Now I Know My ABCs...

THE LONG WAIT IS OVER!

The ABC's of Death is on Pay-Per-View and it is glorious!

Ant Timpson and Tim League want to play a game.  That game is, can we fit 26 shorts, each dealing with a letter of the alphabet, into a two hour movie.

YES, THEY CAN!

And they got some AMAZING talent to do it.  Directors like Angela Bettis (E is for Exterminate), Ti West (M is for Miscarriage) and Adam Wingard (Q is for Quack) give us the best trip to Sesame Street, EVER.

Only maybe not.

Yes, there are furries... but there is no F is for Furry.  Go fig.

See, here's the thing.  Mondo Cinema is awesome and all and I'm all about putting forth the weird but some of these shorts are just plain fucked up.  And not fucked up in a good way.  Artistic vision is one thing but if it takes longer to explain the short than it does to watch it, that could be considered a problem.

Also, if you're not into poop jokes, don't watch.  There are a LOT of toilet references in this one.  In fact, there is a segment called "T is for Toilet" which is an entry chosen via online contest.  It involves one little boy's fear of toilet training and is actually kind of hilarious. 

Scarred.  For.  Life.

None of this is to say that it's not a heck of a lot of fun.  Yeah, there are some misses, but we've got mostly hits and that's a good thing.  We've got some hilariousness,  we've got twists, we've got the absolutely bizarre, we've got poop jokes, we've got internationalism (YAY, global consciousness!), we've got standard horror and we've got gore.  Hell, we've got zombie clowns, too, if that's what you're into.

One thing we ALSO have, in some cases, is extreme social messages.  The one that comes to mind here is "X is for XXL".  A little French ditty about a fat woman who really just has enough of the bullying and takes things into her own hands.

This is NOT a jolly fat woman.

It gives a short, sharp view of the effects of advertising and bullying on a person's psyche and why women go to the lengths they do to diet.  It's horrific and poignant and a little bit sad.

I guarantee that there is something in this for EVERY horror fan to enjoy.  It may not be the whole picture but, as with American Mary, the hype for this one is, I think, well deserved.  Be prepared for subtitles, though.  A lot of them. 

I'ma go play with Legos, now.

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.

Dead Broad Off The Table!

When a loved one passes on, we feel a profound sense of loss.  We attend the funeral, we do our best to remember them and we allow them to leave our lives.

But we're not here to talk about normal people, are we?

You didn't think this was gonna be all schmaltzy, did you?

In horror films, I certainly hope that it does not surprise you to know that people are fucking insane.  We're not talking "take a pill and call me in the morning" insane.  We're talking "bleached bones arranged in a fancy-schmancy tableau to simulate entertaining dinner conversations". 

Welcome home, Daddy!

Whaaaaaat?

Yeah, folks in horror fiction tend not to want to let go.  And, yes, I said "fiction" because this trope goes back to AT LEAST 1609 with The Revengers Tragedy where a character has been carrying around his dead wife's skull for 9 years and having delightful chats with her.  In fact, I just lied.  This trope is older than dirt.   In The Epic of Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh won't allow his friend Enkidu to be buried for a week, treating him as if he were still alive.  This changes when he sees a maggot fall off of Enkidu's nose, thankfully.

The deal is that these folks are so far around the bend that they usually don't even realize that their loved one is dead and, in fact, have developed their own twisted little reality in which that person is not deceased.  They've just lost a little weight, that's all.  The smell?  What smell?  I don't smell anything do you?  Doesn't Mother look lovely in her Sunday hat?  SHE'S NOT DEAD, STOP SAYING THAT!!  You're just jealous!  That's what you are.  Mother says you're jealous and you're trying to ruin me with your vicious gossip!  You'll have to be... dealt with...

You're ugly and your mother dresses you funny.

This is different from just talking to a dead person and not expecting an answer.  For this trope to exist, one of the participants has to be a corpse which has not been interred and the other has to be completely fucking binkers and legitimately believe that the corpse is still living and breathing.  This person will, for all intents and purposes, appear to be completely normal to those who are not "in the know" about their private arrangement.  Usually, we'll end up watching them grab a sharp implement when the clueless pretty girl stumbles on the corpse by accident.

The most obvious example of this trope is, of course, Psycho, but it shows up in some unexpected places. 

Technically, this appeared in Snow White, where the prince KNEW she was dead and fell in love with her anyway and just HAD to plant a sloppy one on the pretty dead girl.  Also, technically, this appeared in Harry Potter.  One of the Deathly Hallows was a stone that allowed a person to speak with the dead and madness was often a result of ownership since the holder would become convinced that the deceased were still alive.  Ms. Spink and Ms. Forcible do this with their dogs in Coraline when they die (and then dress them up in little angel outfits because wacky is as wacky does).

In terms of just movies, though, we're exposed to this a lot.  Not quite "always humorous" levels but enough to where we know what's going to happen .  The AMAZINGLY gorgeous film Perfume has Grenouille becoming obsessed with Plum Girl's scent so when he accidentally kills her he hides her away and constantly smells her until her scent is gone.  May has our heroine making a Frankenstein-esque doll out of those parts of people she finds to be perfect.  Terry Gilliam's controversial Tideland gave us a little girl who taxidermies her drug addict dad so she won't be alone.  (Fucking Jodelle Ferland... STOP BEING CREEPY!  You'll just end up marrying Marilyn Manson and that won't be gross at ALL or anything!)  And, for the fans, Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 has the whole family treating Grandpa as if he's ready to carve the Thanksgiving turkey.  (Edit:  I have been reminded that Grandpa is not actually dead but he may as well be.  I swear if that motherfucker tried to slip me a twenty the way my great-grampa did I'd scream like a little girl and run... then run back and snag the cash and say "Thank you, Grampa"... and then run away again, howling into the night.)

Here's your heroin, Daddy!  Now go get dressed for dinner.

Do I really have to tell you why this scares people?

Fine.  But don't say I never did anything for you.

This bugs people because we don't like to deal with corpses and, frankly, this can actually happen.  It is nowhere NEAR outside of the realm of possibility that a person can develop an obsession over a loved one they are not prepared to lose and completely ignore the reality of a rotting human body to satisfy their emotional needs.  

There are numerous examples of people keeping dead husbands, wives and boy/girlfriends around for a little post-life nookie (eew) and there was one highly publicized case of a family keeping the mummified corpse of a stillborn baby in the house (but that was more of an heirloom sort of thing and while they playfully included it in household activities they didn't actually believe it was still alive).   Even that asshole Rick Santorum took a stillborn home to introduce to his kids.

On the other hand, the definition of "loved one" tends to get tossed around willy-nilly among the insane so a lot of times the crazy person is also responsible for the corpse's current state of being.  Serial killers Dennis Nilson, Ed Gein and Jeffrey Dahmer all decided that they didn't want to be lonely no more and kept a few dates around.  Dahmer, of course, had a different definition for "dinner and a movie".  

Hang on a second... what?  Oh.  OK.  Coming, Mother!

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.

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.