All I Ever Wanted.

Just a heads-up, kids, I'm gonna be offline next week.

Disney and Universal Studios beckon and their siren call cannot be ignored.

I'm hoping to snag me some Haunted Mansion swag.

EEEE!

Meanwhile, In Eastern Europe...

The intermingling of porn and horror is not a new thing.  The mixture of eroticism and death is something we've explored since the advent of fiction.  Vampire stories, for example, are morality stories about venereal disease (which is why I want to slap the fuck out of Stephenie Meyer).

On that note, we're going to bypass the supernatural crap and get straight to the inhumanity of man.

A Serbian Film.

This, Chernobyl Diaries and Hostel are the prime reason that I will never, in my life, visit Eastern Europe.

It's not that this movie is scary but... well, we'll get to that in a minute.

OK, so it goes like this:  Milos has decided to get out of the porn racket because he doesn't think it's a good example for his son, Petar.  His wife, Marija is a little clueless about her husband's past and is more worried about his next paycheck which, really, is only proper.  Not the clueless part, the paycheck thing.

Anyway, Milos is concerned about money, too, since he's become accustomed to being the big dick in town.  A former co-star, says "Oh, hey, I got a job for you but it's still porn" and introduces him to Vukmir.  Milos initially refuses, mostly because he already caught his kid watching one of his films, which is kinda creepy, and he doesn't have the details of Vukmir's script but, eventually (at his brother's insistence, which is also kinda creepy) accepts to do the project for the money, which is substantial.

No.  This guy's not skeevy at ALL...

From this point, the situation gets weirder with a shoot in an orphanage which wigs Milos out.  He tells Viklos that he wants out.  Viklos proceeds to creep him out further by explaining his "vision" and introducing Milos to "newborn porn".  'Cause eew.

Milos storms out but managed to get slipped a mickey by Viklos' on-staff doctor.  He wakes up with no memory of it and wobbles himself back to the now abandoned set and finds a set of tapes.  Like a moron, he watches them and discovers that he was drugged to the point of animalism and in his highly suggestible state, was filmed raping a woman to death, getting raped himself and generally being kind of a douche.  A girl that defends him has her teeth removed and gets suffocated.

And it only gets worse from there.

'Sup?

Now, I understand that this is not an accurate portrayal of Serbia or its culture but the thought of this film actually being made as "a diary of our own molestation by the Serbian government.." is still disturbing on a socio-political level. 

It's not that this is a bad film.  In fact, for what it is, it's rather good.  I enjoyed the concept in and of itself.  Well... not "enjoyed".  More like "found interesting". The problem lies in the content and the imagery.  I have absolutely no problem with controversial material to make a point.  I have no problem with harming a cinematic child if it's integral to the plot and, frankly, it's integral, here.  That doesn't make watching it any more comfortable.  It's SUPPOSED to bother you and it does so with gleeful abandon. 

Yep... Imagery.

And, really, when you watch the movie with a detached eye, the Grand Guignol nature of it pushes the movie JUST to the edge of parody.  Yes, it's blacker-than-black but the over-the-top nature of the goings on are almost horrific comedy.  They aren't "funny" per se but the manner in which they are portrayed is SO gruesome that they border on the absurd.  Let's face it, though, this movie is still GRIM as FUCK and it's hard to achieve that detached state of mind.

That said, I ONLY recommend this movie to the hardcore viewer.  The imagery may be heading toward absurdity but it's still pretty fuckin' disgusting and, frankly, this movie is offensive on just about every level. There are no taboos in this film and that explains why it's been banned in a whole lot of places.

If you think you can take something this dark, go for it but don't say I didn't warn you.

I'm off to watch Disney movies to wash the gross out of my brain.

The Ultimate Slasher: Rube Goldberg

In March of 2000, we witnessed the beginning of something bland-ish.

Part of the wave of self-referential teen thrillers, Final Destination did give us one cool thing.  Death itself as a slasher.

Our story begins with a 15 fucking minute dream sequence on a plane that explodes that gets REPEATED in the next 15 minutes with the added bonus of a Devon Sawa freak-out.  The cops get involved and then the plane he just got booted from for claiming it was going to blow up, as in his dream, blows up.  A bunch of his classmates and a teacher get booted with him and they are all rightfully tweaked the fuck out at the loss of the entire rest of the French class.

After the mass memorial service, the snarky best friend manages to get himself hung by the bathroom clothesline and we should never believe that's an accident for a MINUTE!  Mostly because we then see the toilet water that caused the problem recede back under the toilet.  When our protagonists go all Scooby-fuckin'-Doo to find their friend's corpse, they find Tony Todd instead who, in that creepy-ass voice of his, tells them about Death's Design.

Ooooooooh, creepy.

David Carradine, eat your heart out.

Then the girlfriend of the douchecanoe that hates Sawa gets a bus to the face proving that creepy mortuary dude is right and then the teacher that got left behind gets stabbed with a kitchen knife that also causes her house to explode.  WOOOO!

 

That towel is NOT her friend.

So, then. in the process of explaining all of this to the douchecanoe, douchecanoe gets all pissy and moany about having no control over his life and parks his car on the railroad tracks.  Sawa saves him by the skin of his teeth and then the village idiot gets decapitated.

After that, Sawa goes right 'round the twist and segregates himself from society, eating pudding out of cans and avoiding getting tetanus from old fish hooks.  He thinks he's next but it's actually love-interest.  He goes to her rescue, gets some impromptu electro-shock therapy and then they all go to France where he has to avoid a swinging sign and forget about that whole "for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction" thing.

Why are these people so stupid?

 Now, as a concept, I think this movie is kinda neat.  Originally written as an episode of The X-Files, they decided it was a little too heavy for the show and expanded it into a feature.  All "strange coincidences" and "fate" and "intuition" and all of that crap made it an interesting watch and the best thing was that you never saw a killer except in dark flashes and redirected fluids.  The philosophical idea of the inevitability of death isn't new but it was handled in a kind of awesome manner.

As a finished product, though?  How long do we have to sit through someone's psychotic break?  Sawa is a good actor.  The entire cast is made up of good actors.  They all take a back seat to Sawa's Nicholas Cage impersonation.  There's craziness all throughout this movie but there's a point in the film where I just want to slap the bejeezus out of EVERYBODY.  It's like it lost control of itself somewhere in the middle of the movie.

All in all, this is an OK time-waster but I'm not sure it should be considered a horror classic in any sense other than the choice of villain.  The Scream movies are SO much better than this.

Finished Basement?

From time immemorial...

Well, from time wherein we could build basements, there have been sick motherfuckers using them to muffle screams.  So today on TropeFest, we're gonna look at Torture Chambers. 

It seems as if I shouldn't have to explain why we're afraid of this but I'm gonna do it anyway.

Oooooh, y'all done it now.

Now, the torture chamber doesn't have to actually BE in a cellar but the basic concept remains.  The villain has a special place in their house/castle/workplace where horrific things happen involving blood and intestines and red hot nails and iron maidens and racks and, occasionally, gummy bears.

RUNNING GAG!  YAY!

This sub-trope of the creepy basement has some rules to it.  First, this is normally used in suspense or horror fiction involving a serial killer.  Second, it's almost entirely a visual trope.  It most certainly occurs in literature in works like The Pit and the Pendulum, Gaston LeRoux's The Phantom of the Opera and Octave Mirbeau's The Torture Garden but the impact is best served in film.  There's really nothing like the idiot teenagers exploring the creepy house and finding the basement with its rusty tools and leather straps and giant dildos... wait... that's porn.  Forget that last part.

ANYway...

Roger Corman's The Pit and the Pendulum (and, of course, the original tale by Edgar Allen Poe) is one of the grandest examples in cinema and it had Vincent Price hamming it up the whole time which kind of starts the trope off as a joke.  It had some credibility because his character's father was a member of the Spanish Inquisition.  And NO ONE EXPECTS god dammit that's old...

The trope gained a bit of weight with 1974's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, though.  Leatherface's basement butchery isn't necessarily a torture thing but it's most certainly involved, what with the meathooks where he hangs living victims and all.

Muhuhwahahahahahahahaaaaaa!!

Since then, the torture chamber has gotten quite a bit of use.  From Freddy's boiler room/secret room under the daycare to The People Under the Stairs to Saw to Hostel, the potentially deadly abuse chamber is an iconic part of horror cinema.  It gives that sense of claustrophobia that we love so much even if it takes place in an abandoned Eastern European warehouse.  And, yet, there are things about the trope that make us question the reality of the fictional situation.  Things like, "how do they take care of the smell?"  "How do the bodies get disposed of?"  Occasionally, "why are there no bugs?"

Oh, and death doesn't ALWAYS have to occur in these places (like in The People Under the Stairs) but it's a pretty sure bet. Like, seriously?  Lay money on it.  You could pay your rent with that shit.

Seriously, though, there are a lot of things that bug us about this trope.  We have the fact that such places exist.  Places that were built specifically for the purposes of harming other human beings.  Yes, there are those spaces built for consensual pleasure because some people get off on more acute sensation and S&M is totally a real thing but there's a difference between play and serious pain.

Freddy used his to relive his childhood.

Then we have the fact that, because these places exist, someone had to build them and that means that there is a human being that has no regard for the safety of others.  Psychopaths be scary, yo, and horror films love to remind us of this.  It just so happens that the ones that like to torture people are just fucking interesting.  We watch these movies so we know what to avoid.  

And then there's the fact that these places are dark and atmospheric.  We don't like the dark, remember?  Really, if people want a dark, atmospheric torture chamber, all the cinematic psychopaths have to do is lay out some fuckin' Legos.

Family Fun.

And the one thing that really bugs us?  These places do not just exist in fiction.  Sylvia Likens was tortured and killed in one.   Fred and Rosemary West had one.  Jeffrey Dahmer's entire apartment was one.  Henry Holmes built one that was three stories tall (and a hotel to boot).  Josef Fritzl kept his daughter in his basement for TWENTY-FOUR YEARS and had, what?  Seven kids with her?  And then, there's Ed Gein, the basis for many of our best known cinematic serial killers.

There are a lot of sick people in the world and the movies love to remind us of it.

Just in case you're wondering, I am not one of those people.

I know you were thinking it.

OH!  One last note.  Let's drop the use of the term "dungeon" when referring to these places shall we?  I mean, yeah, it's in the dictionary and all but it comes from the term "donjon" which is the main building of a castle.  Once firearms made castles obsolete, they were used as prisons and "dungeon" became just a pretty word for "prison".  They may have contained torture chambers but the misuse irritates me.

'Cause I'm a nerd.

Give Me My Damn Monsters Back!!

Have I mentioned that I'm ENTIRELY sick of "paranormal romance" fiction?  No, seriously.  The sub-genre has pissed me off for years.  I mean, it was cute for a little while and I still like watching True Blood but that's only because some of the monsters are still portrayed as, well, monsters.

And this brings us to today's review of Warm Bodies.

OK, so, if you've read Romeo and Juliet, you get the basis of the story.  R, our zombie protagonist, is a zombie.  Dead.  Shambling.  Living in an airport.  He still has a little bit of coherency of thought but I blame that on him looking pretty darn fresh for a corpse.  He has a best friend, M, that he kind of grunts and stares at in lieu of actual conversation.

 Best Friends Forever.  Or at least until one of them gets a double-tap.

Then we get introduced to Julie, her father and her ragtag band of attractive, well-dressed, post-apocalyptic survivors.  They get sent by Julie's father to get medical supplies and manage to get attacked by R and his friends and through the power of 80s John Hughes movie music and the eating of Julie's boyfriend's brains (which Julie did not see) he falls in love.  Brains, ya see, make zombies "feel alive" because, like any primitive society, eating your enemy gives you power.  And I'm glad to see that old chestnut rearing its ugly head, for realsies.

So... because he's all twitterpated, he takes Julie back to his airplane home to keep her safe from the other zombies.  And thus, in the weirdest case of Stockholm Syndrome ever, they bond.  Julie gets bored so she tries to teach R how to drive.  Really?  Seriously?

Booooooooooobs.

So, after a day or so, R brings Julie home.  Along the way, of course, we get introduced to the "Bonies" which are those zombies that are way too far gone to be anything but utter douchebags.  They are skeletons with a tough leather wrapping, really, and they are the monsters I prefer to see.  

 

Unlike this asshole.

 

So R really does take her home but like an idiot, not that we expected that much from a reanimated corpse, he tells Julie that he killed her boyfriend.  Naturally, she thinks this is a dick move.  He goes back to the airport where we see that other zombies are showing signs of life, too.  Because... love... is... infectious?  

ANYWAY, they think that R needs to go and tell the normals what's going on plus there's that whole reverse necrophilia thing going on.  (Biophilia?  Maybe?  Whatever.)  In the aftermath of a really awkward balcony scene, Julie and her friend Nora (Nora... Nurse... get it?) are convinced that the zombies are curing themselves and take R to see Julie's dad and dad, of course, wants to blow R's head clean off his corpse-y shoulders.  It's only natural, really.

 

Has the right idea.  No one cares.

Nora helps R escape with Julie and the big battle between of the zombies begins.  The Bonies are pretty much after anything with a heartbeat which, of course, now includes R and his necro-buddies.  

Necro-Buddies.  I should trademark the fuck out of that and make a Saturday morning cartoon out of it. 

So, yeah, R comes fully back to life, dad shoots him, he bleeds proving he's alive, love wins, dad's an ass, humans joined forces with the zombies, Julie's in love, the apocalypse ends (which, really, isn't possible) and the world starts to rebuild thus completely ruining the Romeo and Juliet story for everybody because it's no longer a fucking tragedy like Shakespeare intended.  

So... yeah...

GAH!  I fucking hate this movie and it's not because it's not well made or well written or even well acted because it is all of those things.  I really have nothing to complain about in those departments.  

What I have a fucking problem with is that dead people aren't people.  Reanimated corpses are monsters.  Even in Frankenstein, where there's at least a glimmer of sympathy for the creature, the creature is still a monster and nobody wanted to fuck it INCLUDING the Bride that was made for it.

I get that we're talking about the power of love and blah, blah, schmaltz, gooeyness, huggy-wuggy, blah but seriously?  Isn't there ONE monster that can be left alone?  I know that we don't OWN zombies as a concept but there are rules, dammit!  Besides, this story was already told in My Boyfriend's Back, Boy Eats Girl and a myriad of other movies.

Watch it if you want.  I don't care.  Blargy-bloo.

Like He's Never Slashed Before

Ooooooooh, I been WAITIN' for this one.  The fuckin' French got this a year ago.  Damn French.  With their Eiffel Tower and their baguettes which, let's face it, are only good as weaponry.

ANYWAY, 1980's Maniac is considered a seminal grindhouse horror film.  2013's Maniac, directed by Franck Khalfoun, takes away the grindhouse and cranks it to eleven.

The movie starts with Frank Zito (Elijah Wood), the titular maniac, in his car, stalking a girl exiting a club.  But there's a twist.  We're watching it through his eyes.  We'll go over that later.

So, it turns out that Frank spends a lot of time on dating websites and just, y'know, trolling the streets for girls.  Yes, that's as creepy as it sounds and the reason why is creepier. 


See, his mom, who ran the mannequin restoration business that he currently owns, used to moonlight as a hooker and, occasionally, would take him along for the ride.  So, now, because he's so traumatized, he keeps trying to find girls that, like Psycho, will please dear, old mom.  But because lugging a body around would be cumbersome and draw attention, he just scalps them and be-wigs the mannequins in his collection with them.

You, ahhh... got a little somethin', there.

And then he meets a girl that he doesn't want to kill.

 

Awwww... She's all sweet and virginal and stuff.

 

Because this is so new, that's all you get.  Sorry.  Hate to be a buzzkill but this technically hasn't released to the American audience, yet, so I gots to keep my trap shut.  You understand, don't you?

 

Awwwww, now don't be that way.

 

I WILL say that by removing the suspense of "where's the killer", we, as the audience are forced to look at horror in a whole new way.  Yeah, the trick has been used before in films like Black Christmas but never to this extent.  Other than a few key scenes, the entire movie is shot from Frank's point of view and the madness that taints it is supremely evident.  And the movie isn't so much about seeing the killer, it's about hearing and feeling him.  Connecting with him on a level that film-goers rarely do.

The happiest day in a girl's life...

The one thing that will disturb audiences the most, though, is the choice of Elijah Wood as Frank.  Wood, throughout his career, is pretty much a "good guy".  Other than his voiceless role as Kevin in Sin City, Wood has always been "wide-eyed innocent" and Khalfoun uses that to creepy advantage.  Frank is still, in a shattered kind of way, an innocent.  It's even implied that he's a virgin.

I will warn the movie-going audience.  This is NOT a standard horror film.  It is a slow burn and it is, in its way, beautiful and dream-like.  Yes, there is gore and a lot of it but do not expect it to be a slashfest like, say, Texas Chainsaw.  This is more along the lines of American Psycho only there is no "is it happening only in his head" factor.

Highly recommended, this one.

The Creepiness... I lists it.

Hey, kids!  Want all your Creature Feature creepiness in one place?  You got it!  I'll be keeping a running gag... I mean, tally right here!

But, seriously?  The gag thing?  Not out of the realm of possibility. 

*********************

Intro to Creature Feature Week by Brandon at Movies @ Dog Farm.

Kweeny Todd's Top Ten Modern Creature Features.

Brandon gets introspective with The Beast Within.

Gettin' icky with it.  SQUIRM!

Dirk Benedict is just happy to see you.  Sssssss!

Kweeny gives us a music review and gets her Psychobilly on with Creature Feature.

TropeFest:  Attack of the 49 foot, 11 and 1/2 inch Whatever!

Brent at The Big, Gay Horror Show LOVES Creature Features so he goes over 5 random ones.

I swear to the great Blogathotep, William Shatner hates everybody.  Kingdom of the Spiders.  Damn. 

Betty White kicks ASS!!  Lake Placid, an unsung horror-comedy masterpiece.

Erin at Deep Red Rum is suffering from Brain Damage.  Poor thing...

Surprise!!  Erok from Theatre of Guts goes international with Goke: Bodysnatcher from Hell.

Maggie from MK Horror gets down and dirty in the NYC sewers with her review of Mimic.

I hope you all enjoyed Creature Feature Week!  I know I did.

If you write your own blog and would like to be a part of future Blog-a-thons, let me know!  They're a heck of a lot of fun and they're a great way to gain exposure.

Now it's off to tent our fingers and giggle maniacally while we plan the next one.  Stay tuned!

Regular posts continue tomorrow.