Thursday, January 31, 2013

Made in Canada

There seems to be a lot of hype, lately, concerning Jen and Sylvia Soska's latest picture, American Mary.

And it's WELL-FUCKING DESERVED!  I have been waiting to see this for AGES and I finally broke down and bought the blu-ray and had it shipped from the UK.  I'm REALLY fucking glad that I didn't waste my money on this.  It MORE than makes up for Texas Chainsaw 3D.



After their insane romp through Action-Movie-Land in Dead Hooker In a Trunk the Twisted Twins were recognized as the new mistresses of gore.  I don't think (and I kind of don't hope) that we will get a sequel to Dead Hooker but American Mary cements the sisters as the leaders of the pack in the new generation of horror directors and reaffirms Katherine Isabelle (Ginger Snaps) as the best Canadian export since Yukon Jack.

These two.  Such madness.  It's sweet, really.



In American Mary, we're introduced to... ummm... well... Mary.  We're never actually told where Mary is from but it is assumed "America".  Somewhere in the Northwest that is a couple of days from L.A. (revealed close to the end).  She's a med student.  Apparently a damn good one, according to her professor but he's an asshole so whether or not you choose to agree with him is totally on you.

Mary, like any other promising med student, has a fantastic apartment but lives on ramen and hope and she's behind in her bills.  The only reason she has turkey in the house is to practice her suturing.  Seriously, woman?  Stitch the bitches up and DEEP FRY THEM!  It's TURKEY!  Widely recognized as "eatin' bird". 

ANYway.

So, she loses her restaurant gig and, like any other promising med student (there's a theme, here), decides, "Hey, I'm kinda hot," and goes to get a job as a stripper.  She brings a resume.  Because sleazy strip clubs check references.  In the middle of her "application", something goes down where a doctor is needed and she gets paid five grand to take care of it.  Insert "huddled in the shower sobbing" scene here.

Apparently, her resume gets passed around because we're then, creepily, introduced to Beatress (Tristan Risk who has a WONDERFUL career ahead of her as a character actress), a young woman with a LOT of disposable cash and a penchant for plastic surgery so she can look like Betty Boop.

Yes, you heard me correctly, Betty Boop.


Boop-boop-bi-doop, BOOP!

Beatress introduces her to the world of body modification with the help of a buttload of cash.  Mary, like any other promising med student, reluctantly takes her up on the offer and it only gets better from here.

If you think I'm going any further than this, you're sadly mistaken.  This really is a movie that any good horror fan MUST see.  It's a slick and beautiful revenge flick and brings torture horror to a new level.  This is the new generations' I Spit On Your Grave.  There is blacker-than-black humor ALL up in this piece.  No, seriously, there are parts of this movie that are genuinely hilarious and Katherine Isabelle deadpans her way through every inch of celluloid.

HA!  DEADpan... I slay me.

There's just the right amount of gore in this one.  It's not overdone and it fits perfectly into the piece.  It's actually a loving shout-out to the body mod community and while there are some pieces that the Soska girls just really did NOT do the research on, the extreme surgeries that Mary performs are nothing less than art.  Her development into a cold-blooded, unfeeling sort of crazy that refuses to do anything that isn't extreme and/or painful is a hoot to watch.

This is not to say that the film isn't flawed.  For one, while I love the Soska girls for their vision, they need to either get better at acting or stop appearing in their own films.  Particularly if they're gonna be trying to use fake-ass Boris and Natasha accents.  That shit was nasty.

Second, Beatress' face prosthetic was strange and off-putting.  Not the idea of it because I get that they were going for "plastic surgery addict" but the application.  It seems to me that they could have at LEAST rounded out the nose.

Third, the last 15 minutes of the film were seriously anti-climactic.  There was a TON of build-up to an ending that was... just an ending.  THANKFULLY, the twins didn't actually leave this open for a sequel.  That would have just cheapened it.

But you can safely ignore the last 15 minutes and still have a fucking ball.  I've watched this sucker 3 times already!  If you get a chance to see it either on Blu-Ray, On-Demand or at a festival, do NOT pass it up.  

Absolute amazingness.

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Werrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrk!

Sharon Needles is my hero.

Just sayin'.


Fairer Sex My Ass

Ummm... so, if a movie is a sequel, shouldn't it actually reference the movie to which it is... sequeling?

Is that a word?  Sequeling?

2011's The Woman (which is one of Lucky McKee's better flicks) does that.





The Woman, a story of kidnapping, torture and hideous abuses, is actually a sequel to Offspring.

Did you know that?

I didn't know that.

Maybe some kind of reference to Offspring would have made that obvious.  You know... like finding articles about a cannibal clan that was found and mostly killed off in Maine?  A federal agent poking around saying things like "There may be a homicidal maniac in the area who WILL murder you, drain your blood and brine and pickle your flesh in preparation for a hard winter"?

Not that this affected my enjoyment of the movie.  I just prefer that my sequels be clearly laid out.

ANYWAY.

Mostly, this story is about this guy and his family.


Doesn't that face just beg for a slappin'?

Chris Cleek (played by Sean Bridgers and, yes, that's a reference to Christie Cleek, the legendary Scottish cannibal) is a lawyer with some dark secrets.  For one, he's a control freak.  For two, he's not averse to smacking women around, raping his daughter and encouraging his son's obvious trip into Serial-Killer-Land.  And, lastly, he hunted down the titular Woman (who has no name, nor is she ever given one) and chained her up in the shed.

Yes, we spend an entire movie hating someone and it's TASTY!

So, yeah.  He gets a wild hair up his ass about training the Woman to be a normal human being but really ends up treating her like a pet.  His wife (Angela Bettis, who is awesome)spends the movie realizing that he treats her and their daughter the same way.
That's Angela's "concerned face".  It gets used a lot.

All the while, the son is torturing girls at school (because I LEARNED IT FROM YOU, OK!?!) and the daughter is pregnant and the school counselor is all suspicious and shit.  All the while, the Woman is plotting her revenge and you can see it in her eyes.  She's all "I will suck the eyeballs from your skull and piss in the sockets to marinate your brain."

Because you made me take a bath.


Now, in all seriousness, this is a fine example of indie film making.  There's tension, good acting, and a "horror in daytime" look at abusive family situations that, for once, isn't all "Lifetime Movie of the Week".

Highly recommended.

Monday, January 28, 2013

What You Need Is a Big Shoe...

In 1997, Mira Sorvino was a hot ticket.  Everyone loved her mush-mouthed performance in Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion wherein our heroine touts Mono as the best diet ever.

Yes, I adore that movie.  Don't judge me.

ANYWAY, later, that year, we get to hear Mira mumble her way through a kind of rad horror movie about giant bugs.  Guillermo Del Toro's "Mimic".




So, Mira, in an effort to make herself look intelligent again, plays an entomologist (bug doctor for you folks that hate the big words) who, with her husband/lab partner, genetically engineers a species of insect called the Judas Breed that's part termite, part praying mantis.  And it's from this point in time that we're fairly certain that Del Toro is Catholic.

Anyway, they did this because the cockroaches in the city were killing kids by spreading some kind of disease that's not really defined but it's bad enough to warrant a blood hunt on every damn cockroach in New York City.  (Which, by the way, is totally bad science because cockroaches are probably one of the cleanest insects on the planet and would only spread any kind of microbial horror passively at best.  They're CONSTANTLY cleaning themselves like gross little cats.  Microbes don't even stick to them that well so, really, they're only as dirty as what they're standing on.)  The Judas Breed infiltrates the roaches and kills them off by releasing an enzyme that speeds up their metabolism thereby killing them off with old age. 

Fast forward to now where the world is bright and sunny again and Mira has a running relationship with a couple of kids in the neighborhood who bring her samples.  The kids bring her a huge bug they'd never seen before.   It turns out to be a Judas Breed but that's not possible because they were bred to only produce one male who was fertile and since they kept that one, there shouldn't have been any more of them.


EEEEEEW!  She touched it!

As we all know, in ANY situation wherein a genetically enhanced organism is not supposed to breed, it finds a way to do the horizontal mambo and get with the baby-daddying.  Because humans are fucking dumb.

On top of the bug orgy, the bugs have evolved, over the space of MONTHS, mind you, into gigantic versions of themselves with the ability to look and act like their prey.  Filthy human beings in trench coats.  Because that's the kind of person we ALL want to get near.  Because weenie-waggers aren't scary enough, Del Toro had to make them anthropophagous bugs.

I got somethin' for ya little girl...

Now, don't get me wrong.  This movie is pure trash and I, like a dog, will happily roll around in the stinky.  Del Toro wasn't going for art in this one, he was going for the scare and considering he's one of the few directors to bypass the infant immortality rate, I applaud him and everything he does. 

This is B-Grade schlock pretending to be A-Grade thriller and doing a damn good job of it.  It should be a part of everyone's horror collection.

Friday, January 25, 2013

Pretty in Plasma

Sorry about the delay.  Real life, y'know.

So, anyway, apparently, Australians spend their entire lives in fear.  Maybe it's from being descended from criminals, I don't know, but these are some truly paranoid individuals.

And considering this guy's prom date, they have every right to be.





For those of you who have NOT seen this twisted, little gem, Brent (played by Xavier Samuel) goes all Goth LiveJournal Poetry after a car accident that killed his dad (caused by a beaten and bloody dude just kinda wanderin' into the street (this is important).  He gets asked to go to the prom by Lola (Robin McLeavy), who is not his girlfriend, and turns her down (quite nicely, actually).  We kind of get the idea that Lola isn't quite right when she spies on Brent and his girl making out in the parking lot.

During Brent's daily ritual of brooding, he gets knocked unconscious and wakes up tied to a chair at a tacky dinette set with Lola, her dad (John Brumpton) and Bright-Eyes, their pet vegetable.  Since Lola wasn't invited to the school dance, Dad turned the house into a prom for her.  Complete with paper crowns, disco balls, pretty dresses and cordless drills, knives and syringes full of bleach to keep her date from screaming.  (I STILL want to know where these people get syringes.)


Best Daddy EVER!

And the rest of the night is spent showing us exactly how twisted Pretty Princess Lola really is.  The girl may not be the most creative torturer on the planet but she certainly makes do with the materials she has at hand.  And she's had practice.  A lot of it.
 
Just in case you're wondering, it's kind of amazing what you can do with a fork and a handful of salt.
 
EEW!  Look what you did to my DRESS!
 
 
This is yet another instance of a FANTASTIC first time out for a new director.   Sean Byrne is definitely a director to watch.  The film is flawed but it DOES give us a frenzied blend of Pretty in Pink, Carrie, Prom Night, and Hostel which is kind of amazing to watch.  The comedy elements do kind of shock you out of the horror every so often, but they work.  I definitely rank this up there with Mum and Dad in terms of sheer awesome.

Unless you absolutely cannot stand torture horror, this should DEFINITELY be on your list.

Thursday, January 24, 2013

Feral Children: The New Zombie

Hidey-Ho, kids!  Today, on a very special Candy-Coated Razor Blades, we're going to review a very special movie and it's all about mommies and daddies.

Well... mommies...

Well...  one mommy.





Before we get started, you need to watch this:


Andy Muschietti (NOT Guillermo Del Toro, by the way, so get that out of your heads right now) gives us, in three minutes, pulse-pounding fear.  Now take that fear and expand it over an hour and a half.

The story (and since this is new, I'll try not to give away too many spoilers) is that a man during the 2008 financial crisis goes crazy-cuckoo-pants and takes his two young daughters, Victoria, age 3, and Lily, age 1, on what is meant to be their last road trip.  As he enters his last stage of madness and takes aim at Victoria (after taking off her ZOMGSOCUTE toddler glasses so she couldn't see (this is important but I'm not gonna tell you why even though it's only important for a little while)), she is rescued by a very visible otherworldly force.  This force is what will be known through the rest of the film as Mama.  Mama feeds the kids cherries.  Because cherries are awesome.

Fast forward about 5 years and the children's uncle, (Lucas, their father's identical twin) is still looking for them.  He has blown through the entire inheritance he received from his brother to do so.  And while this is noble, I am not that good a person.  (Sorry, kids.  Uncle Bob loves you but he still has to eat.)  Uncle Luke has a girlfriend, Annabel, who is very glad she is not pregnant because that means she can still play in a rock band and eat Apple Jacks and not have to share them with a howling poop-monster because babies are, like, totally gross, man.  Much to Annabel's chagrin, they find the kids on the very day she fails a pregnancy test.

 
This doll was with them.  Because feral children love forest debris.


Enter Dr. Dreyfus, who is caring for the girls and who REALLY wants to get famous on that whole "raised by wolves" angle, and Aunt Jean who's just a raging cunt.  Dreyfus agrees to help Lucas keep custody of the girls if he gets to keep studying them.  Then the fun really starts.  Mama comes looking for her adopted young'uns and she is NOT happy about it. 

Now, I'm gonna say right off the bat that this movie is not perfect by any means but as this is Muschietti's first time out of the gates, I'm willing to forgive a LOT.  

Except cave paintings.

For one thing, we are never under any pretense at all that this is NOT a ghost story/fairy tale.  He left NOTHING to the imagination in that regard.  We started with "Once upon a time..." and we were always dealing directly with Mama and Mama was a jealous, hurting entity.  Muschietti even lets us see Mama's face early on in the film which is kind of a cinematic no-no.  Muschietti, you get a time-out.  Go to your naughty stool.

Next, we're dealing with a director that hasn't, yet, found HIS voice.  While the story itself is original, and refreshing in that regard, almost everything in the film can be traced back to another movie.  We know this is deliberate but it's a little distracting.  About the only thing that was original (and completely awesome) was the fact that Mama moved like all of her bones were broken in multiple spots.  It gave her a definite "I'm dead, I know it and I'm pissed about it" quality.
 Romper, Stomper, Bomper, Boo...

All-in all, though, even without ANY gore at all, because this is a classy ghost story and shit, this is a thrill-a-minute that I would gladly watch over and over again.  Preferably in a theater full of screamers because that's how I saw it the first time and they were GLORIOUS.  Like a hellish choir.  It even got me a few times and I'm not easy to scare.

Also, you might want to bring tissues.  There are some genuinely touching moments which just confirm to me that Muschietti needs to direct more and find his own place in cinematic history.  

I am a marshmallow.

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Newsy-Note!

Hey, all!  I've been invited to take part in ULTIMATE GORE_A_THON: A Splatteriffic Extravaganza!

It's gonna be a huge multi-blog event from February 10th through the 23rd and it'll include myself and these most awesome bloggy-blogs!

Blood Sucking Geek - http://bloodsuckinggeek.com/
MK Horror - http://www.mkhorror.com/
At the Mansion of Madness - http://atthemansionofmadness.blogspot.com/
Deep Red Rum - http://initforthekills.com/ 
Gorror - http://goreworld.wordpress.com/
Movies at Dog Farm - http://moviesatdogfarm.blogspot.com/
The info Zombie - http://www.theinfozombie.com/
Disturbing Films - http://www.disturbingfilms.com/

I'll post more info as I get it.

This is gonna be goooooooood.

Tuesday, January 22, 2013

So, THAT'S how they do it!

In the post-Scream world of slasher-horror, I think only one movie even comes close to reaching that perfect balance of horror and self-awareness.  Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon is that film.





For the uninitiated, this is a mockumentary along the lines of Best in Show or Spinal Tap.  An aspiring journalist and her team are following Vernon around to discover his secrets as a slasher-type serial killer in a world where killers like Jason, Michael and Leatherface are real. 

He discusses the identity he's chosen (based on a local urban legend) and walks the crew through his paces as he makes preparations to slaughter a bunch of teenagers and face the "final girl".  He introduces the crew to his mentor, shows them how he can move quickly along his killing grounds, discusses his training regimen and tells them how he lures his girl into place using the magic midget from Poltergeist and carefully doctored microfiche. 

 They're heeeeeeere!

He also explains how he believes that he is doing a good thing by getting the final girl to face him.  He believes this will define her as a person and she will be stronger for the experience.

One more important piece?  He introduces us to his Ahab.  The male protagonist destined to follow and attempt to thwart him.  Not all slashers have them. 

 
I'd be concerned about fat jokes, personally.  Ahab...


Now, some folks didn't care for this movie because it's TOO genre-savvy but I dig it.  Its blacker-than-black humor deftly deconstructs the slasher genre and gives us a world where we should all be suspicious of perfect suburbs and "days just like any other", where we shouldn't get too excited over special events and it would probably be safer if we just didn't attend.  A world where sex is a killer, babysitters are an endangered species, the corn is infested with children and the woods really are out to murder you in the face.

A world where I KNOW I would be the victim that gets one line and a sharp implement in the 'nads before the title appears but that's neither here nor there.

This is just an awesome watch.  So... go watch it. 

Monday, January 21, 2013

I Feel Sick.

I made it to 100 posts!  Granted they're not all fantastic or anything but I did it so YAY, me!

Anyhoo.  We're going to celebrate this with a look at a movie I absolutely ABHOR.  2002's Cabin Fever.

Where to begin? 

Well, I suppose I should start with telling you about the story.

A bunch of kids go camping.  They catch a flesh-eating virus and stupidly spread it around everywhere while trying to get help.  Not that the kids would have stopped it because it was in the water supply but, still.  Kids be dumb.

Yep.  That's it.  Eli Roth wanted to give us a brainless 80s teen horror movie with the boobs and the camping and the useless adults.  In that, he succeeded.  In everything else, he failed... hard.  I wasn't sure it was possible to get a Z-minus but he did it.

Red wings?  No, thank you, ma'am.

What kills me is that someone paid for this.  Someone actually handed Eli Roth money and said "Go forth and make a horror movie about a flesh-eating virus."  I'm fairly certain that they did NOT say "Make it suck."

And the thing is, I can't even fault the actors.  Rider Strong was a decent lead and the others played their parts OK.  There was nothing wooden about the portrayals.  The whole PREMISE, though... 

That's it.  Ooze all sexy-like.

There just really didn't seem to be a clear direction and there was some stuff in it that didn't feel like it belonged.  Eli Roth with his cameo felt too much like "Well, hey, man.  Hitchcock did it." and what the HELL was up with pancake kid?  Sorry, buddy, but if your strange, be-mulleted child is known for biting people for no damn reason, you keep him at home.  You don't blame other people for his biting and that kid brought the hideous face-melting on himself.
 
And I understand that they were in small-town America but people really are not this stupid in real life.  I feel like he just spent an hour and a half pointing his finger and saying "dumbass hicks".  Yes, there are other movies that do that but people are still smart enough to say "Hey, get a doctor" not "Hey, let's mow down the sick kids because they got sick and were trying to get help."

Eli Roth.  Bane of Hillbillies.


Every so often I watch this again just to make sure I didn't make a mistake in hating this movie and every time I'm proven to be correct in my original assessment.

This movie would hurt my soul if I had one.

Friday, January 18, 2013

Who Is John and Why Do We Care?

So, last year I read this AMAZINGLY absurd book that involved extra-dimensional hallucinogens, demons, a couple of deadpan snarkers and a whole lot of naked people.

It is called John Dies at the End.

It has been made into a movie.





And it is absurd and involves extra-dimensional hallucinogens, demons, a couple of deadpan snarkers and a whole lot of naked people.

And it is meh.

This is one of those fanboy things where the book is INFINITELY better than the movie.  This is not to say that the movie is bad, but this is not a movie for everyone.

Now, basically the whole thing is set up as an interview.  Our protagonist, David Wong (which is also the name of the author of the book and considering both of them are really non-Asian, this causes some confusion), is telling the story of the soy sauce (the aforementioned extra-dimensional hallucinogen) to a reporter (played by Paul Giamatti who is awesome as always).  The problem is the movie is so convoluted and hyper-active and super-ball-like that I'm not sure I can tell you anything else about it.

 
That face?  Mine through at LEAST half of the movie.


No, seriously.  One of the core tenets of this movie is that time is an illusion and this soy sauce stuff, which is yet another instance of ferrofluid-like special effects, is the key.  It makes for a twisty ride.  One that involves the ability to use a bratwurst as a cell phone to the dead and finds a use for phantom limb syndrome.
 
Don't get me wrong.  It's fun.  It really is.  It's like Big Trouble in Little China had a baby and considering that it's directed by Don Coscarelli, the man knows his twisty and fun.
 
Yeah, I don't quite get it, either.

The problem is that while the pieces and parts taken separately are amazing (much like Rubber), the pieces-parts put together on film do not make for a cohesive whole.  It's disjointed and awkward and missing something that the book had which is not quite nameable.  A... spirit... of sorts.

This is one of those that I'm gonna say that I kind of liked it but I suggest watching it yourself to make up your own mind.  Definitely a Your Mileage May Vary movie.  I may give it another shot myself to make sure.

Thursday, January 17, 2013

No Reason

So, my husband, who hates horror movies, tells me that I need to watch Rubber. 







I think my husband is gonna get a smack in the dick.

Don't get me wrong, there are parts of this movie that are enjoyable and the premise is kind of hilarious.  The fact that it shows us more of the talents of Jack Plotnick (Evie in Girls Will Be Girls) is kind of awesome, too.  But, well, it's hard to explain why I kind of hate this movie.

Let's take a look at the plot, first.

 
I'm lookin'... I'm lookin'...



So, first we get this sheriff guy coming out of the trunk of his squad car to explain to us for ten minutes that some things happen in movies for no reason and then a bunch of people are given binoculars to watch "the movie".  The movie is, apparently, watching a tire (named Robert in the credits) inexplicably come to life and destroy things with its psychokinetic powers.  Trust me when I say this movie is kinda gory. 

So... in addition to this and the sheriff being both inside and outside of the action of the film, there's the accountant (Plotnick) who's trying to end the movie early by poisoning the audience and a wily man in a wheelchair keeps avoiding it somehow.  Ultimately, Robert is killed and reincarnated as a tricycle who then raises an army of tires to descend on Hollywood.

 
Weirdest.  Mexican Standoff.  EVER!



No, I don't care that I just gave away the ending of this movie.

Now, as you know, I'm perfectly OK with foreign films and I will actually use that fact to defend Alien: Resurrection (much to everyone's chagrin) but this is just some strange-ass existential shit right here. 

I get what Quentin Dupieux was trying to do and, frankly, his ability to get a tire to, for lack of a better word, emote, was genius but the whole thing just seemed like an hour and a half of cinematic masturbation.  YES, I understand that the entire movie exists for "no reason" but you still have to give the audience a reason to maintain interest.

 
And this guy is not that reason.



Now.  That said.  I don't think it's a bad movie.  I just think it's a movie that lies to us.  It TELLS us that it happens for no reason and gives us a vapid, B-movie plot but then delivers itself in a manner that takes itself entirely too seriously which just ends up being confusing and off-putting.  This is kind of the antithesis of Hobo With a Shotgun which really didn't take itself seriously at all.

I think I need to go watch a real horror movie, now.

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Welcome to Pleasant Valley

In 1964, horror gained a new sub-genre by way of Herschell Gordon-Lewis, the Sultan of Schlock.

Y'ever wonder where we got Hillbilly Horror?  2000 Maniacs!, that's where.  And the face of horror has included cannibalistic slack-jawed yokels with fewer IQ points than teeth ever since.






I'm gonna tell you right now, this movie is almost 50 years old.  The statue of limitations for spoilers is WELL past.  Bite me.

So, over the course of 15 days in 1964, the town of St. Cloud, Florida was transformed into the quaint and horrifying Pleasant Valley, Georgia, a town celebrating the centennial of the day Union troops destroyed it.  To assist in their jamboree are 6 Yankee tourists detoured into town to be the guests of honor.  It's rumored that the entire town was more than happy to help out during the filming.

He ain't smart, but he's clever.

The tourists are quaintly separated from one another in a series of banjo-accompanied diversions that ultimately prove to be fatal.  Among these diversions are an axe-dismemberment, a drawing-and-quartering, one man's turn in the barrel (a little kinkier than the version you're used to hearing about in the dirty jokes), and a boulder dropped from a dunk-tank like contraption.  

Now, this one might not go over well with the young'uns but this right here is classic splatter.  It's cheap, it's badly written, it's got absolutely NO redeeming social value and it's DELICIOUS.  Herschell Gordon-Lewis may not have been the best director in Hollywood (mostly because he was based out of Chicago) but the man knew what he was doing.  This bloody Brigadoon is hokey, nowadays, but that fantasy/ghost story element is what makes 2000 Maniacs! amazing.  

We'll have a barrel of fuuuuun...

Oddly, considering HGL's other works, the acting in this one isn't bad.  It's a little over the top but considering what he had to work with (an actor hired only for his ability at accents and a Playboy bunny), he did good.  If you want BAD acting, watch The Wizard of Gore.  Holy shitballs, that's some painful line delivery.

And, really, this film is kind of an important piece of cinematic history.  During the Civil Rights Movement, TV and film tended to aim toward the comedic interpretation of the redneck because serious depictions of race relations didn't do so well with the ratings but even though race relations are never actually discussed in the film, that vision of the "negro-hatin' Southerner" was quite clear.  With the redneck ghouls lynching the Yankee tourists, we're treated to the nation's view of the South's stubborn refusal of desegregation, perceived social primitivism, history of not-quite-so-legal violence and abject denial that they had, in fact, lost the Civil War.  That's right, South.  You lost.  You can put away the Rebel flag, now.  You're not allowed to secede. 

In any case, 2000 Maniacs! (and the remake, 2001 Maniacs!) should be a part of any good horror fan's library.  

Because those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.

Monday, January 14, 2013

SPEAK UP!

Sometimes, being stuck on your couch for a weekend can be a good thing.  For instance, I got to watch a ton of movies this weekend so that they're fresh in my Jaeger-quil (the "nighttime, sniffling, sneezing, coughing, aching, stuffy-head, fever, wake up in a loincloth and a snorkel with a new tattoo and a leather-clad biker named Jim" medicine)-addled mind.

Some of them are still undeniably forgettable, though.






The story goes a little something like this:

A guy who has just been released from prison decided he wants to run a restaurant and goes to get a loan for which he is pretty much immediately shot down.  He decides that the best way to get his down-payment is to participate in a kidnapping with his former criminal cohorts.  Because that just SCREAMS responsibility.

Does this haircut say "victim" to you?


So, he gets the kid and they all trundle off to a cabin in Maine whereupon the kid goes all Omen on them.

And there's your movie.

Don't get me wrong.  It's not a bad watch.  Even if you go into it knowing that it's a creepy kid movie, it still has some moments but ultimately, it's shallow and EMINENTLY predictable.  It's like Dionne Warwick is sitting right next to you during the whole thing being your personal Magic 8-Ball.


Creepy Kids On Ice!


The acting, though, given a completely blah, "I wanna be O. Henry" script, was good.  It wasn't award-winning but it was entertaining enough.  This should be expected since the film stars Blake Woodruff, Joel Edgerton and Sarah Wayne Callies, all from The Walking Dead.  Also, keep an eye out for Cory Monteith from Glee.

This is, yet again, another "turn your brain off" movie.  Not much in the way of gore.  Some creepiness.  A couple of characters you want to slap around for being idiots. 

Same-old, same-old.

Friday, January 11, 2013

Don't Answer It!

It occurs to me that if a horror movie advertizes itself as "psychadelic", I should probably just stay the hell away from it.

2009's Someone's Knocking at the Door is such a movie.






There's really not a lot of story to this one.  A bunch of med students, hopped up on the goofballs, are hunted down by the ghosts of a married pair of sadistic sexual serial killers from the 70s who are looking to repay a few folks for the experiments of which they were the subjects.

Yeah, I'd be angry, too.

The kills in this one are fuckin' creepy.  Death by anal sex (cause creepy ghost dude is packing a fuckin' knee-length club).  Vaginal suffocation.  It's like they took the "don't have sex" trope and just said "Well, fuck it... literally...".


LUBE!  GODDAMMIT, MORE LUBE!!


Now, while this movie does have a kind of awesome, visceral grindhouse feel to it, it's a little... too psychadelic.

Yes, yes, it's all about drugs and sex and violence and there's a definite comedic touch as well but it gets confusing.  Painfully confusing.  I'm gonna try and watch this one again but only because I really need some clarification as to why things go down the way they do.

In the meantime, I'm just gonna take this as the director saying "Eew, that Goatse thing is NASTY.  Let's make a movie about it."

It's not a bad movie, it's just weird.

You have been warned.

Thursday, January 10, 2013

Ugh, Seriously?

I've been home sick with a cold for the past couple of days so I've been stuck on the couch.  Medication made me pick this off of FearNet.  I cannot be held responsible.






I'm not even going to review this.  It's a horrible remake of April Fool's Day.  It didn't even really bother to change the plot.

Just FYI, indie filmmakers?  An ENTIRE cast full of deadpan snarkers?  Not going to work.

I also fully blame Nick Stahl for the downfall of indie horror.





Freaky fuckin' gnome.

I turned it off.  I'm not even sure how long I had until the end.  I don't care.


Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Innapropriate Familial Relations

Remember how I said that the British were awesome at horror?

I kind of take that back.  Just a little, though.

See, I watched Inbred this weekend and it left me with a strange feeling of unease.






It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that this is trying to be Britain's answer to the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.  Hell, the poster practically SCREAMS Cannibal Clan.  And, to be fair, it's not a bad watch.  There's just too much wrong with it for me to not say anything.

In terms of story, there's not really a lot there.  A couple of case workers bring their young charges to the country for fresh air and some good hard work to get the evil out of their sinews.  We've got your standard bunch of kids, the pyro, the asshole, the black kid and the girl, all of them in the system for fairly unknown reasons except for the pyro.  Case worker number one is big, jovial, Laugh-a-lot Bear who's entirely too naive to be doing case work and case worker number two is Practical-Woman who obviously knows that the best way to the kids hearts is a trip to the local pub.  On the way into this tiny town, the kids see this out the car window:

Because EVERY kid LOVES a game of Shank the Scarecrow.



The local pub is run by the guy who's in charge of the whole town.  Which should tell you plenty given the name of the movie.  Dude apparently sticks it in EVERYBODY.  His wife makes "scratchin's" (supposedly pork rinds) that come in two varieties, hairy or wet.  There's a guy with a carrot fetish that harasses the girl. 

Anyway, the next day, the kids are brought to the train yard to be taught how to salvage.

Wait, really?  We teach kids to do this, thus training them for a lifetime of  vandalism and air conditioner theft?  Wow.  Way to go, Britain.

So... the kids run afoul of carrot guy again and try and report him to Pub dude while, at the same time, trying to get medical attention for Laugh-a-Lot who managed to slash his own femoral artery.  Pub dude decides to behead Laugh-a-Lot, lock the rest of them in a store room and put on a minstral show.

What?

Yeah, so there's the end of our plot.  The rest is "Let's kill people in new and interesting ways."  No, seriously.  That's it.  It's fun to watch.  Especially when you deal with Boo Radley in Drag.


Tell me about the rabbits, George.


But, really, there's nothing else of substance.  There's humor, in the form of the Ferret guy with the mysterious "incident" that causes him to be left out of the festivities and some in the show itself, but really the rest is somewhat badly acted "OMGWE'RERUNNINGFOROURLIVESALLBREATHLESSANDSHIT!!"

Add to that all of the conspicuously awful CGI:


If I can see it in this picture, you can see it on the screen.


And you've got a halfway decent watch but one that is not the best way to spend your time. 


But if you've got time to kill, go for it.

Heehee... kill...

Monday, January 7, 2013

No Vacancy

Sometimes a movie comes along and you think you should hate it but you kind of don't.

2011's The Innkeepers is that movie.






See, it's kind of this Clerks-esque ride into the "ghost hunting" thing that Syfy has made so popular, much to the dismay of anyone but a complete dumbass.  I mean, seriously, I'm perfectly OK with admitting the possibility of ghosts just because of the Law of Conservation of Energy but do these people really expect something to happen to them a la Amityville?  Call me a skeptic but unless I see stuff flying around and blood dripping off the walls, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that the dead really just don't care about you that much.  Because you're the tool with the camera.



Yep.  Tools.



In The Innkeepers, we are treated to the final weekend of  the Yankee Pedlar's existence.  (The Yankee Pedlar is a REAL hotel, by the way, in Torrington, Connecticut, that is REALLY supposed to be haunted.)  We don't know much about the hotel other than that it supposedly houses the ghost of Madeleine O'Malley, about whom we also don't know much other than that she hung herself in the hotel and the owners buried her in the basement.



Aww.  Why so glum, chum?



Claire, (Sara Paxton) and Luke (Pat Healy) are stuck manning the front desk and most of the movie is them not manning the front desk because they really only have 2 legitimate rooms booked throughout the whole movie.  But, they're amateur ghost hunters, dammit, and they want to prove that this place is haunted.  Except they broke the camera so they have to do it with audio, only.

Enter the failed actress, Leanne (or Lee, played by Kelly McGillis) of whom Claire is a HUGE fan.  She's kind of a mean drunk but she's also a psychic.  Since she can sense some stuff, she, like a gap-toothed five-year-old in a Shake'n'Bake commercial, helped.

Kind of just by being there.

In the most useless way possible.

Fuckin' magical lesbian.

Woo.

Anyway, there are a LOT of reasons to hate this movie, primary among them because there are really no scares in it until the very end.  There's no escalation of events, either.  It goes from zero to sixty in the last fifteen minutes (actually more like zero to 35... school zone, y'see...) and drops to zero again.





But the funny thing is I don't hate this movie at all.  I kind of like it.  It's got great dialogue which is incredibly natural, the cast is wonderful and the story is believeable.  It's very much a throwback to the single-setting horror flicks of the seventies and eighties and I will say that, compared to Shark Night 3D, Sara Paxton was kind of delightful to watch as the weird, quirky, pixie girl.  She didn't always look as if she were about to burst into tears.  And Pat Healy is adorkable.

This movie could be seen as a testament to the failure of the economy that people are willing to hang onto a job until the very last second for a paycheck, even if they'll completely slack off on the last day. 

This movie is, for lack of a better word, cute.  It's got some scares and it does rev up at the end but don't watch it if you expect to be scared.  You won't be.  Watch it for the character interaction which is actually brilliant.

You kind of expect Dante and Randal to show up.