Halloween Fifteen #15: Akira

If you've ever watched anime, you probably know the influence that films like Akira, Ghost in the Shell, and any Miyazaki film have had on American audiences interested in the unique Japanese art form. Akira is so popular not because it's such a violent mind trip (which it is), but because of its political statements and rebellious attitude towards government. It's the ultimate cyberpunk film, a relatable story about a suffering humanity forced into the ghettos by corrupt government officials experimenting on people who can harness psychic powers. Let's look at the machinations of Akira.

Occupy Wall Street. Tienanmen Square. The UK protests. People all over the world have protested government action (or inaction), have stood up for their rights or the lack of them. Akira is a protest film, one that channels the terrors of a people being left to fend for themselves after a government has overlooked them. If one watches Akira just with this idea in mind, the film will still capture your attention. But to think of it simply as a protest film, or an anime, or an ultraviolent machine-man hybrid will ensure that you're not going to get all of the messages that director and writer Katsuhiro Ohtomo has laced within the confines of a trippy little anime.

It's difficult to describe everything that happens in Akira, as it encompasses a huge storyline that includes the experimentations of a government on humans before and after World War III that decimated the world. Neo-Tokyo rose up to replace the tattered remains of a nation, and punks using cyberkinetic weapons and bikes rule the city's streets, effectively ensuring that political strife and rebellion combats government neglect.

Out of these streetpunks, we follow a group led by Kaneda, who remains likable despite his dominating demeanor and tough-as-nails street fighting. Their biker gang contains Tetsuo, a rather despairing little guy who follows in Kaneda's footsteps but who can never quite make a name for himself. He's always overshadowed by others, and Ohtomo works hard in the beginning of Akira to show the foil between Kaneda and Tetsuo. At first it seems that Ohtomo includes the opening scenes of biker gangs and Kaneda's violence as a graphic depiction of Neo-Tokyo; yet this scene simply wouldn't be necessary just to show the grit of the city alone. Instead, it works as a way of setting up Tetsuo's later rise to power and the egotism that fuels Tetsuo's psychic destruction of the government.

Ohtomo presents the viewer with an incredibly fast-paced storyline, and it's easy to lose track of what's happening with everything going on. The film takes a couple of watches to really understand the plot; this is because the latter portions of the film tend to highlight the stylized violence over explanations of Tetsuo's actions, his mutation into a machine, and the presence of Akira. But what really shines forth are the themes of political corruption and the ease of sliding into a power struggle, and Tetsuo's character is developed so well that his own corruption is easy to believe. The machine that he becomes is also heavily symbolic of this inner corruption, and it's good to see Ohtomo drawing parallels between Tetsuo's guilt in the matter and the government's hand in making Tetsuo into the monster he becomes.

If you're looking for action, though, Akira has it on display in full force. I didn't count the explosions, but I know that bikes, tanks, buildings, machines, people, and a satellite explode thanks to Tetsuo's powers and the cyberpunks of Neo-Tokyo. There's also a rather grotesque scene of pulsing, throbbing human organs that suck in humans and pop them like balloons. It really is ultraviolent, and despite it being a "cartoon", the drawings are detailed and surprisingly disgusting.

Slash to the Point: Akira is one of the best anime out there, and I'd urge you to check it out even if you're not into the art. The compelling storyline and original plot are enough to keep the film fan entertained, and it's a film that those interested in influential movies should see. It's a legacy, one that has little to do with the fact that it is anime.

Akira on Rotten Tomatoes

Happy Halloween!

Today is the big day! It's almost too unbelievable that Halloween is finally here. I'd love for the month to go on in perpetuity, but unfortunately for us our time celebrating the ghastly things of the night will be coming to an end - unless, of course, you blog like I do; then, you get to do it year-round. But there's something about the holiday that makes everything seem a bit more special, and I'm sad to see it go.

Let's not talk about sad things, however, since we still have Halloween day and night to celebrate! Today, I will have a post up for the last Halloween Fifteen movie Akira. And please join me on Twitter (@ryneb) for a special Halloween tweet marathon, as I will be watching horror movies most of the day and snarking on them for all to read.

I'm going to put a feed up on the blog as well, so you can click back all day today to see what's happening.

Halloween Fifteen #14: Captivity

Roland Joffé steps out of his element to direct Captivity, a disciple of the torture porn genre that follows one supermodel victim as she's tormented by a seemingly obsessed fan. You probably haven't heard too much about the film, and that's because it was neither widely nor well received. Though gory sleazefests usually never are, Captivity was one of those films that audiences stayed away from and critics panned thoroughly. We're going to get down and dirty to figure out why.


Torture porn movies generally have to include a moral story. Otherwise, their gore and displays of human torture are all just guises to show how sick the human mind can be, and how we take gratification from that violence. At most, there must seem like some reason behind the torture, or else if there isn't, it should be explicitly realized that this is the point the filmmaker is trying to make - sometimes there is no reason, and that's the scary thing about human individuality.

In Captivity, Roland Joffé fails to paint a picture of either of these two ideas. There's not a good reason why we're forced to watch Jennifer (Elisha Cuthbert) choke down a body part smoothie, no explanation what her torturer Gary (Daniel Gillies) gets from the whole ordeal, and no moral to the story about particular human ideals or a sense that anything has changed before or after the events. It's this sort of glamorizing that gives torture porn its name; like porn, the genre rarely has a raison d'etre except to provide the base satisfaction that others find atrocious or disgusting.

It doesn't help that Captivity lacks the two fundamentals of a good story: believable characters and a theme. Jennifer is a supermodel whose limited characterization provides only the facts that she's super busy, she knows she's beautiful, and she has a dog that she loves more than most people. Anything else we know about her comes strictly from speculation, as the narrative leaves little time to meet her before she's drugged at a club, abducted, and strapped to a chair for a forced feeding. This would have provided a good reason for her captivity had the film dwelt on her previous life through flashbacks, but instead Joffé thinks that it's more believable to give her little background or any sort of personality at all and then subject her to all sorts of unfair punishment.

The same is true of her cellmate Gary, who appears suddenly next to her room as another victim. It's obvious that Gary is not what he seems, for one thing because he is so abruptly thrown into the film. But it's also because Captivity doesn't want to take the time to legitimately build anything out of his appearance besides a quick love interest that seems way too forced by Cuthbert and unbelievably corny. It's essentially a Stockholm syndrome love affair, but it's not nearly as realistic as the movie would have one believe.

Slash to the Point: The gore is certainly substantial and the torture uncomfortable, but that's about all that Captivity has going for it. And for most viewers, those two things are not going to make a skeptical viewer believe that the film they just saw is more than pure trashy cinema. Captivity is exactly that, and it's because Joffé doesn't recognize how to balance the over-the-top violence with a compelling dramatic storyline that offers up a moral to equalize all that bloodshed. It takes a fine script to do that, and I'll admit not many torture movies can hit this peak, but Captivity can't even make its way out of the basement.

Captivity on Rotten Tomatoes

Halloween Fifteen #13: The Brain That Wouldn't Die

In the vein of the mad scientist film comes The Brain That Wouldn't Die, a dreadfully funny horror film that's really not supposed to be too comedic at all. There's a sense that the film comes out of the sixties attempting to be something craftily controversial, and it's exploitation at its finest. But does it deserve to be kept alive, or should it get the DNR?

If movies from the sixties can be classified as sleazy, The Brain That Wouldn't Die would earn this categorization easily. The title sounds like a science fiction tale about a gigantic brain that terrorizes a city, something similar to the blob. The "wouldn't" in the title indicates a brain that can't be stopped, a terror that cannot be put down by mere human weaponry. And yet the film has almost nothing to do with a brain that won't die, instead focusing on a brain that can't die thanks to a mad scientist bent on creating a Frankensteinian woman with the head of his fiancee and the body of the best model he can find.

Let's pretend for a minute that this premise isn't entirely misogynistic. Perhaps we can relate to Dr. Bill Cortner's (Herb Evers) predicament of having lost a loved one in a terrible accident. It's true that the first few minutes of The Brain That Wouldn't Die are not only perfunctory but downright Lovecraftian in their execution. There's a bit of Herbert West in Cortner that I tend to like. The film thrives on this idea, and it's actually a strong opening to see a man pumping a heart with his bare hands while Dr. Bill massages his brain to bring him back from death.

But as soon as Bill speeds off into a mountain curve and kills his fiancee in a crash that could have easily been prevented, the viewer is ripped from any sort of association with the doctor. First of all, it doesn't make sense that Bill first acts nonchalant about a call from his laboratory associate and then decides to floor the gas pedal on a steep, twisty mountain road. Nor does it make sense when Bill finds his wife still somewhat alive and burning in the car, and then proceeds to somehow tear her head from her body in an effort to keep her alive in his basement.

But maybe these are acts of love he's doing here. He's in shock, you see, and he's coping by keeping the head of his future wife alive with various fluids despite her protestations against it. He's also got a cyclops from a past failed experiment locked in a closet in the basement, but that's besides the point. This man is furthering science!

But after the car crash (which, mind you, encompasses maybe the first fifteen minutes of the film), the plot of The Brain That Wouldn't Die devolves into Bill somewhat enjoying his bachelor lifestyle by attending a strip club, flirting with women, and checking out the local beauty pageant. This ain't the sleaziest part, though, folks: cue the swanky, sultry music of the sixties. If you can picture a softcore porn film from this era, you've got the right idea about the music when Bill is searching out a new body for his beau. It just heightens that feeling that what you're watching is something despicable and sinful, and it's not even fun at that.

When Bill finally finds a body - the perfect body, even to women apparently - he slips the girl a roofie (which is creepy enough that he's so good at it), until his fiancee channels the monster from the closet to kill the doctor. It's a pointless ending, since the doctor has really learned nothing about the inappropriateness of his scientific exploits. Plus, if you look at the end credits, the film is referred to as "The Head That Wouldn't Die", meaning even the writers gave little thought to the movie they created.

Slash to the Point: This is an ultra-bad mad scientist movie, which is saying something because most tend to slip into science-induced comas anyway. But it's also quite demeaning to any woman who watches it, and feminists would have a field day looking at all the ways women are put down and objectified. Just look at the opening scene, where Bill asks if his fiancee has her keys and then proceeds to drive her car for her, as though a woman driving would just be preposterous! That she can't have anything but the best body Bill can find is just another reason why The Brain That Wouldn't Die has been lobotomized from the classic horror canon.

The Brain That Wouldn't Die on Rotten Tomatoes

Halloween 2011: Television Review - The Walking Dead: "What Lies Ahead"/"Bloodletting"

When The Walking Dead replaced most of its writing crew, it left an impression that the creators weren't happy with last season. I would concur; although I enjoyed watching the progression of a long-running zombie television show, I also found The Walking Dead in limbo between good dramatic television with excellent zombies and bad dramatic television with excellent zombies. This was almost always the script's fault, because the show would often alternate between compelling storylines that moved the plot forward and follow it up with a rather stagnant subsequent episode.

But it's a dangerous thing, getting rid of your crew. You run the risk of alienating old fans, or losing the pacing of what once was. For me, I was excited to get a taste of something new this season - perhaps a bit of the old drama with some new, refreshing ideas on how to spice up this zombie apocalypse.

"What Lies Ahead" starts where our survivors left off, with Rick and company trying to get away from the CDC that had just exploded. They come upon a highway of abandoned cars that bars their way, and it doesn't help that the camper they're traveling in busts a water hose. Stuck in the traffic jam, Rick decides to make camp and find some extra supplies in all of the cars, but zombies attack them and they eventually get separated from the young Sophia. Oh, and another thing happens, but for spoilers' sake, I won't divulge except to say that it will probably be one of the main dilemmas this season.

"What Lies Ahead" has a lot of problems, but we'll start with the biggest one: plot holes. I can name a bunch, but one that comes to mind as the most egregious error is Dale's lookout post on top of the RV. From there, he should be able to see any zombies for miles, yet he's still surprised when the walking dead overtake them from hundreds of feet away. Dale, your one job was to be the sentry, and you failed. But Dale always comes off as one of the smarter survivors of this group, and it truly does not make sense that he would miss a caravan of zombies just yards away.

Trust me, there are more, but I don't want to bore you with the subtleties because we've got a lot to cover. The other thing that bothers me so much about "What Lies Ahead" is the way the story has now doubled back on itself; like the first episodes of the series, there is an arc where a survivor is missing and the season will now focus on finding them, perhaps without closure. It's a cheap way to keep characters alive without having them in the show, and it allows The Walking Dead to bring back those characters whenever they need a surprise. At this point, that technique is old hat, and it's not pulling me in for more.

"What Lies Ahead" and "Bloodletting" take Andrea's character to the next level: a very annoying one where she becomes the Debbie Downer of the group and makes decisions that don't make a hell of a lot of sense. Instead, she becomes suicidal and yet somehow headstrong, a woman who wanted to die and then gets pissed when she's attacked by zombies. This melodrama is not intriguing - instead, it makes me question if the scriptwriters even understand Andrea's motives.

I will say that "Bloodletting" is a much stronger episode than "What Lies Ahead" thanks to some emotional dialogue and fantastic tension. It also has a more suitable pace, along with a more intelligent storyline. We also get an explanation for Rick's coma, although this is done in such a harried way that it doesn't explain much at all. With that said, it's nice to see the writers trying to work their way back to the first season's unanswered questions.

Slash to the Point: The Walking Dead sort of shambled through its first episode, and despite the length, it didn't do much to further the plot besides returning to a similar premise it used in the first episodes of the series. "Bloodletting" is a better example of what The Walking Dead can do best: depict zombie attacks galore, and attempt to trigger the more emotional side of the dangers of surviving a losing battle with the dead. Hopefully, the writers can harness the potential for strong drama without giving us the exaggerated melancholy of characters like Andrea.

Halloween Fifteen #12: Blood of Dracula's Castle

Often overlooked in the vampire genre, Blood of Dracula's Castle has the atmosphere of a Hammer horror film. Drafty castles and posh old vampires are the norm here, along with various candelabras sprouting colored wax and little lighting. The film I watched had a really bad translation to DVD, and it was covered in green cigarette burns that flickered during especially dark scenes. Hopefully, the version you see will be of better quality. Let's sink our fangs into this one.

I like films where couples are lured into strange castles or mansions. It's fun to imagine yourself in that position, exploring the ghosts and corridors of a new house, the skeletons that may or not be buried in the closet. In older castles, it's not so hard to believe that the denizens of the past might still haunt the place, unwilling to give up their expensive home.

Blood of Dracula's Castle takes a cue from this, although the homeowners of the castle are still alive and are actually vampires who keep beautiful young women in the basement so that they can slowly drain their blood. The count and countess are supposedly either relatives of Dracula, or perhaps Count Townsend (Alexander D'Arcy) truly is Dracula in disguise. Whatever the case, they've made their home along with a butler (John Carradine) and a deformed servant (Ray Young), capturing girls and draining their blood until finally feeding the body/fueling sexual deviance in the servant Mango.

It just so happens that Dracula's castle is not technically owned by Dracula, but by the uncle of photographer Glen Cannon (a hint towards Canon photography?). After his uncle dies, Glen and his beau Liz (Barbara Bishop) want to dispossess the vampires from their home and move in, so they travel to meet the Townsends in hopes of kicking them out of the castle gingerly.

A man named Johnny (Robert Dix) also visits the castle after escaping from jail, and there's some connotation that Johnny is not only a serial killer but a werewolf during the full moon. We see Johnny kill for no apparent reason on a couple of occasions, once after he escapes from prison and finds a woman bathing while he's being chased by guards. It's random, circumstantial, and it makes no sense at all why Johnny would take the time to drown this woman before continuing his retreat.

But that's sort of how everything works in Blood of Dracula's Castle. Dracula is a vampire, yes, but he also sacrifices victims to the god Luna for eternal life - despite how he just explained that eternal life comes from the secret elixir of young, beautiful, perhaps-virgin blood. So why do they need to sacrifice to Luna, you ask? It's not explained, nor is there some miraculous ascension from Luna during the sacrifice, and so this plotline is quite unnecessary for the entire film.

Also of note is the fact that at no point does Johnny ever change into a werewolf, despite the numerous references to it. Again, a lengthy description of Johnny never culminates into anything besides dialogue, and it's a waste of the middle portion of the film before Glen and Liz ever get to the castle.

Alexander D'Arcy and the countess (Paula Raymond) make very good comedic vampires. They express their taste in blood through the description of the woman's vintage; they lounge on leather armchairs and read tomes like rich folk; they're tucked into their coffins by the butler every morning. These vampires aren't scary; in fact, they express their own wish that they could switch to synthetic blood to obey the law. Not only are they not threatening, they're also rather dull for vampires; they draw blood from their victims into syringes rather than sucking with their fangs, despite the sexual connotations of keeping beautiful virginal women in the basement.

So unfortunately, much of Blood of Dracula's Castle is spent playing the hide-the-secret game; the vampires hint at their inner nature, John Carradine acts as a creepy butler just fine, and Johnny becomes a focal point for no reason. It's as boring a premise as you might imagine it to be, and when Liz and Glen finally uncover the bodies in the basement, it's almost too late for the audience to care. The best part is the outrageous fight sequences, which are choreographed so poorly it makes them almost unwatchable.

Slash to the Point: At first, I wondered why Blood of Dracula's Castle was so ignored by the cult followers. Now I know. Enough time spent on this lackluster, awkward turkey!

Blood of Dracula's Castle on Rotten Tomatoes

Halloween 2011: Television Review - American Horror Story: "Home Invasion"/"Murder House"

I'm back for rounds two and three of American Horror Story, of course, because even though I wasn't totally captured by the first episode's crazy storyline and the way it ambushed the viewer with an onslaught of horror movie tropes, I can't give the thing up. The show has a way of sinking into the brain; perhaps it's because it's one of two horror shows on cable that I watch, or maybe it's because the show is so bad that it's good. I'm leaning more towards the latter on this one, especially after watching these two episodes.

As I said in the first episode review, American Horror Story jumps right out of the gate with a ton of ghostly drama. Like that previous episode, "Home Invasion" begins with a flashback that generates the A-story, which involves a few mentally unstable people breaking into the Harmon house while Ben is attempting to sort out his sordid past with a(nother) mentally unstable mistress. It's the sort of set-up that requires little in the way of backstory, because the home invasion genre works well by setting up the mystery of why crazed lunatics would attack defenseless individuals.

It's a cool idea, but it's also relegated to the background despite being a prevalent arc in the show. This is because American Horror Story can't focus on just one ghost or event per episode; it must SHOW ALL for its viewers, attempting to generate scares at every single turn. This is where American Horror Story seems to forget all of the important rules of horror: scares shouldn't be obvious, and yet they are in the show because the viewer comes to expect something ridiculous to happen before commercial break.

The same goes for "Murder House", which alludes to the ghosts of Constance (Jessica Lange) and Moira (Frances Conroy or Alexandra Breckenridge, depending on the point of view) with another flashback that makes little sense if one actually thinks about it; but American Horror Story is not about thinking, it's about feeling, and perhaps it's that ideal that terrorizes the plots of the show. The characters have yet to pop, besides maybe Violet (Taissa Farmiga) who has an attitude that makes her more attractive than the others. And the lack of focus on one storyline is telling of how many ideas American Horror Story could utilize if it could just harness them into cohesive plots per episode.

Too much of American Horror Story feels set in an alternate universe, where people don't use their scruples, where everything bad happens all the time, where people randomly dig graves, bury bodies in daylight, and then build a gazebo over it in the course of five hours. When the only plotline that tenuously keeps the Harmons in the house is "we're broke, and we can't afford to move, yet I can afford to go to Boston and build a gazebo." This plot hole is so large it's big enough to bury any more bodies the Harmons have to dispose of, and I for one am quite concerned that American Horror Story is already clinging to a frayed rope to explain why the Harmons don't leave the house.

Slash to the Point: If you didn't like the first episode, whether it be for lack of character development, a frenzied and muddled story, or the jump-cut edits that the show loves to use so much, you're not going to be much more enthralled with the next two episodes. The show has gotten a little bit better, a little more settled into its plot arcs, but it's still doing the same type of baiting without explanation that gets all shows of this nature into trouble. The thing is, American Horror Story has set so many traps that it's going to be hard to remember them all, and even more difficult to keep the viewer believing that the Harmons must stay in this haunted house.

Halloween Fifteen #11: Creature from the Haunted Sea (Featuring LGBTerror)

Creature from the Haunted Sea is a fairly early horror film from Roger Corman; like his other films, this science-fiction/crime/horror hybrid is rife with humor, some intentional and some just plain hokey. The thing is, Creature from the Haunted Sea is from 1961, and Corman had released many movies before this one - so taken in that context, the film can seem quite sloppy for a relatively experienced director. Evan from LGBTerror peruses the depths of this campy classic.


LGBTerror's Take

The Creature from the Haunted Sea (1961)

Directed by Roger Corman
Written by Charles B. Griffith
Starring Antony Carbone, Betsy Jones-Moreland, Beech Dickerson (seriously) and Robert Towne

The Creature from the Haunted Sea is not a horror movie. It bounces so often between every other genre—from spy thrillers to wacky romantic comedies—that it completely forgets that it has words like "creature" and "haunted" in the title. If I had to choose one c ategory for this film, it would be a spoof, because the word "satire" is too fancy for a movie involving characters who speak via animal noises.

And typo-riddled captions. 

The main story involves a nerdy narrator going undercover with a bunch of shady characters who are trying to smuggle a trunk of Cuban gold (actual gold, not a fancy type of cigar), when they begin to slowly get picked off one-by-one by a google-eyed sea creature. And by "slowly", I mean "when-will-anything-freaking-happen-in-this-film?" In the grand tradition of title characters like Oscar and The Wizard of Oz, the creature gets about two minutes of screen time. Most of the murders are actually committed by the captain of the expedition, who picks off random Cubans like he was James Bond in Die Another Day. In the end, the creature squares off with the captain, thus teaching everyone a valuable lesson about stealing gold. (I have no idea why the word "haunted" is in the title, unless a couple of the Cubans come back as ghosts.)

Because this film doesn’t attempt to be scary, it doesn’t seem fair to judge it as a horror film. Instead, I'll treat it like the parody film that it is obviously trying to be. For the most part, I appreciated a lot of the humor, particularly the parts that gently mock movie clichés. For example, a character starts randomly singing the obligatory title song about halfway through, but the other characters eventually tell her to stop, because it’s getting distracting. Also, a lot of the voiceovers do a good job of parodying hard-boiled narration that was so trendy back then. A sample line: "It was dusk. I could tell 'cause the sun was going down." Obviously, these aren’t ha-ha laugh-out-loud moments, but they go a long way toward breaking up the monotony of watching people wait around for the world's laziest monster to take some initiative and kill them.

It’s okay that the filmmakers don’t take this story seriously. I’m glad they didn’t. If they did, this movie would be very, very boring. My main problem with this film is that no one takes the characters seriously. All the women fall in love with our leads for absolutely no reason at all. I thought this might be an intentional joke about bad characterization in these types of films, but it really doesn’t come across that way. It comes across as demeaning and dumb. In a similar way, the background Cuban characters have nothing to do except dance with each other and get murdered. Even the main characters are wildly inconsistent from one scene to the next. Movies like this can get away with stupid humor, but only if the jokes are rooted in real behavior. There is no real behavior in The Creature from the Haunted Sea. These characters aren’t even characters. They’re excuses to make jokes and add wacky sound effects. (And don’t get me started on those sound effects. That was the running joke that wouldn’t die.)

So is this film a failure? Not really. I enjoyed myself pretty much the entire time. Unlike similar horror films from this time period, it didn’t have any scenes that seemed overly long and tedious. This is clearly a cheap film, and instead of hiding that fact, they used it to their advantage and made a gentle spoof of cheap genre films. It’s not a good film, but it’s a fun, harmless film. Will I see it again? God no.

The Moon is a Dead World's Take

I would be a bit concerned as well if a cactus walked out of the sea.

Creature from the Haunted Sea is a misleading title for Roger Corman's horror comedy. The creature is rarely featured on-screen, and there's not a haunted sea besides the creature who morosely wanders the depths with his googly eyes and Cookie Monster body. At first, the title is reminiscent of the '50s, the nuclear age of creature-feature films, and so the viewer is presumably thinking that Corman's flick will resemble Creature from the Black Lagoon or Attack of the Giant Leeches (another Corman-produced film).

Audiences will be surprised to find that this is not the case. In fact, Corman begins the film with a spy rendezvous, and a hilarious one at that. Sparks Moran (Robert Towne) is an American spy working to bring down a mafia leader named Renzo (Antony Carbone), and when he's not trying to pinpoint corruption on the Italian's ship, he's carousing with a female spy in a Charlie Chaplin get-up and spouting noir-esque one-liners. He's not as suave as Sam Spade, however, and the cold open is so comically bad that it's one of the best parts of the whole film. One assumes that this was the point, that the scene is being used as a way of making Moran seem amateurish and imbecilic. It works, in a so-bad-it's-good kind of way that can only come about by either devilishly good direction or ironic failure.

The rest of the film isn't as entertaining, however. When we meet Renzo, he's trying to find a way of stealing an immense treasure chest of gold from Cubans while on a ship. His great idea is to create a sea monster by killing off some Cuban soldiers, marking them with plungers and garden rakes, and creating enough anxiety to force the Cubans to sail to where Renzo wants to take them. This plotline is about as holey as my ten-year-old swim trunks, but apparently the Cubans are superstitious enough to believe it.

So Renzo's next big plan is to capsize the boat, swim to shore, and recover the gold chest later. It's another brilliantly bone-headed scheme that just doesn't make a whole lot of sense, seeing as Renzo is forced to kill off the other soldiers anyway. In a very repetitive middle section, Creature from the Haunted Sea finds Renzo diving into the water to search for the gold while he kills off Cubans to make it look like a sea monster attack, only to find that there really is a sea monster in the water that lives to... rake people to death?

It's not really explained or shown how terrible this rake-handed sea monster really is, although we can assume that being clawed to death by a googly-eyed monster is embarrassing enough as it is. The problem with Corman's film is that the sea monster gets limited screentime, despite the eponymous title, and the dread one might feel about the monster is belittled by the terror the viewer feels about having to listen to Betsy Jones-Moreland again as she randomly breaks out into song while being attacked by pirates.

Now this all adds to the B-movie feel of the film, and don't get me wrong, I love stuff that's so pointless and drawn-out that it's silly. I can laugh at that. What I can't get down with in Creature from the Haunted Sea is the amount of fluff thrown into the film, like two of the mafia men finding lovers on a deserted island or a crewmate announcing his assent in the form of barks or chicken squawk. Even at only an hour, Creature from the Haunted Sea (or a more befitting title might be Mafia Guys on the Sea) seems like it drags on for two hours, mostly because of the filler that Corman found important to the plot. It's not - really, it's not.

Slash to the Point: I had a few chuckles with Creature, if only to laugh at how Z-grade much of the film really is. It's certainly not Corman's best - I can't say whether it's his worst, either. But it is quite sloppy, most notably the bland cue-card that announces the title of the film. And moreso, it tends to drop its satirical tone during the middle of the film and replaces it with dull, irrelevant scenes that only limit the creature's appearances even more. More creature hauntings, please, and less animal sounds!

Creature from the Haunted Sea on Rotten Tomatoes

Halloween Fifteen #10: Perkins' 14 (Featuring Son of Celluloid)

Craig Singer has now had two movies featured under After Dark's 8 Films to Die For moniker - Dark Ride, which premiered at the 2006 festival, and now Perkins' 14, a significantly different attraction. The 8 Films to Die For series is known for being relatively hit-or-miss, and so just because a movie makes it to that venue doesn't mean it's a good movie. So I asked Son of Celluloid to check out Perkins' 14, to become one of Perkins' little fiends. Let's see what he took away from it - and don't you dare call them zombies.


Son of Celluloid's Take

First of all I’d like to say that it’s a pleasure to take part in the Halloween 15. I’ve wanted to participate in a Viewer Vomit for a while, but I was always either too busy or didn’t have access to a copy of the flick. So, when I saw that Perkins 14 was on the Halloween 15 list, I jumped on it. Recently a bunch of Ballbuster Video stores closed in my area, and I raided the horror sections. Among those I picked up was this flick. I had never heard of it, but it was only a dollar since it didn’t have a cover so I figured “what the hell do I have to lose?” Then it proceeded to sit in my “movies I need to get around to” stack. That stack is way too big by the way. This was the perfect motivation to dust it off.

Sheriff’s Deputy Dwayne Hopper of Stone Cove, Maine has some serious problems. Today is the 10th anniversary of the abduction of his son, Kyle, his marriage is falling apart, his daughter is a pseudo mall goth who is trying to bed the local bad boy musician, and he just discovered that Ronald Perkins, one of the prisoners sitting in his holding cells, is actually the Stone Cove Killer. Ten years ago Perkins abducted 14 children, including…guess who… Kyle. It turns out, however, that the 14 children are still alive. In retaliation for the authorities’ failure to properly investigate his parent’s murder when he was a child, Perkins has drugged and brainwashed the kids, creating mindless killing machines. When Hal, another officer, investigates Perkins’ house, he accidentally lets the 14 savage teens out of their cages, unleashing them to wreak havoc on the town. Will Hopper and his family survive the night? Can he kill his own son if he was to? Is there still good in him? Will indy filmmakers ever move past the Saw-esque “over saturated blue, yellow, and darkness” color scheme?

There are few things more disappointing than when a movie has a great premise and a lot of things going for it, but can’t bring it all together and ends up just being OK. I would almost rather the movie just whole-heartedly suck than be half good. That way there wouldn’t be hints of the great flick it should have been to tease us. What a premise this one had, too. A man kidnaps a bunch of kids, jacks them up on PCP, screws with their heads for 10 years, and unleashes them upon a sleepy little town. With an idea like that, how can you lose? Well, I wouldn’t exactly say this film lost, as there’s a lot to like here, but it didn’t exactly live up to the promise of that killer setup either.

The script is both the biggest strength and the biggest flaw in the film. The movie is paced almost perfectly. The first third lays out the story in a measured, suspenseful way. When the kids get let out, it shifts into a chase through the city for the middle part. Then the final third is spent in the besieged police station. It builds for just the right amount of time without ever letting up on the action for long enough to get bored. Also, like I said, the central idea is a winner. The focus is all wrong, though. It should have been much more about Perkins and his brainwashed brood than the uninteresting Hopper family. The dialog is god awful. Listen to the scene of the teens in the graveyard. Those lines will have you laughing ‘til you cry. Plus, the characters are stupid and the plot holes are huge. The daughter’s response to someone raising a machete/saw thing (which is a very cool weapon) is to, and I’m not kidding here, sit down, cover her head, and scream. During October I’m doing a countdown on my blog of the 31 dumbest things ever done in a horror flick, and that could easily be on that list. There are only 14 assailants, yet the family, plus the wannabe rock star and another cop, hole up in the station like it’s the damn zombie apocalypse. There are 14 of them! Why not just arm themselves to the teeth and go take care of the problem? Well, apparently there are no guns, or weapons of any kind, stored in this police station. Um, what? The downer ending is not at all what I was expecting, and I dug it a lot.

For the most part, the acting is pretty mediocre, with a couple of notable exceptions. Patrick O’Kane as Hopper is hilariously overwrought. If overacting is “chewing the scenery,” then this guy is a chronic masticator. He spends a lot of time in this flick making the open mouthed “Noooooooooooo” face into the camera in slow motion. It’s not bad in the “nails on a chalkboard” sense. It’s in the “so bad it’s enormously entertaining” sense. He also has good onscreen chemistry with Richard Brake, who plays Ronald Perkins. Brake gives far and away the best performance in the flick. He has the quiet, sleazy, articulate, chilling menace thing down. He reminded me a little bit of Jackie Earl Haley as the pre-flambé Freddy. The rest of the cast aren’t really good or bad, they’re just kind of there. They might as well be props. One of the selling points of the film, and one of the things I was most interested in, was the debut performance of Michale Graves, horror punk pretty boy and singer for the “Resurrection” era Misfits. It’s not his film debut. He’s appeared with The Misfits in a few films, including George Romero’s Bruiser. It was his debut as part of the actual cast. He has yet to make his “acting” debut, however, if you catch my drift.

Director Craig Singer (Dark Ride) has become much more competent behind a camera since his early work, but he falls too often into that cliché “shaky cam and rapid fire editing” trap that lame modern horror so frequently relies on. He likes strobe lights too. A lot. In fact, most of the action during the second half of the film is so hard to make out that you’re not really sure what’s going on until they show the aftermath. He busts out some really great moments now and then though. A man gets beaten to death with a flashlight, which is providing the only light in the pitch darkness. It looks awesome. There is a shot when someone takes a bullet that I would describe as “Tarantino meets EC comics.” It looks awesome. He keeps the camera still for a brutal scene where a man gets his face beaten into goo with a champagne bottle. It too looks awesome. There are moments like that sprinkled throughout the movie. Even during one of the “camera is shaking so bad I can’t tell what the hell is going on” scenes, he intersperses freeze frames of the action into the convoluted mess. It does not look awesome, but I give him credit for at least trying something unique.

One other thing that should be commended is the gore. For the first half of the film I was wondering if we would ever get any of the red stuff. In the second half, however, they deliver. In addition to the afore mentioned face goo-ification, there’s a cool disemboweling, a shotgun dismemberment, ocular trauma, and some other meaty goodies. It looks like it was primarily practical effects too. The filmmakers are to be highly commended for that…even if the blood looks a little too much like Hershey’s strawberry syrup at times.

Random Thought #1: I thought he called him “The Stone Cold Killer” at first. “That’s a pretty cool name,” I thought. Then I thought he referred to himself as being from the “Stone Cold PD.” I wondered if Steve Austin or Brian Bosworth was going to make a cameo. Maybe Queen would do Stone Cold Crazy. Then I put two and two together, remembering the big “Stone Cove” sign they kept showing. I felt like a stone cold moron.

Random Thought #2: I wonder if they have a Cold Stone Creamery in Stone Cove. Can you imagine having to answer the phone “Stone Cove Cold Stone Creamery, can I help you” all day? There’s no way you could spit that out correctly in the middle of a busy shift.

Random Thought #3: “Blackbird” is not one of Graves’ better songs.

Random Thought #4: I have seen some people refer to this as a zombie film. Dammit, for the last time people, if it hasn’t died and come back, it isn’t a freakin’ zombie. End of story.

Overall, despite it’s flaws, Perkins 14 achieves the one thing a movie must do above everything, be entertaining. As far as the After Dark Horror Fest flicks go, it’s one of the better ones. I’ve definitely seen worse, and I’d be willing to bet that you have too. You don’t have to love bad movies like I do to dig it, there’s plenty of good stuff on display. Enjoy the gore, some cool shots, and one of the more original ideas in recent years, laugh at the acting, and don’t sweat the small stuff. A dollar well spent. Thank you for getting me to finally watch it Ryne. One severed thumb up. Nathan says check it out and HAPPY HALLOWEEN EVERYBODY!

The Moon is a Dead World's Take

Just another day of Michale Graves being Michale Graves.

Craig Singer's Dark Ride was a fun ride, mostly because it took a conventional slasher film and threw it in an amusement park's carnival ride. Movies like The Funhouse had done this before, but something about Singer's portrayal of the dark inner haunts of the ride made the film pop for me - especially the way that he made everything seem more raucous than a normal slasher. Singer attempts to do the same thing with Perkins' 14, though in a different way; he tries to reanimate the zombie genre (albeit they're not zombies, as Son of Celluloid points out above) by giving the monsters a new backstory.

All of this revolves around creating a sick pervert in the form of Ronald Perkins (Richard Brake), who has been kidnapping children and torturing them in his basement for ten years. Our twisted psychopath happens to get arrested in the town of Stone Cove, and the sheriff on duty for the night, Dwayne (Patrick O'Kane) happens to be a man who lost his son to the Stone Cove kidnapper. Well, Dwayne puts his detective-work to the test by researching Perkins' 14 kidnappings and discovering the rabid kids in his basement. From there, Perkins' 14 becomes a test of survival as the kids have developed a taste for human flesh and begin to terrorize the town.

The beginning of the film is one of the weaker aspects of its story, as not a ton of plot seems to happen and its unnatural build meanders through Dwayne's ambiguous flashbacks. It does give us a chance to observe the familial pattern within Dwayne's life, getting to know his detached demeanor at home and the strained relationships he has after his son's disappearance. But it's also clumsily done, tedious and somewhat cluttered until Perkins eventually makes his way to the forefront of the suspect list.

And before the crazed kids escape their imprisonment, much of the plot with Dwayne's daughter lacks focus. She goes off to party with Misfits' previous band member Michale Graves (who, we can safely assume, is about twenty years older than her), and her role in the whole thing is tenuous until Dwayne finally meets up with her halfway through the film.

But Singer does a good job of developing the backstory behind the kids, making them a symbol of adult corruption, social injustice, and all that jazz that relates to forgetting about the kids in our political system. We could also make a case for their rebellion against the forces that seem to limit them, although Singer doesn't provide enough detail to fully develop that idea and there's not a strong motive or explanation for the kids' attacks besides a ton of chemical PCP. Instead, Singer leaves it to the viewer to decide what Perkins did to the kids.

But he does provide a head-scratching explanation for his own actions. His parents were killed when he was young, and their death was not prevented by police or rescuers. So now, his motive in life is to kidnap children and use them against the parents, and then mock the parents for forgetting about their kids when the search has failed. To me, this retribution feels really forced and quite unbelievable, because frankly, it just doesn't make a whole lot of sense why Perkins feels the need to punish people for a vengeance they don't even understand. Maybe Singer is trying to show just how insane Perkins is, though. I guess it could work that way.

The other big problem with Perkins' 14 is the latter scriptwriting, which is fraught with strange character decisions and huge plot holes. It's difficult to imagine why locking your child into a jail cell and then taking the keys would be a good idea, you know, in case you die and she no longer has a way to get out... Or the fact that they send a woman without a gun to find keys for a car in the police department. That they even want to leave the police department in the first place is a mystery since there's only fourteen kids and two or three are already dead, but props to Singer for sticking to that idea.

The thing is, knowing that there are only fourteen kids makes the film somehow less threatening, even when the characters are being bombarded with attacks. Because we know that there's only a set amount of attackers, when one or two try to eat the characters' brains, they seem like target practice. They've got guns, the sheriff should certainly know how to use it, and it seems like fourteen comatose kids should be a smaller threat than they really are.

We've yet to talk of the acting, which is really hit-or-miss. The minor stock characters are generally the focal points of shoddy acting, although Patrick O'Kane doesn't do a whole lot better, even when he gets to plead and beg for his son to remember him. There's a reason Michale Graves is a musician and not an actor, except, after seeing him play the guitar and sing along, I can't really justify either. The best display is Richard Brake as Perkins, who really nails that pedophile aura almost a bit too naturally.

Slash to the Point: There are certain times where Perkins' 14 really nails the subtleties of the zombie genre, but getting there is almost a chore in itself. And the script really starts to go downhill in crucial moments, meaning the film uses the cliches of stupid characters as a way to advance the plot. There's nothing wrong with the film as an entertaining flick for a chill October night, but for a film based on a kidnapping plot, it's not strong enough to capture a good deal of viewers.

Perkins' 14 on Rotten Tomatoes

Halloween Fifteen #9: Wolf Creek (Featuring The Horror Canon)

Greg McLean made his big horror movie debut with Wolf Creek, a slasher film that resembles its forefathers in many different respects. But the title gained a lot of fans for its unexpected twists and turns, along with its gruesome depiction of torture that heightened the already-taut suspense. The Horror Canon camps out with Wolf Creek to see if it's worth the trip.


The Horror Canon's Take

Ryne over at The Moon Is A Dead World has devised a plan so cunning so as to entertain us throughout the entire month of October. It's called The Halloween Fifteen, and surely this is the "We Are The World" of the horror blogging community. My humble part in this extravagant plot is to simply review the film Wolf Creek.

All told, Wolf Creek really is a simple story: Three adventure-hungry youths take on the isolated Wolf Creek Crater in Western Australia. They become stranded there, far from anything remotely resembling civilization. Help arrives in the form of friendly Australian gentleman, Mick. As soon as Mick is trusted, it is revealed that he, well, should NOT have been trusted.

Director Greg Mclean is the captain of this ship. He begins the film at a leisurely pace and let's things meander as we get to know the cast. We see excessive pool partying, excessive drinking, and excessive flirting. All this serves to introduce us to the 3 main leads:

Ben, the confident yet sensitive city boy, who may or may not have a crush on Liz. 

Liz, the resourceful and quick-witted life of the party, who may or may not have a crush on Ben.

Kristy, the wet blanket/third wheel, who may or may not be bitter that she's boyfriend-less on this outing. 

Group shot!

As the film progresses, we are treated to many Australian locales, from the suburbs to the highways, a hole-in-the-wall bar to the sprawling plains. Visually there is a lot to take in, which is impressive considering the sparseness the film maker is trying to convey. And once we get to the heart of the story, the film does a great job of portraying the middle-of-nowhere helplessness of the characters effectively.

I mentioned the slower pace of the first hour or so. It's intentional, and never feels like the film maker was lost to what he was doing. It was the right way to set this story up. We spend time with these three characters, and we are able to identify and empathize with them. By the time we see bad stuff happening to these good people we've spent enough time with them to feel that they deserve to survive this nightmare.

I won't go into all the intricacies of the story. Watching how things unfold is half of the fun. Having said that, the story is not what's important here. The real meat of the film is in its performances, and misdirection of the audience. Each cast member gives their all (with a slightly off-putting turn by the male lead toward the end) and is fairly believable in their reactions to their new found stress. But the real star of the show is John Jarratt, who plays Mick. He's fucking RELENTLESS:

Geez, and this picture is from one of his more tame moments. Mick can play friendly, menacing and creepy all in the same scene. In scenes where he is in full on Crazy Mick mode, it's underlined by the fact that he is always in control of his actions. Not once is he unaware of what is happening around him, and his actions are precisely calculated. Mick is a hunter, and he does this to people because he can, plain and simple. And that laugh of his is haunting... 

There are several sly misdirections from the director. One precedes the 'head-on-a-stick' scene. One happens toward the end on a lonely stretch of highway. I don't want to give them away because they are pretty effective. There are many scenes where the leads seem to be making progress and then things blow up in their faces. It's the typical 'one step forward, two steps back' scenario, but it works well in this film and keeps the viewer unnerved. 

At one point, this kind, old man shows up, but isn't really any help to anyone. His intentions were pure, but let's just say he won't be attending the annual Gorton's convention this year...

When all is said and done, the slow build first hour is a great set up for the bat-shit INSANE finale. The movie poster claims this was based on true events, but I'm not aware of the supposed real life incident, so I can't comment on that. What I do know is despite a bit of a weak ending, this movie will make you give pause the next time a stranger offers you help. 

Here are a few things I took note of while watching the film: 

-the travelling montage while not boring, is quite forgettable.
-the locals at the bar worked hard at making us hate them, but nothing came of it.
-'head-on-a-stick' is largely effective because Mick is explaining what he's doing to his victim.
-not only in America, but old men wear funny hats in Australia too (refer to above photo)
-only 5 cast members that have names in this film, and 19 actors listed as "Pool Party People."

In closing: 

Wouldn't you trust him? He seems harmless enough, doesn't he? (WARNING: If you answered 'Yes' to either of these questions, it is very likely that you have been, or will be, one of Mick's many victims).

The Moon is a Dead World's Take

I know what you're thinking: yes, it is a sequel to Dances With Wolves

It's a difficult task to come up with a slasher film that throws the old conventions out the window. When you think of the plot of a normal slasher film, there's not too much to change about what happens - one can alter the characters, change the setting, introduce a different type of killer, but for the most part, characters go someplace, they get killed, and one survives.

Greg McLean attempts to change the formula a bit with Wolf Creek. For the majority of the film, the plot is relatively the same thing as most slashers - we get three characters who head out on a road trip to the titular Wolf Creek meteorite site in the desert, where they camp out, break down, and get picked up by a mysterious stranger from the outback. But McLean spaces all of this out by allowing the characters to interact, almost improvisationally, without much interference.

So the first half of the film is rather slow, but it's a defined pace. McLean allows his characters to branch out, to become more than just stock characters who go through their motions as humans and then die. Granted, there are only three main characters to work with, so Wolf Creek allows a lot of space for each of them to have their own individuality.

At first we see the three partying, an elongated opening before the beginning credits that exposes these characters to the regularities of life. Before they head out to Wolf Creek, they live their lives like most twenty-somethings - drinking and partying, with the occasional bout of flirting. It doesn't necessarily work that well to open the film, as the extended open feels too long and overdrawn to be truly effective. But it does feel like McLean is working towards something more than two-dimensional characters, and it's a fact that if he didn't include these little vignettes, viewers would complain they didn't know the characters enough. It's a double-edged sword, and I'd rather have a couple of boring moments than find that the characters on the screen could be relative strangers.

The slow pace allows McLean to develop a sense of suspense throughout, especially after the three meet Mick (John Jarratt). There's something off about him from the get-go, and his character is expertly portrayed by Jarratt. Small subtleties like facial expression and pregnant silences make Wolf Creek electrified during its middle portion, where Jarratt seems to get offended at minor things. When the characters wake up chained after their campfire, it's not really a surprise, but more like revelation that Mick is not as nice as he seems to be.

It's the latter half of Wolf Creek that tends to wear down the viewer, thanks to some strange plot contrivances that leave the viewer wondering why their new friends are so stupid. It's nice to see that the women in the film are not as weak as they appear in other slasher films; in fact, they are our point of view for the majority of the film. However, that hopefulness means that the viewer is let down when they make some egregious mistakes, including lingering around Mick's campsite when they could be running away, or thinking that Mick will forgetfully leave his keys in the car every time they attempt to find a car.

It's interesting how McLean structures the film, because he leaves the fate of the lone man Ben (Nathan Phillips) up in the air until the end of the movie. Perhaps this is because Ben escapes, another convention routed by McLean's twisting plot. But it also feels pushed away from the viewer, and we never even get a glimpse of Ben when the other two are trying to run away.

Slash to the Point: Wolf Creek is a very slow burn, and it's not recommended to viewers who need their action to happen immediately. It almost feels as though the film has no conclusion in mind; however, that's not the case, as McLean knows exactly how he wants the viewer to feel at every turn. The film redefines slasher conventions, toying with escape plans, setting, and even final characters. But it also slacks off in its finale with characters making some really implausible decisions, meaning that it will leave the viewer yelling at the television screen in frustration. At least you're engaged, though.

Wolf Creek on Rotten Tomatoes

Book Review - A Hidden Affair by Pam Jenoff

A Hidden Affair is the sequel to Pam Jenoff's earlier novel Almost Home, although it's tough to see that right away. When one cracks open the novel, there's a feeling that Jenoff's character Jordan has done things before - that there have been experiences and plots that the reader has yet to see, and Jenoff certainly writes in a style that enhances that relationship between reader and character.

It is, however, not as easy to penetrate Jordan's world without knowing about her first story. Jenoff drops little tidbits of information and assumes that the reader will know what she's talking about; there are hints of Jordan's previous experiences and references to people we don't really know, like Sebastian and his treachery. It's not a bad thing, but it also feels a bit offputting to new readers in the series. There's a difference between referencing the prior novel and expecting the reader to have read it, and Jenoff sometimes oversteps the boundary.

A Hidden Affair sounds more Harlequin romance-esque than it is. The overarching plot deals with Jordan, a government agent, attempting to find her college sweetheart Jared after she learns that he's not dead; the story expands from there by incorporating a black market wine sale that draws a Mosaad agent named Ari into the mix and threatens Jordan's life.

For the most part, A Hidden Affair is a bland wild goose chase with romantic elements interspersed throughout. Jordan's search takes her to various European countries, and along the way she's thrown off the scent by Jared's new wife Nicole. From there, she meets Ari, falls in love with him while still harboring feelings for the married-with-children Jared, and eventually seeks closure from him by confronting him about why he left.

The most intriguing part of this whole affair is the wine hunt, which finally brings a bit of action to the plot by adding a bunch of Italian thugs. But the entire wine search is hastily thrown together, and it feels like Jenoff includes it exclusively to both a) provide some interesting twists for the reader and b) give Jordan a real reason to wonder if Jared will take her back.

This is the real problem I had with A Hidden Affair - the fact that Jordan pursues Jared over so much territory and through all the danger for a chance at closure with him. It's just not very believable, especially after she learns that Jared has a wife and child that he loves. Let him be! my senses were screaming. Jordan's motivations are weak, and the questioning she does about why she's chasing after Jared shows how conflicted Jenoff is with her character. There's no clear reason at the end of the novel just what Jordon got out of finding Jared besides a bit of closure and a feeling in her heart that she still could love this dude, and I'm not convinced there ever is closure in this situation.

The writing is good, though, and Jenoff clearly has talent writing imagery and well-drawn metaphor. Her prose is concise, intelligent, and very readable. It's her characters that need a bit of work; Ari feels underwhelming even after the intimate times we spend with him, and the same with Jared, who still feels like a ghost even after we meet him.

Slash to the Point: A strongly written novel about a rather boring subject, A Hidden Affair focuses too much on the chase, one that is not believable enough to hold the reader's attention. Jenoff is unable to give Jordan a genuine reason for her search besides closure, and the lack of character motivation results in a novel that feels like it's hiding something from the reader - a pulse. And even at the final conclusion, the realism of the novel fades into explosions of ridiculous proportion that sink the boat.

Halloween 2011: Movie Review - Scream 4

It's tough to come back to a series ten years after the last release, especially when the series was already a pretty concise trilogy. But Wes Craven has always had that longing for nostalgia; just look at his return to Elm Street in New Nightmare, which was a metafictional journey back into Freddy's dream world that actually worked very well. Craven does the same thing with Scream 4, bringing the viewer back into Sidney's (Neve Campbell) traumatic life after her battle with three Ghostface killers. And this time, the metafiction returns with a new set of rules for the fourth film.

The premise works fairly well despite its simplicity - Sydney returns to her hometown for a book-signing on the anniversary of the attacks, and a new Ghostface begins to ravage the town. Craven incorporates new teens to slaughter by adding Sidney's niece Jill (Emma Roberts) into the equation, a popular teen who befriends a bunch of horror lovers holding a "Stab" movie party in an abandoned barn. Of course Dewey (David Arquette) and Gale (Courteney Cox) return as well, although much less a part of the film than they used to be in the previous installments.

Scream 4 toys with its viewers right from the start, with not one but two gag scares set within the fake "Stab" movies. It's a little conceited to play it like this from the start, but right away it's apparent that Scream 4 is making fun of itself and all horror movies in its depiction of "Stab." "Stab" is a direct correlation to horror movies and their "ripped from the headlines" taglines; the "Stab" scares only help to put this fact into perspective, that what we're watching is borderline reality but not quite.

It's this playfulness that makes Scream 4 such a fun movie to watch. It's never taking itself as seriously as most horror movies, and even the rules of the new generation - the horror remake - mock the genre and the movie too. So when things don't necessarily make sense in Scream 4, or when things get corny, it's easier to blame it on the tongue-in-cheek attitude Craven brings to the film.

And overall, the movie does play out like your average slasher, with throwbacks to the original: a garage-door slaying, real footage from the first "Stab" film, the juxtaposition between Sidney at Jill's age and her niece's actions, the subtle twists of events throughout the series. It's certainly a fan's movie, and it does attract older viewers by recognizing the previous installments.

But then it gets tricky by throwing in some really neat surprises, things that the rules might not agree with. Craven and returning writer Kevin Williamson are not ready to dish out a completely unoriginal script, even with the humor that rags on the horror genre. Instead, Scream 4 not only highlights the cliches within horror, it also tries to outdo them at all times.

It does a fairly good job, although at times the plot tends to fade into a slow burn. If you've seen a Scream film, you'll know what to expect from Ghostface's murders - stabbings, and lots of them. But there's also a brutality to Scream 4, one that used to shine through in the older films. When Ghostface stabs Deputy Perkins (Anthony Anderson) in the head, the killer watches as Perkins staggers and blubbers around with his knife-wound lobotomy. It's good to see that Craven hasn't lost touch of the gorier side of horror, and it gives the film a dual moods - both darkly comic and horrific.

Slash to the Point: While there are some areas where Scream 4 doesn't live up to the series' stronger areas, it's a surprisingly successful sequel that comes after years of updates to the horror genre. Most notably, Scream 4 has made sure to advance with new horror, and Wes Craven is back to the directorial tricks that made him one of the most popular directors in the genre.

Scream 4 on Rotten Tomatoes

Halloween 2011: Movie Review - Night of the Demons (2010)

The idea of a Night of the Demons remake is not a surprise; held in cult esteem, the original was rife with potential remake qualities that could draw new blood or anger those who loved the first. It's this dissent that remakes use for their publicity anyway; what better way to draw attention to a film than the qualms of an entire generation of older viewers?

But it's apparent that while Night of the Demons takes some ideas from its source, it's more comparable to its current brethren in the horror field. Flashy special effects, loads of partying, and mentally deficient kids who seem less like students and more like hospital coma-ward patients are the norm here, and while that's not too different from slasher flicks from the '80s, the difference in the new Night of the Demons is the total lack of personality in the characters.

The film is populated by the stereotypical hot people - the girls who seem to not realize that they don't just have to settle for the normal frat goofs, the guys whose machismo overpowers their handsome qualities. It is perhaps not the actors' faults that their characters are so flat-headed and dull; even Shannon Elizabeth in a sexy goth 'do can't save Angela from being one of the most stereotypical and lifeless characters in the film. This is strange, too, because Angela is the focal point of the Night of the Demons series. Here, Angela is a shell of a monster at best, and it's only icing on the terrible-tasting cake when she starts frenching heterosexual women and performing various acts of lesbianism with a (ridiculously fake) ample-bosomed woman.

There's also enough nudity to last you for two movies; if women aren't taking their clothes off for sex, they make exceptions by posturing their cleavage in exaggerated shows. I'm not complaining, of course, because I quite enjoy a nice set - simply, though, it's not necessary. The same is true of the game of spin the bottle we're subjected to, or the anal sex that turns Lily (Diora Baird) into a demon. It's hilarious, and possibly that's the point. But it also feels like a little boy's fantasy.

Yet even after all of that, I couldn't help but have fun with Night of the Demon's rampant sexuality and stylized partying. Maybe the only reason this is so is because it all takes place on Halloween night. Or perhaps it's because after a while, I finally let my inner child take hold, reveled in the immaturity of it all.

Slash to the Point: I'll say this - Night of the Demons is not a very good movie from a conventional standpoint, but it is a lot of fun, especially if one likes outlandish gore and big boobs. It's funny that the people in the film are ones that I would normally hate in reality; however, the fact that they're terrorized might be one of the reasons why I found pleasure in the film.

Night of the Demons on Rotten Tomatoes

Halloween Fifteen #8: Hostel (Featuring Dr. Terror's Blog of Horrors)

Torture porn owes a big thank-you to Hostel, which took ultraviolence to a new level with its mental and physical abuse on its characters. Eli Roth's film probably gained a lot of fans just by having Quentin Tarantino's name on the poster, but he had also gotten quite a following from Cabin Fever, which was invigoratingly fresh for the horror genre. With Hostel, Roth sought to expose the animalistic tendencies of human beings by crafting a film that plays on Americans' fear of foreigners (gasp!) and their undying love of pot, booze, and giant bazongas. Dr. Jimmy Terror takes on a trip to Slovakia to show just how similar Roth's film is to the actual country.


Dr. Terror's Blog of Horror's Take

ELI ROTH’S HOSTEL: Slovakia is for Lovers

When the tourism board for the country of Slovakia saw Eli Roth’s masterpiece, Hostel, they invited him on a trip to their country to prove that it was not the undeveloped homicide –for-cash capitalism capital of the world. That an entire country has acknowledged Roth’s film in this way forces you to think that the words “torture porn” underwhelm this cinematic sledgehammer. Some see this film as simply a means to a clever kill but to have incensed so many so quickly there must be a bit more under the hood. Mr. Roth has repeatedly stated that the movie is in no way designed as an actual representation of the life and times of modern Slovakia and that tourism would not be discouraged in the slightest. In his eyes people still go to Texas even though they’ve seen The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, so who wouldn’t want to visit Slovakia? He also asserts that most Americans don’t even know where Slovakia is… Do you know where it is? Think real hard. Ever play the Wii version of Trivial Pursuit in which you need to put a push pin where a certain geographic location might be? Could you accurately mark the spot where humans are murdered for cash on the barrel head? This brings us to the fulcrum of our discussion: Slovakia, The Slovak Republic.

Above we find a map of the Slovak Republic shown in red smack dab in the center of Europe. According to Wikipedia, “Slovakia is a high-income advanced economy with one of the fastest growth rates in the European Union,” which pretty much forces the reader to question why Eli Roth would choose an advanced nation for his undeveloped tail of humanity at its worst and most money hungry? I’m sure it’s the same reason we all think that every horror film ever made should be set in Transylvania. To people in the United States country of Slovakia might as well be Never Never Land; not because they down play its significance, but because it’s a place that truly does not exist for them as they haven’t been there. It’s the very same people you can use Transylvania so successfully. Yeah, we get the whole Dracula/Vlad Dracul shtick, but aside from its bloody history, Wallachia is a pretty beautiful tourist place; you call it Romania… by the way, Wallachia is for Lovers.

Need a place to stay while visiting Slovakia? I think these guys can help: HOSTEL Bookers.com

While it’s a prospering nation at present with its industry focusing on car manufacture and electrical engineering, Slovakia has a somewhat sorted past. It was under the bastion of communism for quite some time, essentially keeping its growth stunted under heavy bureaucratic watch. Once freed from communism in 1989 and separated from its symbiotic brother country the Czech Republic, it began to prosper. Unemployment peaked at nearly twenty percent, but would eventually stabilize under the European Union. Also, Slovakia is at least partially bordered by the Carpathian Mountains which sound scary, are referenced in Ghost Busters 2 and, of course, are home to yes… Transylvania. Communism. Late 80’s underdevelopment with people starving for capitalism and practically Romania and/or Transylvania; Welcome to your setting, kiddies.

Let’s talk a little about Hostel for a moment; the Hostel beyond its setting and beyond the youth domicile. You all know the story right? A couple of young bucks go to Europe, backpacking and enjoying the party of post modern Bohemian living. It begins as a tale of complete indulgence. The boobs flow like water. The pot smokes itself. If you were looking for a finer story in which to insert your moral kick in the butt, this would be it. The protagonists start off on a carefree adventure and eventually follow their genitalia to a Slovak village where sexual desire is akin to breathing. Soon all goes askew. A friend disappears. People get drugged and the hunt is on to regroup and get the heck outta Dodge. Unfortunately for a our fun loving, uncommon-sensed friends, it’s too later and the Hostel they’ve checked into turns into the procurement counter for a savage game of capitalism, unchecked personal aggression and a homicidal resort for the Robin Leach set, Lifestyles of the Rich and Homicidal. Queue gore. Thrust. Repeat.

Maybe the Pepsi Challenge will help. Here’s the video put out by the Slovak Republic’s Tourism Bureau:



Not too shabby. Now here's how Eli Roth would have you think of Slovakia.

So does Slovakia work for everyone after reading our chamber of commerce bulletin? I think it’s safe to say the country has come a long way, but that its sorted past makes it perfect for film fodder. There’s no reason to think that strange murderous folks with disgusting obsessions do not lurk behind doors across the globe. I guess the real question is whether or not places like the murder factory in Hostel really exist in Europe or elsewhere. I think it’s safe to say that human trafficking is fairly prevalent. Just look at the US/Mexico border and the horrors that await unsuspecting migrant workers looking for a better life, but end up baked in the hot sun by inexperienced people herders. It certainly isn’t a far reach to think that people can find reasons to hurt other people anywhere in the world from teenagers picking on the strange Goth kid with the painted fingers to little girls with circumcised genitalia. I suppose that Roddy McDowall in his infamous Twilight Zone appearance said it best, “People really are alike all over”. 

So Hostel is a good gross out. It’s a movie that encompasses the later history of the rise of the Slovak Republic (without realizing it). If you only watch it about half way through the film you might even say it’s a better tourism video than the one included in this blog. Who wants to see art and culture when you can see boob and smoke grass? 

And this from straight from the tourism website itself: 

"The only thing I know about Slovakia is what I learned first-hand from your foreign minister, who came to Texas." – then Governor George W. Bush

So I guess Eli Roth was right about the whole Texas Chainsaw Massacre bit, but I wonder if that foreign minister had seen the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The world may never know.

 -Dr. Jimmy Terror
DR. TERROR’S BLOG OF HORRORS

Moral: Enjoy Hostel Responsibly. Friends don’t let friends backpack across Europe and get suckered into murder fantasies by sex pots.

For further info on Slovakina tourism, please follow go HERE

The Moon is a Dead World's Take

Roth knows how to make things kinky.

First of all, there are some fans of horror who believe that all you need for a good horror flick is exposed breasts, drugs, and lots of violence. And they're free to continue believing that those aspects of horror are the most important; but they're also missing out on the bigger picture of what horror can do to the individual on a more profound level. Hostel may at first seem like Eli Roth is working within the smaller former spectrum, especially since it begins with an ample amount of boozing, shmoozing, and more sex than a softcore porn film. But the unevenness of our three characters tends to set in after they begin to experience the terrors of hardcore partying within Slovakia, and it even translates well to their characters too.


Yes, Hostel does seem quite easy to boil down: take three men traveling in Europe, get them doped, laid, and aroused at first, then lay into them with scalpels and other cutting instruments in the latter half to spill the extreme amount of blood needed to sate fans. This is what Eli Roth does, and it's a formula that's worked for him for three movies now. But Hostel does seem to have a point to all of this bacchanalia once it's put into greater perspective.

A quote from The Dutch Businessman (Jan Vlasák) first signals the approach of a thematic message: paraphrasing, he says that humans have often lost their connection to their food, that living things have died for us to eat them. And though it does pertain to his own meat consumption, it highlights the animals in all of humanity - we kill, perhaps not recreationally as the murderers in Hostel do, but for food at least. Eli Roth tries to draw a line in the sand where he intentionally crosses it throughout the film.

Because however much the audience wants to relate to our main protagonists, their mission on their backpacking trip - to smoke and lay as much as possible - is also an animalistic tendency, no matter the difference between the hunters and the hunted. And these guys aren't exactly saints, either; Roth highlights their homophobic nature, the sketchy morals that allow them to bang chicks and then leave them the next night, or the fact that Oli would like to have sex with a woman who may or may not be in a coma. This characterization happens thanks to the beginning; sure it's debauchery and it probably attracted a lot of people (men) to the film, but it also says something about the guys we're rooting for.

The second half is mostly grotesque bouts of torture as the film switches point of view to Paxton (Jay Hernandez). The shift in perspective is the most jarring thing about Hostel, and it's not done in the swiftest of ways; Paxton has never been the focal point up until this point, and Roth hasn't done enough development to ensure the audience will follow along. But it ends up working because it does seem as though Paxton is the most level-headed of the group, and it's realistic to assume he could work his way out of the mess.

Roth gives us gore galore, with some suspenseful shots that force the viewer to guess what's happening. The screams, the lingering shots, the pictures of various bloody tools, all set the mood for the grim realization of death and destruction. And I'll hand it to Roth for attempting to stay away from the graphic nature of some of the sequences. But ultimately Hostel is still a brutal movie in a way that exaggerates the extremities of violence.

It makes one question why the hell they're watching the madness in the first place. Perhaps this is not the intent from Roth, but this questioning is sort of a metafictional theme for Hostel. If we're watching these people commit these killings for fun, what does that say about us in terms of torturers and madmen? Are we just as bad, baring our animalistic tendencies for all to see? This message works well in Hostel because we do get that earlier juxtaposition between humans and animals; otherwise, that metafiction might not be so apparent.

Slash to the Point: One can say a lot of negative things about Hostel: that it promotes murder, that it's violent and sexualized for the sake of it; but there's a lot to be said about what Eli Roth is trying to say about us as a culture, and here, much more than the sequel to Hostel, Roth makes that statement by emphasizing exactly the things we like to see - and then he leaves you toying with the notion of why we want to see them.

Hostel on Rotten Tomatoes