (2018) |
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It is likely no coincidence that the name "Elaine" is also the female character in Mike Nichols masterpiece THE GRADUATE(1967). In that world, Elaine is the object of desire for the male protagonist Ben, who idealizes her as a solution to both his progressive values and his traditional ones, and who he must save from society's pre-conditions. He thinks he's "outside the box" but is he only breaking rules within a larger set of rules? In Biller's tale (also taking place north of California's Bay Area) we get to experience the female-objects' (Elaine's) inner view of the world. Both films end with rather mundane anti-climaxes. THE LOVE WITCH is rife with ponderances of how desires and visions can produce profound let downs. If we assign such lofty and unrealistic goals to life, how can we possibly find true fulfillment? Biller addresses these themes not in a finger waving, reductionist essay, but in a meditative, tongue-in-cheek fantasy that leaves us to ponder the broader question: how could a character be like this in the first place?
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| The promise of marital bliss. DIVORCE AMERICAN STYLE (1967) / THE GRADUATE (1967) |
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THE WAVE (2019)
Dir: Roar Uthaug (TOMB RAIDER 2018)
Very well made and realistic disaster film that focuses on characters and science rather than epic special effects. Referencing an actual fault line in the Scandanavian mountains, the film portrays a "what if" scenario of avalanches creating a tsunami wave in an alpine lake bordering a small town. No Roland Emmerich end-of-the-world nonsense here, just mature storytelling.
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THE VOID (2016)
Dir: Jeremy Gillespie & Steven Kostanski
Cosmic horror entry that riffs on the likes of H.P. Lovecraft's "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward." Feels like EVENT HORIZON(1997) meets HELLRAISER(1987). Pretty good until the third act. A group of folks trapped in a defunct hospital are surrounded by a weird death cult that won't allow them to leave. Inside, weird-ultra-dimensional stuff starts to unfold as dead patients come back to life and morph into bizarre otherworldly creatures. Very reminiscent here of John Carpenter's THE THING(1982) only in the hospital location of Rick Rosenthal's HALLOWEEN II (1981) The films' strength is in the intersecting paths of the characters who all find themselves at this hospital. With no time for explanations and everything coming unglued, they all have to just react. This was refreshing compared to the sleepy plodding of most horror entries these days that spell everything out. The gore effects are somewhat limited but ok and kept to a minimum. There is a nice "descent into hell" sequence where the hero characters have to traverse the abandon parts of the hospital, only to find themselves in parallel realities brought on by their emotions. The end fizzles slightly as the bad-guy cult-leader is revealed and is sort of "Pinhead" from the HELLRAISER franchise going on about "the death of death" and other Lovecraftean tropes. After going through a time portal thingy, the main characters end up on some foreign planet(?) staring up at a pyramid hovering above in the sky. That's all the explanation we get! There is some subtext about birth and reproduction I couldn't quite latch onto, allegories about parenting and some such.
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BLACK MOUNTAIN SIDE (2015)
Dir: Nick Szostakiwskyj
Takes all of its cues (almost scene for scene) from John Carpenter's THE THING(1982) for the first two acts, then morphs into THE SHINING(1980) meets WENDIGO(2001) whilst managing to be starkly creepy. Much like the film THAW(2009) an ancient virus from early pre-civilization is excavated from the icy North and preys on an unsuspecting research team. The team hypothesizes that the virus, which uses homosapiens as its host, has evolved in such a way that it drives infected humans to kill themselves and each other. A perfect adversary from the micro-world that defeats you by convincing you to hurt yourself. By the third act we begin to see the visions that the infected victims are seeing- a bizarre manifestation of a deer-God deity that speaks to them in their minds telling them to do dastardly things. This evil-deity voice even philosophizes in order to erode the morale of its victims. This is reminiscent of the real-life Fluke worm that infects an ants brain, convincing it to run up the nearest blade of grass and offer itself as food to birds (which in turn excrete the Fluke in its feces, which the ants eat, thus continuing the symbiotic cycle). The film uses an interesting fusion of ancient folklore and modern-day science to explain a deadly phenomenon that proves both modes of understanding correct. There are also some some down-right gruesome scenes of amputation and self-evisceration. Adding to the stark ambience of the story is the fact that there is no musical score and little to no moving camera shots.
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ISLAND ZERO (2018)
Dir: Josh Gerritsen
Low-budget fun. Had a lot of charm. Small-group-trapped-on-an-island motif with decent characters.|
Review coming soon...!
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TERMINUS (2015)
Dir: Marc Furmie
Almost the exact same storyline as the film ENCOUNTER(2018) (see below) only darker. A single father, still grieving the loss of his wife to Cancer, teams up with a local disabled veteran to explore a miraculous discovery. When a meteorite lands one night, a bizarre pod-like shell remains and seems somehow alive. Whoever makes contact with the pod, has all their ailments healed and they also get visions that inform them of something profound about to happen. With the world on the brink of nuclear war, the two men resolve to complete a vision of a nuclear-proof steel reinforced capsule to place the pod within. Meanwhile Federal men-in-black are in pursuit. The first half of the film seemed to wander a bit until the meteorite showed up. The flashbacks were mercilessly brief and coy, a refreshing change for most films nowadays. The FX were good and not overplayed. The Abiogenesis concepts were engaging, not sure how the characters' back stories really fit, but overall, an enjoyable ride.
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CONTAMINATION (1980) (AKA: ALIEN CONTAMINATION, TOXIC SPAWN)
Dir: Lewis Coates
Cheesy drive-in fun!
Review coming soon...!
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HOSTILE (2017)
Dir: Mathieu Turi
THE ROAD WARRIOR meets THE NOTEBOOK. Strange collision of genres and storytelling styles into one narrative. Fantastic acting performances and direction in what amounts to a non-horror, horror flick. The film is in two parts (1) a charming love story about a young, street urchin junkie and the rich art gallery owner who becomes her savior; and (2) a post-apocalyptic Earth tale of the girl struggling to survive while trapped in the desert, fending off Dystopian zombie creatures. (How's that for marketing strategies?)
The present-tense of the narrative is the Dystopian world and the back-story romance is told in flashback. Interesting is that figuratively the entire story is cohesive if taken through the young woman's point-of-view. Juliet (where art thou Romeo?) sees the world as a Dystopian wasteland where everyone and everything is a potential enemy. In both "worlds" she is a scavenger playing the system for survivals' sake and closes herself off to any real quality of life as she is "hostile" by necessity. Again and again she gets herself into perilous situations having to painfully learn the "no man is an island" lesson every time. Aimless art-dealer Jack eventually becomes boyfriend Jack after forcing Juliet off her heroin addiction and refusing to give up on her. The two marry and build a life together, even trying to have children, which fails because Juliet has messed up her health so much.
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After a fight, hubby takes the subway home where he becomes a victim in a terrorist bio-weapons attack. Even at the eve of his death, Juliet still cannot bring herself to tell Jack she loves him. It is impossible to love anything until you love yourself and Jack makes her promise to "never give up" which is the only reason she persists in her future apocalypse. Stuck in her overturned SUV all night in the wasteland, she must fight off wandering "cannibal" marauders and also these bizarre evolved zombie-like creatures. Without any explanation we are left to assume these creatures are the result of whatever the apocalypse event was all about (more of the same bio-chem weapons?) Battling one persistent zombie through the night, the two are left barely alive at sunrise. The creature crawls to her and makes a gesture that Jack used to make. Can it be? Is the creature- Jack!? Seems perhaps it is. (We never actually see his death, just that his body was taken away at the hospital). In hind-sight, we realize as Juliet does, that the creature actually protected her from the marauders during the night. Same old Jack! Embracing the creature lovingly, the two sit there in the desert expanse and Juliet is finally able to utter the words, "I love you." With her last bullet she puts them both out of their misery.
It is common in horror and science-fiction that a barren landscape represents the emotional landscape of a characters inner-life. HOSTILE is no exception here, however, what is confusing is who the creature represents. It would seem the creature should be Juliet herself and her final vigil in the desert a look in the mirror to battle her shadow self. However, the creature is supposed to be her husband Jack. Why this? Keeping with the point-of-view interpretation, Juliet never saw the "real" beauty of who Jack was, or anyone else for that matter, she only sees her "Dystopian" view and Jack is another in a line of ugly, exploitative demons. She may need him, trust him, want him- but can she actually love him? Juliet's inner hostility keeps her from ever really connecting with the one person who actually loves her unconditionally. When she is able to reckon this love, her journey comes to a close.
The spot-on performances of both Brittany Ashworth (Juliet) and Grégory Fitoussi (Jack) where really endearing and provided for a fully engaging character drama. The dialogue in the flashback scenes was particularly nuanced as was the direction. The creature effects, mainly practical (and likely only embellished with CGI) were amazing! Much like the creatures in I AM LEGEND(2007)(see review) but more realistic. HOSTILE is well made and interesting if viewed with an open mind.
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THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU (1996 version)
Dir: John Frankenheimer (THE FRENCH CONNECTION, SEVEN DAYS IN MAY, SECONDS, THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, BLACK SUNDAY, PROPHECY) and Richard Stanley (HARDWARE, THE COLOR OUT OF SPACE)
More a humanist philosophical drama than a straight up horror tale, an unethical physician plays God as he tries to biologically create a morally "perfect" species on his own hidden island. Naturally (pun intended), everything goes horribly wrong. Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" (this time Kurtz is a medical man!) meets all things David Cronenberg basically. Very strong ending leaves you with a lot of sociological conundrums to ponder.
Based on the H.G. Wells classic and starring Marlon Brando as Moreau and Val Kilmer as Montgomery. Screenplay and co-direction (uncredited) by Richard Stanley. Terrific practical creature effects by Stan Winston studios. Ron Pearlman co-stars as a half-man/half-animal shaman called "the law sayer."
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CREATURE FROM BLACK LAKE (1976)
Dir: Joy N. Houck Jr. (THE BRAIN MACHINE, THE NIGHT OF THE STRANGLER, WOMEN AND BLOODY TERROR, NIGHT OF BLOODY HORROR)
Couldn't hate it. Charming fun. Lensed by Dean Cundey (famed cinematographer of JURASSIC PARK, THE THING, ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK, THE FOG and HALLOWEEN.) Couple of college guys get funded to search for Sasquatch in the deep South. They are properly skeptical and scientific, but think there's something out there. Hopping in a van with some gear they road trip down, encountering some quirky characters along the way. Local Sheriff (Bill Thurman) doesn't like them winding up the locals since there's a lot of fear in town about "the Creature." Finally meeting up with a family terrorized by the creature, the guys get some hard evidence! Moving on to an old geezer (Jack Elam, in a show stealing performance) who lives out in the marsh, they get the real scoop on the monsters' whereabouts. Trekking deep into the wild, they finally encounter the creature and have to do battle to survive!
What I liked about the film was its easy-going nature and the time it spent with its characters. You can't help but like everyone and the conflicts they have with one another are all for good reasons. Sometimes the best of intentions get in each others way. Also there an ethical thread running through the narrative about choices and consequences. Very 70's look and feel with some terrific character-acting performances by veterans Thurman, Elam and Dub Taylor as "Grandpa", which make the ride worth it. Yes a low-baller- no, nothing special- but full of old-school charm.
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THE MAN FROM EARTH (2007)
Dir: Richard Schenkman
A group of academics gather at a cabin for a going away party in honor of a colleague. Seems the good Professor of History could've written his own ticket at the University but chose to move on. The funny thing is that he hasn't told anyone why. After some berating over this fact, his friends convince him to, "try something he's never done before" namely- explain his reasons to them. "Every 10 years I move on and start over somewhere new," he explains. "But why?" the group begs, especially when there seems no reason to- is he in trouble? What is he hiding?
Thus begins a long night of storytelling with a hypothetical question posed to the group: what if there were an off-shoot line of homosapiens in our evolutionary past, whose immune systems developed more advanced than the rest? What if it wasn't an entire line but a freak occurrence within the normal species line that showed up every once in a while? With some careful planning and lifestyle stricture, could such an individual live for generations or even indefinitely?
The gathered faculty take the challenge and begin hypothetically mapping out what such a biological phenomenon might be like. As the intellects reach impasses in there reasoning, Mr. History always has a sufficient answer to the dilemma. After a while, the group begin to get uneasy. How could any one person know so many answers at such a deep level? On subjects that aren't even his own discipline? This engages the group to dig deeper and so the experiment continues. Eventually emotions begin coming loose as suspicions mount.
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Is he playing some sick mind game with them or is the dear Professor actually positing that he in fact, is such an immortal specimen? How could such a fantastical phenomenon actually be real? He is quick to remind his fellow experts that they've just spent the evening answering this exact question.
With some intense revelations and some ending plot twists, the film acts as a canvas to illustrate many contemporary notions in modern science and social-psychology. Not cinematic at all, just characters in a room talking for 2 hours, but the storytelling is quite gripping. I have to applaud the actors for pulling off their roles with nothing much to do (mostly sitting and looking perplexed.) The performances helped pull off what otherwise would've been just a claustrophobic play. The music cues in the first act were painfully amateurish but got better later. All-in-all this straight-to-video feature was a fun brain teaser.
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THE TUNNEL (2011)Dir: Carlo Ledesma
Another crowd-funded indy-thriller in the "video-verite" genre (found-footage, caught-on-tape, etc.) like THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT(1999) or CLOVERFIELD(2008) (see review). This one utilizes the same faux-documentary style of Neil Blomenkamp's DISTRICT 9(2009), as the story is presented by witnesses in a series of interviews and the "recovered footage" shows us what happened. The footage is very much BLAIR WITCH and also Jaume Balaguero's REC(2007) see review (in my opinion, the very best of the "found-footage" genre.) All of this serves a story that is basically a modern re-make of the 80's straight-to-video cult-classic C.H.U.D.(1984).
When the government of New South Whales decides to use ages-old subway tunnels and WW2 shelters under the city for water recycling facilities, several lower tunnels are filled with water as artificial "lakes." Soon after, homeless people living underground start disappearing. In the blink of an eye, the government project stops and is never spoken of again. A desperate journalist in need of a breaking story hooks her video crew and producer into illegally descending the tunnels to seek out what's going on. After someone or something grabs their audio guy, the panicked crew searches for him only to find a bloody mess deeper down the tunnels. Scarier still, something picked up one of the crews planted cameras and was filming them! Rewinding the tape back, they see a flash frame of some humanoid looking thing with weird eyes. A security guard from above wanders their way and just as they think they are saved, he is dispatched by some huge and powerful thing.
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The crew now tries desperately to escape back to the surface, but only get more and more lost in the labyrinth of tunnels as their lights begin running out of power. Arriving at what might be the creature's inner lair, we see the only direct footage of the creature, but only in really, really, REALLY dark snippets that don't reveal anything much. Journalist girl is taken by the creature and dragged under the lake as she records it with an underwater handycam. The remaining two crew guys dive in and grab her, scaring the creature off long enough to escape. The producer doesn't survive the encounter however, and dies just after the three finally make it to the surface. The ending credits tell us that the police determined the footage to be "inconclusive" and no investigation is launched.
The film is well made and well acted and doesn't seem to suffer from the tell-tale amateurish results of many in this genre. Also, the characters are very well developed, almost rendering the story a drama about trust and betrayal, rather than a horror thriller. Nonetheless, the action and pacing are quite tense and the locations fantastic (if you like "Urban Exploration" this film is for you!) and the effects kept to a bare minimum. The major problem is that there are little to no fireworks or payoff at story's end. If you are a veteran of Verite-Horror films, THE TUNNEL offers nothing new at all. In spite of being very adeptly made and being a solid effort, the film probably will not impress unless it's your first time with the genre.
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BLACK WATER (2007)
Dir: David Nerlich & Andrew Traucki
Well made feature about three Aussies who go on a fishing outing in the dense mangrove river channels of Australia. With an abundance of "salt water Crocodiles" this area is highly dangerous without proper guides and protections. Sure enough, a giant croc rattles the boat and kills the guide, leaving the two sisters and husband to try and survive in the wilderness. Seeking shelter in the trees, they watch as their boat begins to drift downstream, powerless to get at it. Thus begins a several days vigil to avoid the croc-filled water and hopefully come up with a strategy to get back to civilization. Eventually husband gets eaten and older sister is chomped on but survives. Now, scaredy-cat younger sister has to wear the pants and take her chances in the water to try and get at the ever drifting boat. Surviving an attack from the menacing croc, she gets the gun off the body of their deceased guide and manages a showdown with the deadly beast in the river. This was the high point of the film as the sense fear of going into the water was nearly palpable. After successfully killing the croc she returns to the tree for big sis, only to discover she has bled out. Placing her body in the boat she begins paddling back-river to try and find the way home.
Supposedly based on true events, the film begind with some title cards explaining the recent phenomenon of salt-water crocs invading the marsh lands and causing problems. All-in-all this was a well produced frightener about a simple event that happened, placing man at the mercy of the wilderness and the brutality of the animal kingdom.
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BAIT (2012)
Dir: Kimble Rendall (7 GUARDIANS OF THE TOMB)
Adeptly made Australian schlocker that is a throw back to the cheesy-fun, drive-in flicks of the past. Sharks in a flooded grocery store! Although silly and implausible, the film is aware of itself at all times. Good effects and characters and a clever story (co-written by Russel Mulcahy) based on the old characters-trapped-in-a-closed-space angle. Reminescent of say, TREMORS(1990) or JAWS 2(1978), or some-such. The characters actually aren't idiots and you don't actually want them all to die. Imagine that!
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DARK WAS THE NIGHT (2014)Dir: Jack Heller
Well done and mostly compelling yarn about a strange creature that stalks a rural town in winter. Bizarre and eerily large animal tracks and some mutilated bodies start the intrigue as the local sheriff tries to allay the fears of the townspeople. However, by the second act the pacing starts to get caught up in the severely morose character of the Sheriff. Grieving the loss of his son (pool drowning) the Sheriff is in an existential and alcoholic crisis. This tried and tired angle (see TV's STRANGER THINGS) start to wear thin fairly quickly as we realize the "creature" is an obvious stand-in for the Sheriff's personal demons. So will he rise to the occasion and overcome them or not? By now it is revealed the monster is a "Wendigo" from Native American lore, that is actually some forgotten species living in isolation that has been forced out of the woods by the logging industry. Of course there is a massive storm that traps everyone in town and no one is coming to help (think 30 DAYS OF NIGHT(2007) see review.)
In the final showdown, the town folk are barricaded in the basement of a church and the Sheriff goes upstairs to face the beast. This was actually a properly tense horror moment and a ripe payoff to all the previous build up. (Think Ripley going down the elevator to face the mother alien in Jame's Cameron's ALIENS(1986)). The directing and cinematography were strong here and the action was played smart. However, the gravity is lost after the creature is killed and a snarky closing shot reveals that it was only one of many creatures that are now crawling over all the town. Obviously everyone is doomed! Then there is of course a pop-music track over the final credits that seems to throw the entire film into the gutter. (I will never understand how this ugly phenomenon is allowed to happen! Motion pictures are not record company promotionals!) I blame the writing and directing, not the acting, for the overly-depressed Sheriff schtick. It felt almost as if the film was trying so hard to have solid character grounding and heart that it forgot to be a horror film. No one cares about the drunk Sheriff's pending divorce! Get me to the monster stuff!
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BENEATH (2013)
Dir: Larry Fessenden (WENDIGO)
From indy horror maestro Larry Fessenden comes another meditation on human nature's darker side. High-school friends go on one last summer outing together, only to find themselves in a compromising situation. How long will their values and ethics last in the face of mortal danger? Interesting characters-trapped-in-a-closed-space motif to play out a moral thought experiment. Seemed to follow in the current tradition of utterly value-less young people having to face life and failing miserably.
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THE BEYOND (2017)
Dir: Hasraf Dulull
Maybe an A- for effort but the low budget aspect kinda cuts it off at the knees. The concepts weren't too bad. A wormhole mysteriously emerges just outside the Earth's orbit and all attempts to send in probes fail. As tension mounts as to what it might be, strange dark, cloudy shapes emerge from the wormhole and hover over the planet. Years pass until one day a cosmic event threatens Earth- a destructive anomoly takes out two of Saturn's moons, sending debris directly at Earth. As the meteorites enter our atmosphere, the strange cloud things form a barrier around Earth, protecting it completely. Afterwards, they disipate back into the wormhole which promptly disappears. Some intelligent, cosmic force forsaw events and came to save us. Interesting ideas that harken 2001:A SPACE ODYSSEY and very reminisceint of EUROPA REPORT. Presented in a pseudo-documentary format as players recount the events, much like DISTRICT 9.
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COSMOS (2019)Dir: Elliot & Zander Weaver
Low budget but very well done with terrific atmosphere. Documentarians Elliott and Zander Weaver weave a narrative fantasy about three astronomers on a routine outing who discover something astonishing. If you think of this as being for younger audiences, say in the 10-15 year old range, it plays rather well, perhaps at home on the Disney Channel, etc. Basically, the film is about the day that alien intelligence makes contact with Earth.
The story is told via the group of guys up in the woods as they become the first scientists to track the event, thus making history. The film is less about aliens and sci-fi and much more about the role of scientists and what it means to put one's drive to explore above all else. Much like EUROPA REPORT(2013)(see review), the film is a love letter to astronomy (even taking its title from Carl Sagan's famed TV series.) Although almost all of the film takes place in a station wagon(!) the cinematography is so well done, you never feel claustrophobic. In fact, the visual look of the film is rather expansive, maximizing depth of field and Spielberg-esque light over the horizon looks that beg the imagination and create a certain tension. The pacing is a problem however as the first two acts really drag. The third act over-compensates for this by turning into a down to the final second race against the clock. Although solid, the musical score is over used and gets in the way at times.
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POD (2013)
Dir: Mickey Keating (PSYCHOPATHS, CARNAGE PARK, DARLING, RITUAL, ULTRA VIOLENCE)
Nice little indy jaunt from regular Larry Fessenden collaborator Mickey Keating (in fact, Fessenden acts in the film!)
Full review coming soon!
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DARK ENCOUNTER (2019)
Dir: Carl Strathie (SOLIS)
Another spin on the popular alien-abduction milieu. This one taking all of its cues from Spielberg's masterful CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (1977). If you recall the "abduction of Barry" sequence from that film, well this film is basically that for an entire movie! The homages to CLOSE ENCOUNTERS are endless (including the title obviously) but it also borrows elements from Shayamalan's masterful SIGNS (2002). In spite of some obvious pacing problems, the creepiness and the tension are terrific for two full acts. The "spin" comes in the third act where the film sort of morphs from alien-abduction horror to a missing-persons drama the likes of TV's COLD CASE or HBO's TRUE DETECTIVE. By the end, the filmmaking slows into an almost completely poetic style with all slow-motion and dreamy sequences (not unlike the tesseract scenes from Christopher Nolan's INTERSTELLAR(2014)) which mercifully deliver the wrenching plot twist in digestible chunks. Although I had higher hopes for this one, it is still interesting and had the pacing been tighter in the build up, it might have been in contention for "creepiest flick of the year" accolades. However, the films' true dramatic focus and the pacing problems render the final result more meditative than scary.
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ALIEN RAIDERS (2008)Dir: Ben Rock
Cheesy but fun B-movie/drive-in feature about a group of criminals who take over a supermarket and hold it in a siege for a day. Turns out, the group are actually a bunch of scientists and survivors who are hunting down aliens that have infected certain people. The supermarket is at the center of the source area where the alien infestation is strongest. At first we think these bandits are the bad guys and root for the hostages, but soon realize the "terrorists" are a actually heroes. Gaining the trust of their hostage negotiator outside and the captive folks inside, they have a test to find out who is secretly an alien. Much like John Carpenter's THE THING(1981) meets THE MIST(2007)(see review)), the characters fight their way through the supermarket space until the last of the aliens are finished off. But did they manage to get all of them?
The efficiency and sparseness of information in the narrative gives a maturity to the storytelling whereas similar films oversell and paint with a wide brushes. Although obviously a genre piece meant for B-movie status, the film manages to realize this about itself and work accordingly, which is what a makes a good "drive-in film" a good drive-in film!
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ENCOUNTER (2018)
Dir: Paul Salamoff (THE LAST BREATH)
Kind of a fun drive-in flick that spoofs on TV's THE X-FILES as well as a host of B-movie classics. Very much a lighter version of TERMINUS(2015) (see above). Fun practical effects and a good-hearted plot make for a basically fun ride. A paraplegic guy gets use of his legs back after interfacing with an alien pod found by his friends. Reaching out with creepy tentacles, the alien life form sucks onto his neck and suddenly he can not only walk, but start sharing memories with this creature. Everyone is against "interfacing" with the thing but as each friend eventually does, they become convinced of the aliens benevolent and perhaps even compassionate nature. Meanwhile, the men in black are on the case and closing in. The big question: is the alien friendly or are they all being taken in by some malevolent force? The ending is cheezy but you knew it would be! Tom Atkins from John Carpenter fame has a show stealing role as an aging Biology professor who gets to meet an alien before he dies! One of the Hemsworth guys stars.
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EMERGO (2011)Dir: Arya Tariverdi
Solid but tepid "found footage" piece about paranormal researchers trying to record and "clean" a haunted apartment. Nothing you haven't seen in the myriad of others just like it, not the least of which are the PARANORMAL ACTIVITY(2007)(see review) films. In the end, of course it is confirmed that the ghost is real.
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ERRORS OF THE HUMAN BODY (2012)
Dir: Eron Sheean
Brutally sad drama about medical ethics. A doctor who finds a radical healing method for human tissue uses it on his sickly new born son as a last resort. After the child dies the man loses his career, marriage and whole life essentially. With his sponsorship gone and being labeled a heretic, the good professor takes a gig in Europe as a hired consultant to an advanced medical lab. Here he must work along side an old flame who is the only colleague who believes in his old research and in fact, has been continuing it to great success! However, there are some less-than-ethical practices going on behind the scenes with some competitors and our Professor, with nothing to lose and anxious to settle old scores, rises to the task of seeking out the culprits. In order to solve a stand-off and very much having a death-wish anyway, our hero injects himself with his same controversial serum that killed his son. Descending into the madness of slow death and fearing the contamination of others, our hapless professor flees into the industrial ruins of the city until he finally collapses. Waking in a hospital bed he learns that not only has he survived the experience, but now understands that the deadly effects of his serum are only temporary until the bodies immune system adapts. This begs the question of why his son died if this is the case? Big reveal: turns out he suffocated his son on purpose, thinking he was going to die a horrible death and wanted to reduce the suffering of the child. Now that he knows the effect is temporary, he is left to survive with the knowledge that he unnecessarily murdered his own baby. Ouch...
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THE DUSTWALKER (2019)
Dir: Sandra Sciberras
Australian feature, ok for the first two acts. A female sheriff of a rural, desert town is, get this- on the last day of her job (never seen that plot device before) when a meteor lands bringing with it deadly spores that turn everyone into murderous, superhuman zombies. There is also a bizarre alien creature that may have come from a different meteor that seems at odds with the other invader. Big twist is, the creature arrived to battle the other alien force and protect the humans.
Built some nice tension and acting was good. Some problems with pacing and also a tendency with the editing to wait too long to reveal things the characters are looking at in surprise, which got annoying. The ending, like so many other films like this today, feels thrown together and abrupt. Annoying chick song over the final credits is unforgivable! By the end, you're left with this feeling that the filmmakers didn't at all care about the film they just showed you and perhaps it was all just practice for something else.
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STORAGE 24 (2016)Dir: Johannes Roberts (HELL BREEDER, DARK HUNTERS, FOREST OF THE DAMNED, THE EXPELLED)
British production, pretty ok for a drive-in flick. Similar to BAIT (see above.) Two young couples are trapped in a storage facility when a plane crashes that lets loose a murderous alien being. Characters and plot and effects are all fairly solid, but once again, the ending feels phoned in. There is no explanation about the alien or its origin whatsoever. A seriously unnecessary, cheesy and totally predictable final CGI shot shows a mass alien invasion underway; just like the endings of DARK WAS THE NIGHT(2014)(see above) and 10 CLOVERFIELD LANE(2016)(see review.)
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WE GO ON (2016)
Dir: Jesse Holland & Andy Mitton (YELLOW BRICK ROAD)
A SHUDDER exclusive. Interesting drama about a young man paralyzed by obsessive-compulsive fears about the reality of death. Taking an ad out in a newspaper he begs for anyone who has proof of an "afterlife" to show him. This leads him to meet a man who takes him to an abandoned building where there is a dead body. The body is of the man he has just met, meaning- the man he's just met is a ghost! Now he cannot be free of this ghost until a young psychic woman, also tortured by ghosts, helps him to understand the nature of the supernatural realm. Terrific performance by Annette O'Toole as the young man's mom who hides certain secrets herself. Not much of a horror flick until the creepy ghost stuff, but more an interesting thinker with some third-act twists.
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ALIEN TRESPASS (2009)Dir: R.W. Goodwin
Fun spoof on 1950's era Science Fiction features (partcularly INVADERS FROM MARS(1953)(see review)). Although certainly a send-up on the genre, the film played much more as a heartfelt homage. The story and characters were actually well drawn and sincere. Eric McCormick (of TV's "Will & Grace" fame) plays a hapless scientist who is "taken over" by an alien life form that has crashed in the desert. This alien was returning some particularly nasty space creatures to galactic prison, which are now on the loose in the local desert town. A local waitress is the only person who believes the alien and along with a skeptical sheriff, the scientists wife and some kids, they try to save the town and return the alien to his ship before the government moves in. Light-hearted fun and stylish production!
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ASYLUM (1972) recommended!Dir: Roy Ward Baker (AND NOW THE CREAMING STARTS!, THE VAULT OF HORROR, SCARS OF DRACULA, THE VAMPIRE LOVERS, MOON ZERO TWO, QUATERMASS AND THE PIT)
What is likely the best of all the 70's Brit anthology features (Amicus this time) starring Peter Cushing, Patrick Magee, Herbert Lom, Britt Ekland and Charlotte Rampling. Terrific Cinematography and boisterous orchestrated score.
The entire film is justified by the first segment alone which is pure nightmare fuel! An angry husband strangles his wife and cuts up the body for disposal, setting the paper-wrapped pieces in a basement freezer. Soon after, we hear something coming up the stairs. Can it be!? Yes! The body pieces have re-animated and murderously chase the man around the place, starting with the head, which magically and demonically comes rolling into the kitchen! ACK! The creepy absurdism here is as comical as it is horrific, which only makes the experience more ghoulish. I was reminded of the "Amelia" segment of TRILOGY OF TERROR(1975) (see review) or perhaps some of the more absurd hallucinatory shots from THE SHINING(1980).
Full review coming soon!
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TORTURE GARDEN (1967) recommended!Dir: Freddie Francis (LEGEND OF THE WEREWOLF, SON OF DRACULA, TALES THAT WITNESS MADNESS, TALES FROM THE CRYPT, DR. TERROR'S HOUSE OF HORRORS, THE DEADLY BEES)
Certainly Francis' best anthology piece and ties with THE ASYLUM for the best of the 60's/70's Amicus anthologies. Whereas ASYLUM was more sensationalist horror, TORTURE GARDEN is straight up character drama. A group of fright seekers, perhaps compelled by their own inner guilt, attend a circus horror show. After the presentation the MC (wonderfully portrayed by Burgess Meredith) invites a select few to see something "truly horrific." Under a hypnotic trance, each subject views a future awful deed they will commit, giving them a chance to mend their ways before it happens.
Unlike TALES THAT WITNESS MADNESS(1973)(see review), TALES FROM THE CRYPT(1972)(see review), or DR. TERROR'S HOUSE OF HORRORS(1965)(see below), the characters are able to escape a future Hell, rather than be doomed to it. Interesting that this is the most mature and nuanced of Francis' anthology flicks, even though it is one of his earliest ones. The performances and certainly the camera work are fantastic.
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THE GHOUL (1975) recommended!
Dir: Freddie Francis (LEGEND OF THE WEREWOLF, SON OF DRACULA, TALES THAT WITNESS MADNESS, TALES FROM THE CRYPT, DR. TERROR'S HOUSE OF HORRORS, THE DEADLY BEES)
Perhaps the best work by Peter Cushing. A rich tale of a tormented man with a dark, hidden secret. Stylish horror tale as gut-wrenching moral play.
Full review coming soon...!
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TWINS OF EVIL (1971) recommended!
Dir: John Hough (THE LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE, THE INCUBUS, THE WATCHER IN THE WOODS)
Hammer horror and Peter Cushing at their best! Orphaned twin sisters Maria and Frieda come from the modern city to live with their aunt and uncle in a rural, super-puritanical small town. The uncle (Peter Cushing) is the leader of a brethren sect of witch burners who live and obsess on pure religious paranoia. Believing they are doing "God's work", the brotherhood finds basically any woman walking by herself and burns her alive as, "an agent of the Devil." Frieda wants nothing of this charade and sets her sights on the rich Count Karnstein whose palace casts a shadow over the town and who revels in upsetting the brotherhood. Finding her way into his graces Frieda discovers the Count is a wanna-be Satanist who worships ancient evil and gets his wish by becoming a vampire! Ironically enough, there really are those who seek to serve the Devil and do evil deeds around town! Giving in to Karnstein, Frieda submits to becoming a vampire herself and goes on a killing spree. Meanwhile, good-and-plenty Maria is caught between understanding the freedom her sister desires and her fears of her tyrannical uncle. In a last ditch effort, the Counts' minions pull a switcheroo with the twins in order to save Frieda from capture and Maria is nearly burnt alive- but rescued at the last minute by her would-be beau, the local scientist-skeptic. The film showcases some of Peter Cushing's best work and the diabolical "brotherhood" is truly malevolent! Interesting script in that all the characters sort of flip by stories' end and their final resolves reveal their true inner character. Great effort and production!
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THE BEAST IN THE CELLAR (1971)Dir: James Kelly (WHAT THE PEEPER SAW)
Anti-war films come in many varieties and often are packaged within other genres. This is case with Brit-Horror/Drama THE BEAST IN THE CELLAR. Two very anxious sisters live in the house of their deceased father. A decorated military man, the father is the centerpiece of the home and the lives of the two lonely women, even in his absence. When some local murders begin taking place, the nervousness of the sisters increases. Friendly with the local military base, the women are kept up to date by a cordial young soldier who looks in on them. It isn't long before it becomes clear something is amiss with the two ladies and their home. Big Twist: Turns out there was an illegitimate brother of the two women, who wanting to be like Father became a military man himself. Willing to go off to war for all sorts of unhealthy emotional reasons, the brother is willing to face mortal danger in order win father's good graces. Terrified by this, the sisters wall him off in a secret cell in the basement in order to "save him from himself". As years pass, he becomes a ferrell animal and is in fact the the killer who is on the loose. Having dug his way out of the cellar, he has been roaming the countryside committing ghastly, animalistic crimes. In the end, the sisters come clean with the authorities and the mad brother is put down. The tragedy is that in order to save the brother they turned him into am monster. Clearly this is a bit of metaphor for the soul of a nation at war and the struggles of its people to act within ever conflicting principles. War can only be fully understand in the endless stories of each individual touched by it.
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THE MONOLITH MONSTERS (1957)
Dir:
Surpringly charming and solid 1950's B&W Sci-Fi!
Review coming soon!
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THE CRAWLING EYE (1958) (AKA: THE TROLLENBERG TERROR)
Dir: Quentin Lawrence (THE MAN WHO FINALLY DIED, TV's: THE TROLLENBERG TERROR, THE INVISIBLE MAN and THE STRANGE WORLD OF PLANET X)
Pretty stylish and mature telling of an anomalous cloud that hovers on a Swiss mountainside and the evils hiding within it. Although the FX are laughable, the acting and direction aren't bad. Also the sets and locations (although mostly green-screened) are nice. Turns out the icy cold cloud hides aliens who need their own artificial environment to survive so they hide on mountain tops at altitude. A science lab set up to observe the phenomenon becomes the last stronghold for our cast of characters who include a leading scientist (F-Troop's Forrest Tucker) a clairvoyant young girl (Janet Munro), her older sister (Jennifer Jayne) as well as a journalist and some other scientists. The gang must band together to find a way to attack the giant brains with a single eye and creepy tentacles (lol) before it's too late! The movie is based on the BBC mini-series The Trollenberg Terror by the same director and was released in the USA as "The Crawling Eye."
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THE GIANT BEHEMOTH (1959) (AKA: BEHEMOTH THE SEA MONSTER)
Dir: Douglas Hickox & Eugene Lourie
Stylish and charming British production in glorious black and white that is basically the UK version of THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS(1953). Fisherman's daughter teams up with American scientist to solve mystery of dead fish washing up on shore and strange disappearances of the locals. Turns out a dinosaur is on the loose! Moving on London like Godzilla on Tokyo, the beast terrorizes the city until it is lured into the narrows of the Thames and destroyed with explosives. Science wins the day and gets the girl! Great old-school claymation effects with well thought out matte compositions blended with live action footage.
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QUATERMASS AND THE PIT (1967 version)
Dir: Roy Ward Baker (THE LEGEND OF 7 GOLDEN VAMPIRES, AND NOW THE SCREAMING STARTS!, THE VAULT OF HORROR, ASYLUM, SCARS OF DRACULA, THE VAMPIRE LOVERS, MOON ZERO TWO)
Review coming soon!
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THE HOUSE THAT DRIPPED BLOOD (1971)
Dir: Peter Dufell
Brit Anthology (Amicus production) of four shorts from writer Robert Bloch (author of PSYCHO), starring Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee and Ingrid Pitt. Very good cinematography and tight direction even if the stories are a bit so-so. All the segments revolve around an old house that seems plagued by bizarre and horrific tragedies.
The first installment follows Charles, a horror writer (Denholm Elliott) and his wife staying in the old house as he finishes his latest novel. Soon he starts actually seeing the strangler character from his novel in the house! After visiting a shrink to deal with this, the visions escalate until the strangler actually starts killing people Charles interacts with. Is Charles himself really the killer? The plot thickens when it turns out the wife is having an affair with a failed actor who is dressing up like the strangler to try and drive Charles nuts. But who is really doing the killings?
Next up, Philip (Peter Cushing) rents the house in his retirement and to help escape old memories, particularly of a lost love. In town Philip comes across a wax museum with a peculiar female likeness holding a man's head on a platter! The face of the wax woman "Salome" hypnotically draws him in with haunting feelings of his lost love. When an old friend (and ex-rival suitor for the same girl-that-got-away) comes calling, he also is entranced by the wax statue and obsessively moves into town to be near it. Before Philip can stop him, he finds Rogers' head on the woman's platter in the museum! Will Philip succumb to the same fate?
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In the third and most compelling segment, widower Reid (Christopher Lee) rents the house for he and his daughter Jane, who he desperately tries to keep away from the public. In-home teacher Ann (Nyree Dawn Porter) wins Jane's trust, but soon discovers some curious oddities about the child. Turns out Jane's deceased Mother was a witch and Reid fears his daughter will follow in the same path. In spite of his attempts, Reid's overly-strict behavior seems to drive Jane down the same evil path as her mother. Ann learns the truth too late and Jane makes a voodoo doll to control her father and nothing can stop her! The performance of the little girl Jane (Chloe Franks) was stellar and very creepy!
The last installment features Jon Pertwee and Ingrid Pitt camping it up as shallow, narcissistic movie stars who rent the house while working on a horror film in town. In his quest for looking perfect, Paul (Pertwee) procures an old cape from a creepy horror supply store. Once he puts the cape on, he can no longer see himself in the mirror! He has inherited vampirism!
The film ends with the real-estate rep for the house locking the front gate and looking into the camera to explain that the house reflects back the essence of the person who enters it. The movie follows along with contemporary anthologies like Freddie Francis' TALES THAT WITNESS MADNESS(1973) (see review) and TALES FROM THE CRYPT(1972) (see review).
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DR. TERROR'S HOUSE OF HORRORS (1965)Dir: Freddie Francis (THE GHOUL, LEGEND OF THE WEREWOLF, SON OF DRACULA, TALES THAT WITNESS MADNESS, TALES FROM THE CRYPT, THE DEADLY BEES)
Early entry from Francis and another Brit Anthology (Amicus.) Five vignettes as a tarot card reader (Peter Cushing) tells the future of five men on a train. Christopher Lee co-stars as a doubting and erudite art critic and a young Donald Sutherland plays an American passenger. This film sort of set the stage for later anthologies from Amicus and Hammer, including more from Francis (TALES THAT WITNESS MADNESS(1973) see review and TALES FROM THE CRYPT(1972) see review.)
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THE OBLONG BOX (1969)
Dir: Gordon Hessler (GOLDEN VOYAGE OF SINBAD, MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE, CRY OF THE BANSHEE, SCREAM AND SCREAM AGAIN)
Vincent Price and Christopher Lee in a Poe adaptation. No Peter Cushing this time.
Review Coming Soon!
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THIRST (1979)
Dir: Rod Hardy
Australian feature that didn't get much exposure in the U.S. Interesting twist on modern-day vampires as a subset of society. Uses horror motif to critique the reality of the "one percenters" versus the everday folks. Much the same content as the more recent HBO series TRUE BLOOD.
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SCREAMERS (1979) (aka: ISLAND OF THE FISHMEN)
Dir: Sergio Martino
Started much like a blood and guts Lucio Fulci cheezer but actually evolved into a charming Jules Verne type epic. Good actors and nice effects for a Euro drive-in romp. The lost city of Atlantis shows up! and hey, Barbara Bach ;-)
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LET SLEEPING CORPSES LIE (1974)
Dir: Jorge Grau
Original for its time, this influential "undead" film was Europe's response to George Romero's NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD(1968) and inspired the likes of Lucio Fulci.
Review coming soon!
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HORROR HOSPITAL (1973)Dir: Anthony Balch (BIZARRE)
Bizarre Brit-horror that held a certain naive charm.
Full review coming soon!
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THE ASPHYX (1972)
Dir: Peter Newbrook
Cinematographer Peter Newbrook takes a spin in the director's chair for this Brit-horror entry. A nineteenth century scientist, recording an execution accidentally stumbles across a method for cheating death. His lighting equipment reveals an entity called an "Asphyx" that appears just before the moment of death to steal away a soul. The light somehow harnesses the Asphyx, making the human victim immortal as long as the Asphyx is confined in the light. Creating a container of light to eternally house the demon, the scientist has found a path to immortality. Immediately the scientist sets about making himself immortal as well as his daughter and soon-to-be son-in-law. Of course, everything goes wrong. Once everyone has died, the scientist, now aware of what his Frankensteinean hubris hath wrought, destroys any chance of reversing the process on himself, such that he must walk the Earth in immortal penance. The movie ends in modern times with him still alive being hit by a car and still surviving in spite of the mangled state of his ever deteriorating body. Tragic Stuff! Sparse effects and iffy music cues make for a lackluster, albeit sincere production, although the demon effect (puppet?) is really creepy!
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EARTH VS. THE SPIDER (1958)Dir: Bert I. Gordon (EMPIRE OF THE ANTS, THE FOOD OF THE GODS, WAR OF THE COLOSSAL BEAST, ATTACK OF THE PUPPET PEOPLE, THE AMAZING COLOSSAL MAN, THE CYCLOPS, BEGINNING OF THE END)
So there's this big cave outside of town where kids go to fool around and all and it turns out a giant spider lives there. Atomic radiation is at it again creating giant monsters. On the flip side of Science, a teacher from the local high-school whose all "let's do Science!" believes the kids when someone goes missing and convinces the skeptical sheriff and company to investigate. The whole town comes together to rescue the kids and seal the cave with explosives. Silly but not terribly insulting low-baller that was a tiny bit refreshing in that, everyone believed the good guys for once. The "Science!" flag waving gets old quickly however. Effects weren't bad- typical Gordon miniature usage and superimposition (rather than silly clay-mation or rubber suits.) Black & white precursor to his later master-works FOOD OF THE GODS(1975) (see review) and EMPIRE OF THE ANTS(1977) (see review).
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BEGINNING OF THE END (1957)
Dir: Bert I. Gordon (EARTH VS THE SPIDER, EMPIRE OF THE ANTS, THE FOOD OF THE GODS, WAR OF THE COLOSSAL BEAST, ATTACK OF THE PUPPET PEOPLE, THE AMAZING COLOSSAL MAN, THE CYCLOPS)
Another Bert Gordon attack-of-the-giant-insects-or-whatever romp- this time, giant locusts! Using his usual green-screen techniques with real insects made to look enormous, the effects are at once refined and yet silly. Although Gordon got pretty good at his composition sense with the effects shots, the technology of the day made the color timing/matching of the comps rough at best and much of the monster effects end up translucent in appearance and void of color. Other than that, the film sort of scrimps on the creature shots and relies mostly on reactions from the actors. This makes for a rather lackluster ACT 1 & 2, although things ramp up in ACT 3. One of my favorite shots is of the grasshopper-locusts scaling the side of city skyscrapers and it is clear that the buildings are a flat photograph with the bugs running around on top of it, made to look vertical! Love it! A young Peter Graves stars with an easy-on-the-eyes Peggie Castle as co-star/love interest.
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MANSION OF THE DOOMED (1976)
Dir: Michael Pataki
Not bad. Cinematography by Andrew Davis and co-starring Lance Henrickson.
Full review coming soon!
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RAW MEAT (1972)
Dir: Gary Sherman (DEAD & BURIED, VICE SQUAD, WANTED: DEAD OR ALIVE, POLTERGEIST lll, LISA)
Well made Brit-feature. Donald Pleasance at his mischievous best, bit part by Christopher Lee.
Full review coming soon!
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THE HEARSE (1980)
Dir: George Bowers (PRIVATE RESORT, MY TUTOR, BODY AND SOUL)
Not bad but forgettable. Kind of made-for-TV-ish. Read a lot of online hype about this old gem and found a great restored copy.
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DEVILS OF DARKNESS (1965)
Dir: Lance Comfort
Some interesting moments but mostly forgettable.
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| CAMPY HONORABLE MENTIONS!
(with beer and some nachos)
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DARK WATERS (2003)
Dir: Philip J. Roth (MAXIMUM VELOCITY, DEEP SHOCK, DRAGON FIGHTER, INTERCEPTOR FORCE, APEX)
Ok, here's a cheesy drive-in flick that brings up a lot of discussion points, namely- that it was perfect for what it was and expected nothing more from itself. A terrific example of a low-budget drive-in flick that knows it's a low-budget drive-in flick and tries for nothing more. As such, it was enjoyable! The lost city of Atlantis is involved!
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CROCODILE 2: DEATH SWAMP (2002)
Dir: Gary Jones (SPIDERS, BOOGEYMAN 3, JOLLY ROGER: MASSACRE AT CUTTER'S COVE)
Couldn't hate it! Leagues better than Tobe Hooper's ghastly prequel (see below). Another cheesy but fun drive-in flick by yet another visual effects guy turned director. Actually is a solid genre piece a la BAIT(2012)(see above) or ANACONDA(1997). Good characters and silly winding plotline and convincing enough FX for a movie you expect nothing from. Ending is abyssmal LOL!
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BEYOND THE RISING MOON (1987) (aka: OTHERWORLD, aka: STAR QUEST)
Dir: Philip J. Cook (INVADER, METAMORPHOSIS trilogy)
Holy Eighties spandex Batman! Such a beautiful mess, featuring all the teased hair, shoulder pads and pompous posturing of an 80's Sci-Fi spectacular. The practical miniature effects (think ROBOT JOX(1989)) made this tour-de-farce something of a special rarity- guilty pleasure to the max! Clearly one of those effects-movies by special-effects peeps.
A cyborg assassin femme-fatale goes rogue to solve a mystery of an ancient alien civilization off-world that has been hidden by the government she works for. Having only so much time off-grid before she explodes (think Snake Plissken's neck injections in ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK (1981) girlie-bot joins forces with a gritty pilot to galavant across the galaxy in search of the answer to the mystery. Meanwhile, former colleague and also assassin dude is fast on their tale. Lots of spaceship dog-fights, explosions and soldiers in futuristic costumes and such.
Ridonkulous production design, models, effects, action, comps, wardrobe and overall glam-style make this Dance Fever meets Miami-Vice-in-space epic the funnest of cheese. All that was missing were the Solid Gold Dancers.
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| Quick- someone pick a title before the robot blows up! |
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PLANET OF DINOSAURS (1977)Dir: James K. Shea
Old-skool, drive-in dino-fun! The same year as STAR WARS, um- yeah... Silly Z-grader (think STARCRASH(1978)) but with pretty cool dino-claymation FX (think THE VALLEY OF GWANGI(1969) see review) No, not Harryhausen, put pretty good. The whole story plays like an Edgar Rice Burroughs entry from his "Caspac" series (THE LAND THAT TIME FORGOT(1974), etc.) only minus the rubber-suit monsters and Doug McClure. Some silly mutton-chop actors in tight suits and mustaches crash on a prehistoric planet full of dino-beasts and have to make it their new "home." The acting is awful as is the directing, music and pacing, but hey- the effects! (lol) Especially fun are the alternate posters for the film (likely foreign markets) which feature the Millennium Falcon and other STAR WARS designs. I think I watch these flicks just for the posters. Straight to MST3K!
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| Other-Worldly Dino-Drama! |
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VOYAGE TO THE PREHISTORIC PLANET (1965)
Dir: Curtis Harrington (RUBY, MATA HARI, WHO SLEW AUNTIE ROO?, DEVIL DOG: HOUND OF HELL, KILLER BEES, THE CAT CREATURE, THE DEAD DON'T DIE, QUEEN OF BLOOD)
Overly ambitious British production that tries to cash in on the DInosaur frenzy of the time, but is painfully under-produced. Schticky acting and a meandering plot tell the tale of some astronauts who seek to land on Venus to answer the greatest Scientific question of all- is there life on other planets? Upon landing, plant and animal life are everywhere as well as vast bodies of water although no one seems to care. Man-sized dinosaurs (Hmm...) attack as do giant plants and flying beasts. The crew is separated and spend most of the story trying to reach one another. A painfully awkward robot, shaped like a human for some reason(?) ambles along with half the crew as the remaining half scout about in an air car that seems glued to the bottom of the frame. Anyhoo, with plot sagging we suddenly shift attention to a dopey female navigator left up in orbit who wonders if she should land in case the crew needs her. This act will ruin any chance of any of them getting home to Earth but she feels she must. So as the clock ticks, the away team finds signs of intelligent, seemingly Human life under the ocean. Seems the emphasis now is on Human civilizations on other planets, not just Life in general. Who knew? (Apparently not the writers) So they all make it back to the ship in time and bring with them an ancient relic revealing that in fact, the extinct race looked liked humans. A final shot reveals a humanoid female on the planet's surface who had been watching them the entire time. It's all rather tired and phoned in with nothing terribly pressing to reveal. I guess hefty amounts of expository dialogue, stock banter and pointless action tend to dumb down the contours of any narrative. It's especially hard to care about what's going on when the characters obviously don't.
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FORBIDDEN WORLD (1982)
Dir:
Once again proving the theorem, "the cooler the poster, the less the film can live up to it," this low-ball stinker takes away 90 minutes of your life, never to be seen again.
Review coming soon!
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STAR PILOT (1966)
Dir: Pietro Francisci
Holy low-baller Batman!
Review coming soon!
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STRAIGHT-TO-STREAMING HELL
(sigh...)
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The thing with these films is to understand that they are all "third-string" by nature at best, and one should have zero expectations going in, although one hopes to be pleasantly surprised now and again. The test for me is whether or not the film has good concepts and ideas regardless of its low-budget, indy reality. I'm willing to forgive a lot for the sake of a good idea. It's amazing to stumble across the rare gem that not only gets an "A for effort!" but manages to work thoughtfully within its limitations, almost making those limitations an asset. Sadly, this is all too rare. More often than not viewing these entries seems more like a student film fest or indy market where they're hoping you'll vote for their "little film that COULD" while all you really want is a solid film that IS.
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TRIASSIC WORLD (2018)Dir: Dylan Vox
Ok, let's first pause to laugh at the title. OMG it was not completely awful. Wow, literally the first production I've seen from The Asylum that was watchable and the only one I've reviewed for reasons other than warning you to avoid it. (See my review of MONSTER ISLAND(2019) see review from last year's list.) I know, I know- but it was free! I swear! Yes Asylum has been my whipping post for years now, the benchmark for so-bad-they-literally-don't-count streamers. The very institution of High-Cinema that brought us the SHARKNADO franchise, SNAKES ON A TRAIN, TITANIC ll, LITTLE DEAD ROTTING HOOD, MEGA PYTHON VS GATOROID and at least 9 or more "Shark" movies at last count...)
An unashamed rip-off of JURASSIC WORLD(2017) the story all takes place in one location- a lab facility where genetically engineered dino-villians get loose. The cold and bitchy evil corporate woman (complete with Brit accent) even has the same bob haircut as Bryce Dallas Howard. I started skipping through the timeline and got caught up in the cinematography, which is really quite good. Also, I would say that, for what they had to work with, the film is well directed and designed. There is an obvious maturity in the choices they made to shoot and edit around the limitations they had so that you don't much notice. The only problem with such a tightly pre-designed approach is that it leaves less flexibility in the editing room to correct for pacing. The moving dolly shots and rack focused moments sort of pre-determine editing points. Some of the scenes needed to move faster or cut around performances, but would have provided little wiggle room for the editor to play with.
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The CGI effects, while not great, actually look better than if done on a 16bit Commodore=64 circa 1983, which was pleasantly surprising. Why am I being so technical? Cuz the nice visual look of the flick actually made me want to like it. The way to view a straight-to-streaming low-baller like this is to imagine the dedication of the filmmakers getting a chance at making a feature and doing the best they can with it, even though it's all very silly and not what they would rather be doing. Although I don't recommend the film, I have to give credit where it is due- they were pretty crafty with this one. The worst part is that now I'll have to give more of their films a timeline scan.
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HARBINGER DOWN (2015)
Dir: Alec Gillis
Special Effects guy directs a film that is almost scene-for-scene an homage to John Carpenter's THE THING (1982) except on a boat. There are even some lifted dialogue lines: Blair's "Is that a man in there? er somethin'?" and Childs' "...Voodoo bullshit!" FX although not awful, rely on cheated angles and not seeing much. The storytelling and characters, although fairly solid, is not original enough to carry the project very far.
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BIG LEGEND (2018)
Dir: Justin Lee (FINAL KILL, SWELL, ALONE WE FIGHT, ANY BULLET WILL DO, A RECKONING)
Enjoyed this for the most part- especially the great locations and the refreshingly not-stupid decisions/actions of the characters. Ex-soldier loses his fiancé to Bigfoot and after a year in the funny house, he returns to the woods to find some closure. Once there he encounters the creature again and also a bushcrafter also haunted by the creature and the two join up to find the truth and try and survive. Pretty decent action and somber enough storyline, but the pacing sags. Perhaps the editing could have been a bit tighter. The end disappoints when king-of-straight-to-streaming Lance Henrikson shows up and it is revealed that this film is the kick off to a series of monster movies. Adrienne Barbeau has a bit part.
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THIRST (2015)
Dir: Greg Kiefer
One of the better straight-to-streaming entries. Nothing original but manages to not insult too much. Ending has nice showdown a la ALIENS(1986).
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ALIEN ORIGIN (____)
Dir:
There can only be one THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT (____), CLOVERFIELD (____)(see review), PARANORMAL ACTIVITY (____)(see review), or REC (____)(see review). After these first-to-cash-in-on-the-gimmick films, the hand-held "caught on tape" or "video verite" schtick is a see-thru, hollow venture that has long worn itself out.
Full review coming soon...!
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DEADLY WATER (2006) (aka: KRAKEN: Tentacles of the Deep)
Dir: Tibor Takács (DESTRUCTION LOS ANGLES, NYC TORNADO TERROR, MEGA SNAKE, RATS, SPIDERS, ICE SPIDERS, NOSTRADAMUS)
Made for TV tepid-ness. A guy whose parents were killed at sea teams up with an ocean archeologist to battle an ancient giant squid protecting sunken treasure; which turns out to be the sea monster "Scylla" from Greek mythology. The actors are sincere enough and the story takes itself seriously enough and the effects are actually pretty good, but- "meh." Other than seeing Victoria Pratt in a string bikini for 90min, this film has little to offer.
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HAUNT (2019)
Dir: Scott Beck & Bryan Woods
A SHUDDER exclusive. Almost but not quite torture porn. If I had seen that Eli Roth was producer I would've skipped this one. That being said, it wasn't as bad as it might have been. (now there's a review!) Some college kids go to an off campus haunted house on Halloween night. They have to sign some waivers and surrender their phones to an evil clown at the front gate. Once inside this old factory turned spook house, they have to go through a series of increasingly disturbing scenarios until they realize they are not in a pretend fun-house at all. The "actors" in costumes are actually a gang of S&M bandits who kill the kids and take their stuff. Using the kids cell phones they get private information and family addresses to rob, etc. Realizing their peril, the kids struggle to survive and find a way out of the building to freedom. Although a mindless actioner the set-up of a haunted-house hosted by robbers is a clever idea. The characters are stupid and there's a dumb back story about the lead girl over-coming her childhood fears, etc. In general its fun watching the bad guys get blown away and the stupid kids get bludgeoned to death. That's about it.
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2036 ORIGIN UNKNOWN (2018)Dir: Hasraf Dulull (THE BEYOND)
In another in a recent spat of one-character-alone-in-a-confined-lab films (once again: AIR(2018) see review and I AM MOTHER (see above) Katee Sackoff stars as "Mack" a space probe controller who investigates what seems to be a mysterious alien relic on a distant planet. Much like CONTACT(1997), the glyph covered relic needs to be deciphered with lots of math and physics and may hold a message from some distant civilization, but who is the message for? The Borg-CUBE looking thing is some kind of mechanical yet organic device that is obviously intelligently designed, moves around unpredictably and strategically but cannot be unexplained. Riffing on the recent ARRIVAL(2016) (see review), the powers that be can't decide whether to act as if the alien presence is hostile or benign. Can Mack find enough clues in time before a first-strike is launched against the relic? Could a possible inter-galactic, inter-species war hang in the balance? Of course Starbuck- I- ER- UM- "Mack" will have to go rogue and play outside the rules in order to do so. Must someone always go against humanity in order to save humanity? Yes, someone always does and so it is here as well. Ok effects and performances in what was essentially a made-for-TV original.
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COLD GROUND (2018)
Dir: Fabien Delage
Skip...
Review coming soon...!
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IT CAME FROM THE DESERT (2017)Dir: Marko Mäkilaakso
Wanted to be a charming, campy, B-movie, horror/comedy like TREMORS(1990), or EIGHT LEGGED FREAKS(2002), or DOG SOLDIERS(2002)(see review); but the pacing killed it. Based on some video game it uses the classic giant ants film THEM!(1954) for its backstory "prequel." Better luck another time. In spite of the actually decent creature design and CGI effects, I say skip this and watch THEM!
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BEYOND THE SKY (2018)
Dir: Fulvio Sestito
Character driven take on the age-old alien-invasion angle that plays like a found-footage version of the X:FILES meets COMMUNION(1989). A young man travels to Roswell New Mexico to interview gatherers at an "abductee" conference for his alien-skepticism documentary. After meeting a girl at a support group he becomes convinced there is something psychological deeper going on with her story. Eventually the young man and his camera guy come across actual alien technology that clues them in to a government conspiracy surrounding the abductees they have met. Turns out the government is behind the kidnappings and stage "alien-UFO" scenarios using drugs and elaborate settings to convince these people they have been taken aboard UFOs. What is the purpose of this conspiracy? Plot twist: turns out the government has long been in concordance with actual alien visitors, supplying them with fresh human subjects for their studies. So both the alien-hype and the government conspiracy stuff turn out to be true. Particularly interesting is a sequence in the second act where the girl and the filmmaker, now romantically intertwined, visit her Native American surrogate family. Seems the Native Americans have also long since established an understanding with the aliens and through meditative peyote rituals, are able to communicate with them. An intervention is held in the form of a bizarre seance of sorts, to convince the aliens not to return for the girl even though she has been marked. The ritual fails and both the girl and the filmmaker are abducted on board a UFO only to be returned when the aliens realize they cannot ascertain why the humans have emotion, which seems to be their entire goal of study. Although the alien stuff was all really tired and the ending cheezy, the quirky character development was the highlight of the piece, especially the weird peyote seance sequence.
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GREY SKIES (2010)
Dir: Kai Blackwood
Mostly forgettable ensemble-cast feature about a group of friends renting a rural house for a weekend vacation. Soon aliens show up and one by one the members of the group go missing. The "abducted" individuals are found a day later naked near the house and seem very flat and emotionless. There is a compelling second half where the house is under full siege by alien invaders and the trapped group must try and survive. Finally, only one woman is left and once taken, we witness her in an alien craft being probed and surgically implanted. In the end, all the members of the gang are back together and all the females are pregnant! Now zombie-like and seemingly controlled by the aliens, they each depart the property and head home.
Very straight-to-video but I would describe the high points of this piece not so much by what they did with very little (although certainly laudable), but rather, what they could've done wrong but didn't. There was some quality restraint in the direction and the physical action. Its not easy to enact a close-quarters siege sequence with rubber-suit alien actors and a lot of shadows, but these scenes were compellingly creepy. There was a nice treatment of how the aliens seemed to exist or co-exist out of the same time/space as the humans. This goes along way toward explaining questions of geography and movement and fears of "punching at something that isn't there."
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CATSKILL PARK (2018)Dir: Vlad Yudin (LAST DAY OF SUMMER)
"Found Footage" horror about two young couples from New York City who go camping upstate in the woods and encounter evil aliens. Taking most of its cues from CLOVERFIELD(2008)(see review), our main character is a reality-TV producer who documents everything on his state-of-the-art video camera rig. Video-boy's girlfriend is a wanna-be actress and the other couple are "childhood BFF" jocky wall-street douche and his fling of the week. The film is presented, ala CLOVERFIELD, as if the footage is secret government classified material. After one of the girls is levitated up in the air by an overhead flying saucer, she emerges from a comatose state with a weird rash and vomiting black ooze. Chasing the saucer across the woods, the two men along with a local hick and a cop witness it crash and see a spindly alien "gray" nearby. Soon a giant creature attacks and eviscerates (eats?) the locals and the two campers run for their lives into the forest. After walking in circles for hours the men discover an old barricaded house with a dead alien in a basement fridge, part of a lab run by a crazy, isolated doctor. The doctor also suffers from the rash and black ooze and attacks them. Seems the doctor-turned-zombie is under the control of the aliens and they put him down with a shotgun. Back in the woods, video-boy and jock-douche realize they are purposely being confused and keep walking the same circle, arriving back at their camp.
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Jocky-BFF is eaten and actress-girlfriend is discovered stumbling comatose in the woods, rashy and oozy. Soon everyone is dead but video-boy, and he follows all the rashy un-dead people who, like so many rats behind a pied-piper, follow the saucers through the woods. Approaching a landed saucer in a clearing, video-boy goes nuts, firing on it with the shotgun only to be taken by the giant creature. The end.
Although the video-verite angle is way overly tired, the special effects are surprisingly understated and well done, especially the shots of the saucers hovering overhead. The characters were annoying, shouting and screaming at one another, none of them smart or resourceful in the least. There is an homage to the famed "Alien Autopsy" video as the men watch video tapes in the scientists lab of him dissecting a captured "gray."
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THE ENCOUNTER (2015)
Dir: Robert Conway (THE COVENANT, KRAMPUS UNLEASHED, KRAMPUS: THE RECKONING)
So good I don't remember a thing about it.
Review coming soon!
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BEACON POINT (2016)
Dir: Eric Blue
Aimless and tepid alien-abduction story that sufferes from not knowing which plot line to follow and which character to center on. Spoiler alert: you never get to see any aliens.
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THE CREATURE BELOW (2016)
Dir: Stewart Sparke (BOOK OF MONSTERS)
Baby Cthulhu comes home with you in this Lovecraftean yarn that takes us to the end of the world. An overly ambitious diver tests a suit at the bottom of an ocean trench where her sponsor believes the origins of life can be discovered. Surviving an assault by a mysterious octopus-like creature, the woman surfaces only to find an egg implanted in her diving apparatus. Being fired for the botched dive, the woman takes the egg home and incubates it in her basement lab. The thing grows into another tentacled creature that feeds off human blood and also established a psychic connection with the woman. Believing he creature to be her offspring and she its "mother", the woman begins murdering people in order to feed the creature. Escaping into the sewers, the creature makes it to the nearby seacoast and immediately thousands of eggs start washing up on the shores of the UK! A final shot reveals a fully grown Cthulhu creature out at sea as TV announcers speak of mass chaos beginning to unfold. Yawn.
The first act is compelling then the Lovecraft references start showing up then the end seems to go full tilt away from itself. It was better as a drama about he obsessive woman and her failed career than an End-Times Elder-Gods stretch. Practical creature FX are pretty decent.
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INDIGENOUS (2014)
Dir: Alastair Orr (THE UNFORGIVING, EXPIRATION, HOUSE ON WILLOW STREET, TRIGGERED)
Much like TOURISTAS(2007)(see review) or THE RUINS(2008)(see review), a group of douchey American kids "on one final trip together" before entering the real world, go on a visit to Panama. Discovering a remote jungle that has a dark reputation of course the kids seem to go there. Ignoring all the warnings of the locals and the lore and even some internet documentation about the troubled reason, they willingly walk straight into a meat grinder. Turns out there's a Chupacabra in the woods just like the old legends say and seems that civilization has simply built around this reality. Everyone seems to know about the creature but everyone stays silent about it. This becomes a big part of the theme of the film as "going online" in real-time with a start-up cell-phone app brings the World's attention to the plight of the doomed kids. In the end, the military moves in and rescues the last two survivors and the World is left having to reckon the exist3ence of monsters in our midst. These themes are similar to the very influential CLOVERFIELD(2008)(see review).
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THE CHAMBER (2016)
Dir: Ben Parker
A hapless bathyscaph operator must host an urgent NAVY SEALS away team at the edge of North Korean waters. With inadequate prep time, the group descends to the ocean floor in search of a crashed drone before it is found by the PRNK. Old and fragile, the sub require tender-loving-care that the SEAL team just hasn't the time for and before long the group is trapped at the bottom of the ocean. The rest of the narrative is a trapped-under-water/characters-in-a-confined space drama that pits everyone's sanity and resolves against each other. Everything that can possibly go wrong does and the story is merciless in this regard. The final shot reveals the one surviving character alone on the ocean with no rescue. Have a nice day! Mainly the film meditates on the psyches of those who take on missions where death is an "acceptable loss". This is contrasted against the poor pilot who is only along for the ride and didn't deserve any of it.
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DEEP FREEZE (2002)
Dir: John Carl Buechler
Very Eighties-feeling low-budget homage to John Carpenter's THE THING(1982). Actually not horrible considering. Has a certain C-list charm.
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ARROWHEAD (2016) (aka: ALIEN ARRIVAL)
Dir: Jesse O'Brien (TWO HEADS CREEK)
A futuristic, inter-planetary soldier is broken out of prison to serve one of two generals who keep the world at war. After his ship crashes on an isolated planet, the soldiers mission of delivering stolen information to the general fails. Will anyone come for him or is he now lost on a barren planet for good? After being attacked by some indigenous creature in the wastelands, the soldier wakes up to find himself back in his shelter. What has happened? Turns out everyone who dies comes back to life on this planet because of the mysterious creature. After befriending an A.I. on-board computer from his crashed craft and retro-fitting it with a hover device so it can be mobile, the soldier starts learning more about the nature of the war. Discovering he has been lied to by the general, he hides the stolen data in case rescue does come. When the general does arrive, it is revealed that the planet is a temporal anomaly that slows time. The many years he has been crashed there turns out to only be 20 minutes of human time! A battle breaks out and after killing the general, the soldier and his newly reincarnated female counterpart discover the nature of the weird hive-mind brain creature underground, which has kept re-creating them over many life-cycles. Finally they escape in the generals space ship. The special effects were decent B-movie level and the first act with the prison break was especially brutal and compelling. The remainder of the film was a bit of a so-what.
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DOOR IN THE WOODS (2019)
Dir: Billy Chase Goforth
Just "meh". Bringing and old, rustic door home and using it their new home, a young couple have their autistic son go missing. Consulting a deaf medium, they become convinced the door opens a gateway to hell and an evil spirit has taken their son. Returning the door to the woods they enact a predictably tired exorcism/seance and open the evil gateway. Inside, they sit with the child-stealing spirit and make a deal to get their son back. The deal is this: they can have their son but only if they install the door in the local elementary school where the dad works, so many more fresh children can be abducted! The couple reluctantly agree and with their son safely home, sell the house and move to another town, hoping to find a way to live with themselves. The film ends with a shot of the door in the school with tons of children around...
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MANDY THE HAUNTED DOLL (2018)
Dir: Jamie Weston
Skip...
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ALTITUDE (2010)
Dir: Kaare Andrews
One of these straight-to-video features where all the actors seem like they were trained at Nickelodeon and are always smiling and overly-well-adjusted to just about everything. The characters, if you can call them that, are the same cardboard cutouts you're used to: the beer swilling alpha jock, the awkward brainac who reads comic books, the cheerleader with a video camera who is the "aspiring filmmaker" and the over-achiever girl with a troubled past who is learning to be a pilot. Yawn. The group take a flight to a music concert and on the way are enveloped by a mysterious black cloud. The instruments failing, the plane keeps ascending until the gang starts seeing visions of a Cthulhu-like creature in the sky! One by one the annoyingly argumentative teens are picked off until only pilot-girl and geek-boy remain. Turns out, geek -boy has the same troubled past as the pilot-girl and has been pseudo-stalking her. Both were involved in a mysterious plane crash as kids where their parents died. Big reveal: the monster is a manifestation of geek-boys fears and comic book imagination. Once aware, he begins concentrating and the creature goes away. Their plane emerges from the dark cloud in time to see another plane approaching head on- it is themselves- the plane they were in as kids! Obviously in some temporal anomaly, the two realize that they are now the plane that struck them in the past. Managing to swerve away in the nick of time, they prevent the crash from ever happening. Out of fuel, they crash, knowing that their childhood selves and their parents will survive this time. Bizarre story that seemed to not know what it wanted to be. Played more like an episode of something on the WB Network rather than a feature film. Each character death was a welcome relief from the screeching noise they each were making.
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BLOOD SURF (2001)
Dir: James D.R. Hickox (DETENTION, GIRLS GONE PSYCHO, SABRETOOTH, THE GARDENER, CHILDREN OF THE CORN lll: URBAN HARVEST)
Really bad low-baller about an extreme-sports film crew that ventures to a dangerous Hawaiian bay to surf with killer sharks. Turns out an ancient salt-water crocodile rules the area. The team is rescued by an old crusty, sea-dog with a score to settle (Captain Ahab, etc, etc.) The characters are pathetically drawn and acted, the story is silly and the creature effects- actually not that bad! Completely phoned-in experience. Taryn Reif is naked a lot ;-)
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COLD MOON (2016)
Dir: Griff First (STARVE, 30 WAYS TO DIE, UNIVERSAL SOLDIERS)
Actor, TV Director and sometimes torture-porn horror director Griff First weaves a straight-to-video tale about an abusive, alcoholic wealth holder who murders in order to protect his fortune. Shock/surprise, the angry ghost haunts him until justice is served. Meh.
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ALLIGATOR X (2014) (aka: JURASSIC PREDATOR: EXTINCTION)
Dir: Amir Valinia (MUTANTS)
Skip...
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CROCODILE (2000)
Dir: Tobe Hooper (THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, EATEN ALIVE, POLTERGEIST, INVADERS FROM MARS)
Pure crap. Can't believe this came from Tobe Hooper. Oh how the mighty have fallen...
A bunch of coeds on a spring break romp to the lake, get drunk and whatnot and run into some mythic crocodile. The annoying, ever yelling and screaming brats don't die fast enough and by the end too many survive.
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FRESHWATER (2016)
Dir: Brandeis Berry
Skip...
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51 (2011) (aka: AREA 51)
Dir: Jason Connery (PANDEMIC, THE DEVIL'S TOMB)
Silly cheezer starring Bruce Boxleitner as a crusty old military colonel guarding the secrets of Area 51. Nice touch that an alien exists and has been around since the Roswell crash in the 1940's. He's a good guy with telekenetik powers and they call him "old man". Bad-guy creature effects are abyssmal.
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THE DAY THE EARTH STOPPED (2018)
Dir: C. Thomas Howell (THE GENESIS CODE, THE LAND THAT TIE FORGOT, WAR OF THE WORLDS 2: THE NEXT WAVE)
Z-list actor C. Thomas Howell continues directing Z-grade video features with an eye for Sci-Fi. This feature is essentially a remake of Robert Wise's classic THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL (1951) and tries to have heart in spite of its no-budget production and lack of originality. The acting was actually decent given the circumstances and fellow 80's brat-packer Judd Nelson co-stars. For some reason I can't hate this or Howell either, I feel like this is kinda for kids (or at least that's how I'm justifying not bashing this.)
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ALIEN SIEGE (2018)
Dir: Rob Pallatina (FLIGHT 666, ALIEN CONVERGENCE, FORTUNE COOKIE)
I watched it a matter of hours ago and remember absolutely nothing aqbout it, including that I even saw it. Oh yeah, it was an ASYLUM production.
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FIGHTING THE SKY (2018)
Dir: Conrad Faraj (THE NIGHT IT ENDED, THE WIND IS WATCHING, THE SHADOW PEOPLE)
God awful.
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INDEPENDENTS' DAY (2016)
Dir: Laura Beth Love
With a title like that it could only come from... you guessed it- THE ASYLUM! Crap that at least tries to be a fun FX romp and the FX aren't utterly horrible, just sorts horrible. That 's all there is to say about it.
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THE HILLS HAVE EYES Part ll (1984)Dir: Wes Craven
Void of any of the meaning, purpose or ideas of the first film and any of the "A-for-effort" indy spirit of the original production. Merely a bad and uninteresting grindhouse flick. The only curious factor was that, as in the first film, one of the characters is a pet German Shepherd. Unlike the "good guy" humans or the "villain" humans, the dog seems to be the only character with any laudable resolve or coping instincts. Even though the dog dies, he does so "on the job", fearlessly going out on his shield as a committed soldier. It's as if the filmmakers are pointing out that even a random dog is better than any human person.
Thank you to FLICK VAULT FREE HD MOVIES
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LOOKER (1981)
Dir: Michael Crichton
A victim of the times in which it was made, LOOKER suffers from being way ahead of any technology necessary to tell its' story. It should've been set in a post-internet near-future, but is sadly set in a VHS-era 1981 and it just doesn't work. Poignant themes, but better as a novel than a movie.
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WAXWORK (1988)
Dir: Anthony Hickox (SUNDOWN: THE VAMPIRE IN RETREAT, WAXWORK ll: LOST IN TIME, HELLRAISER lll: HELL ON EARTH)
Everything bad about eighties straight-to-video horror all in one film. Tries to be funny and isn't. Tries to be clever and isn't. Tries to be creepy and never is. Pick a genre already! Was obviously just a vehicle for special effects and mask-making artists- always the worst of the worst in horror fare. In my struggle to mentally figure why films like this even get made, the concept of "must have been a tax write-off" usually is as far as I get. Model-turned-actress Michelle Johnson co-stars (the femme-fatale from BLAME IT ON RIO(1984)) and was the only reason I regrettably sat through the whole dumb thing.
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SILENT WARNINGS (2003)
Dir:
"...and featuring Stephen Baldwin..." pretty much tells you all you need to know. Oddly enough, a group of college friends devote their spring break to helping a friend fix up his house for re-sale. No party-hearty hijinx here! Crop circles and weird lights at night indicate something supernatural afoot and soon one the kids goes missing. Turns out the house, inherited from a crazy dead uncle (Baldwin) had been fortified against alien invaders who seem to use the adjacent field for their inter-dimensional portal. At the climax, the badly designed aliens attack the house and the early low-resolution CGI is really bad, taking us completely out of the story sadly. Should've been a TV episode of something, not a feature film.
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THE SLAYER (1982)
Dir: J.S. Cardone (WICKED LITTLE THINGS, FORSAKEN, THE SCARE HOLE)
One of those 1980's flicks that follows in the "slasher" surge of the day, only was really just a drama that throws some cheap horror motifs on top to cash in on the trend. A troubled woman and some friends visit an island rental house for a weekend and everyone starts dying. Turns out the woman is the killer, her "Mr. Hyde" alter ego coming out at night and offing her own friends. A finale sequence is almost interesting as the woman, now all alone in the house, witnesses the walls coming in on her as her psyche confronts itself.
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SCREAM AND SCREAM AGAIN (1970)
Dir: Gordon Hessler (GOLDEN VOYAGE OF SINBAD, MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE, CRY OF THE BANSHEE, THE OBLONG BOX)
Bizarre Brit thriller (AIP) starring Vincent Price and Christopher Lee with a walk-on bit part by Peter Cushing. Sort of an international intrigue picture mixed with horror/thriller and told in very backwards structure.
A secret quasi-Nazi society running out of East Berlin has designed a race of super-humans by replacing their limbs with hyper-alloy upgrades. They also seem to be vampires of some kind although it is never made clear. Price is an evil doctor heading up the British wing of this society but has a change of heart when he realizes the society is not after the progress of humanity, but just fascistic world domination. The quirky "Austin Powers" type score is a hoot and lends to the weirdness of this lost-between-genres outing. Most memorable is this vat of acid the doctor keeps on property to get rid of materials- including misfires of his human experiments. In one seen, after pulling his own hand off to escape police handcuffs, one of the "zombie" humans throws himself into the acid rather than be caught and discovered. Later Price does battle with the evil Nazi leader (both of them upgraded with new zombie parts!) until both are consumed by the acid. The most memorable and unforgettably ghoulish element however is the side story of a captive man held as a patient in Price's laboratory. Each time when see him he is awaking from drug induced sleep to discover a limb had been surgically removed, eventually all four are gone as he helplessly lies in his bed screaming for help...
I saw this as a kid on "Dialing for Dollars" a local TV affiliate movie show that showed a lot of Hammer films and other Brit imports. The guy pulling his hand off and the helpless guy in the bed always stuck with me, but I couldn't remember from what film. Now I know!
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THE SPIRAL STAIRCASE (1954)
Dir:
Tepid Noir-Thriller than is quaint but lightweight. Nothing trumps family loyalities like old family money!
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FINAL DAYS OF PLANET EARTH (2006) Made for TV
Dir:
Made-for-TV stinker that takes its' cues mostly from Philip Kaufman's INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS(1980) and TV's "V" and "V: The Final Battle." Entry-level CGI tech make for patience-testing SFX and the meandering ensemble-cast, intersecting plot-lines gets tired quickly. Daryl Hannah stars as the queen of a roach-like alien force that hides underground and possesses the bodies of political leaders in a plot to take over the Earth. A merry-band of "aw shucks" multi-cultural freedom fighters rises to the challenge. Blah, blah, etc, etc...
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SCARED TO DEATH (1980)
Dir: William Malone
An ex-cop writer and his old partner team up with a woman to unlock the mystery of some serial killings. An evil lab has been manipulating DNA to form a hybrid creature that gets loose and kills everything. Cheezy rubber-suit monster shot with quick cuts really doesn't work. Attempt to make quirky characters humorous and likeable grows annoying. Wanted to be like ALLIGATOR(1980)(see review) but wasn't.
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THE BLOOD BEAST TERROR (1968)Dir: Vernon Swell (BURKE AND HARE, THE CRIMSON CULT, TERROR SHIP, GHOST SHIP)
Total fail but starring the always magnificent Peter Cushing. First of all, the cinematography was really phoned in on this one. Mostly the shots were locked off and just panned with the actors as if on a stage. The pacing was also very problematic. Each scene seemed as if it were simply butt-spliced to the next without any attention to flow, pace or efficiency. On top of these technical missteps, the plot about a woman who turns into a giant moth is awful! (as are the special effects) The origin of the woman-creature is never explained other than the evil scientist who created her (we think) is trying to create a second one as a proper spouse for her. There is a play within a play in the first act that is taken directly from Mary Shelly's Frankenstein and the Shelly influence is also present in our films plot. As with Frankenstein, just as the doctor is successfully completing his second monster, he destroys it in a sudden change of heart. This only renders the doctor the creature's next victim. The film plays out like two different stories. The first half is the police detective (Cushing) trying to solve a string of mysterious deaths all leading back to the doctor. After the doctor flees town, the detective (incognito) and his daughter follow the doctor to his new place of residence. This second part feels like a new film and almost as if it was the only part necessary. There are some bit characters that add levity and charm in what are mostly drawn out, expository scenes, or scenes that don't advance the plot at all. I guess the editors went on vacation for this one. All in all, Cushing was fantastic and although the film utterly fails as a horror piece (or as a film at all in my view) I enjoyed the actors doing their thing. Watching Cushing navigate the scenes was by far the most engaging element to this mess.
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TRACK OF THE MOON BEAST (1976)
Dir: Richard Ashe
Very low-budget one-off about a meteor that breaks into bits that hits both the Moon and the Earth. Getting impaled by some of the debris, a young researcher has a bit-o-Moon rock now stuck in his head. When he comes close to another particle of the same meteor, it triggers him into becoming a murderous lizard man! Turns out this explains an ancient Native myth about a "Dinosaur Man" that can only die by fire. So when the moon rises, our hero becomes a murderous lizard man on a killing spree. Being a hero, he decides to go up in the mountains and end himself but emotional girfriend screws up everything. The local sherriff and friends have to track down and destroy the monster, but they cannot. It is only when our hero's best friend, a local Native American Professor shoots him with a moon-rock tipped arrow that the creature is destroyed. The pacing is really slow and the production very amateur. I had to crank up the brightness in my video player just to see the crappy print at all. The production would've benefited greatly had they known about something called "editing."
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ATTACK OF THE CRAB MONSTERS (1957)
Dir: Roger Corman (DAY THE WORLD ENDED, IT CONQUERED THE WORLD, A BUCKET OF BLOOD, HOUSE OF USHER, PIT AND THE PENDULUM, THE RAVEN, THE TERROR, THE HAUNTED PALACE, THE MAN WITH THE X-RAY EYES, THE TOMB OF LIGEIA, LAST WOMAN ON EARTH, CREATURE FROM THE HAUNTED SEA, THE WASP WOMAN, THE TRIP)
Russell Johnson ("The Professor" from Gilligan's Island) co-stars in this Corman schlocker about a group of scientists investigating radiation anomalies on a Pacific island. Seems atomic tests have altered the evolutionary path of living organisms, resulting in giant crabs that can assimilate the minds and essence of whoever they eat! Making sure the crew cannot leave, the crabs tunnel underground, systematically eroding the island into the sea until there is nowhere for the humans to hide! Will science prevail and overcome the results of its' own hubris? Will the surviving cast find a way to defeat the evil, telepathically talking crabs? Turns out DC current can do the job, but can they fashion a weapon in time? Ridiculous rubber-suit gags and audio effects round out this grindhouse filler-thriller. Curiously enough, science girl with the big boobs never trips when she runs (although she does feint easily). Hmm, doesn't count as a true horror entry then!
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MARK OF THE WITCH (1970)
Dir: Tom Moore (RETURN TO BOGGY CREEK)
A university professor teaches a course on occult history, but some of his students take their homework too far! Using an old witchcraft book, the students gather at the Professor's apartment to enact a seance and summon the dead. The professor thinks this assignment will establish proper skepticism in his students. Jill (Anitra Walsh) leads the ritual, reading from the old book, but when the ritual is over, she has been actually possessed! Claiming to be Marguerite, a witch from ages past, "Jill" commits a series of murders on campus to round out her old coven and bring them back to take over the world. Turns out the professor is from a lineage of opposing witches who betrayed Marguerite in a former life and were thus cursed by her. Can the good Professor and Jill's boyfriend find a way to exorcise Marguerite and save Jill before it is too late? Super-cheesy kodacolor 1960's look and feel with bad (non)acting and silly effects makes this low-baller a grindhouse wanna-be.
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TURKEY SHOOT (1982) aka: ESCAPE 2000
Dir: Brian Trenchard-Smith
Twist on the old "Most Dangerous Game" story where prisoners are forced to be hunted by rich sportsmen. This time, it's the future and a totalitarian government rounds up all free-thinkers and puts them into concentration camps. A cadre of truly despicable and morally vacant one-per centers come to hunt, but this time the good guys turn the tables. This film was really bad and reminded me of a wanna-be DEATH RACE 2000(1975). It's basically campy spoof-dom but one element that just goes too far is a cannibalistic "hairy man" from the circus who is brought in to torture and eat the fugitive runners. Oy vey, this film sucked!
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MONSTER FROM GREEN HELL (1957)
Dir: Kenneth G. Crane (THE MANSTER, HALF HUMAN, WHEN HELL BROKE LOOSE)
Monster from "This Movie Sucked." Really awful, not even kitchy-schlock good. Total Ed Wood effort. Using mostly stock footage and really laughable special effects, editor-turned-director Crane attempts his first feature about radiated, giant wasps in Africa. People walking for an hour-and-a-half (first on a pointless safari, then in a cave) all for 5 minutes of creature showdown at the end which is achieved through more stock footage superimposed over more bad creature shots. In the end, the human characters fail to kill the monsters but a volcano erupts and kills them, rendering the entire narrative a waste of everyone's time. No one involved in this production knew the first thing about filmmaking.
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