10/14/15 (Part One): The Sisterhood of the Flying Broom

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31 Days of Halloween, 800 Bullets, Accion Mutante, Alex de la Iglesia, alternate title, armed robbery, auteur theory, battle of the sexes, Carmen Maura, Carolina Bang, El dia de la bestia, favorite films, feminism, Film auteurs, foreign films, Gabriel Delgado, Guillermo del Toro, horror movies, horror-comedies, Hugo Silva, Jaime Ordonez, Kiko de la Rica, Las Brujas de Zugarramurdi, love story, Macarena Gomez, Mario Casas, men vs women, misogyny, paganism, Peter Jackson, romance, Santiago Segura, Secun de la Rosa, small town life, Spanish film, special-effects extravaganza, Terele Pavez, The Day of the Beast, The Last Circus, witches, Witching and Bitching, writer-director, Zugarramurdi

Occupying a common ground somewhere between cinema-fantastique auteur Guillermo del Toro and legendary surrealist Alejandro Jodorowsky, the films of Spanish writer-director Alex de la Iglesia are, without a doubt, one-of-a-kind treasures, little islands of individuality adrift in a cinematic sea of homogeneity. Since the early ’90s, de la Iglesia has used genre films like feature-length debut Accion mutante (1993) and El dia de la bestia (1995) to address everything from organized religion to societal responsibility, from the vagaries of the child adoption system to the horrors of the Spanish Civil War.

Beginning with 2002’s 800 Bullets, de la Iglesia began to move further afield from the scrappy supernatural-themed films that began his career to focus on more “mature” films, albeit ones which still bore very little resemblance to anyone else’s. El crimen perfecto (2004), The Last Circus (2010) and As Luck Would Have It (2011) might have been more grounded in reality than de la Iglesia’s previous films (although The Last Circus is a pretty surreal cake, no matter how you slice it) but were no less quirky and ground-breaking. Since As Luck Would Have It was his most linear, “normal” film yet, I found myself wondering if the wild man of Spanish cinema had decided to walk the straight and narrow, so to speak.

For his most recent film, however, de la Iglesia opted to go a little further back in his career: all the way back to the outrageous El dia de la bestia, as it turns out. Witching and Bitching (or the Witches of Eastwick-referencing original title, Las brujas de Zugarramurdi) (2013) combines action, slapstick, sly black humor and the supernatural in truly invigorating ways, offering up a treatise on the eternal battle of the sexes that manages to lob grenades at both sides while still finding plenty of room for romance, some sneaky asides about Spanish pop culture and some pretty awesome SFX setpieces, including a climatic battle with a massive, ancient goddess that would make Peter Jackson smile. In other words: that magnificent bastard de la Iglesia has done it again.

De la Iglesia has always been masterful with his opening segments and Witching and Bitching continues this trend. After a nicely atmospheric intro featuring some good, old-fashioned witch action (think “bubble bubble toil and trouble/big black cauldron type stuff), we get jumped into a thoroughly dynamic credit sequence that manages to juxtapose images of famous female actors, politicians, historical figures and celebrities with those of witches, pagan symbols, fertility statues, arcane images and serial killers, as if to make the claim that pigeonholing women is just about as stupid and pointless an exercise as possible. De la Iglesia seems to be making the statement that women, like men, are a little bit of every archetype: that old cliché of “the Madonna or the whore” is just as worthless today as it was a hundred years ago.

The film, proper, begins with Jose (Hugo Silva), his young son, Sergio (Gabriel Delgado) and accomplice, Antonio (Mario Casas), fleeing a badly botched jewelry store heist. They make off with a dufflebag filled with gold wedding rings but Tony’s girlfriend has taken off with their getaway car (in her defense, Antonio never bothered to let her know that he would be using her car for an armed robbery, so her reaction is kind of understandable), leaving them stranded as the cops begin to bear down. Springing into action, Jose carjacks a taxi, taking the driver, Manuel (Jaime Ordonez), and his passenger hostage. All that Jose wants to do is get to the French border and he sees Manuel’s taxi as his golden parachute.

Meanwhile, Jose’s highly irate ex-wife, Silvia (Macarena Gomez), has heard about the botched robbery on the news and is rushing over to rescue her poor son and slap Jose upside the head so hard that it jogs his common-sense loose. Along for the ride are bickering cops Calvo (Pepon Nieto) and Pacheco (Secun de la Rosa), who are both convinced that Silvia somehow abetted her low-life ex-husband with the robbery. As luck would have it, all of these disparate characters converge on the titular town of Zugarramurdi, where they will find themselves in the midst of an ancient coven of witches, led by Graciana (Carmen Maura), her elderly mother, Maritxu (Terele Pavez), and daughter, Eva (Carolina Bang). The witches are seeking to resurrect a pagan goddess, in order to replace the reigning patriarchy with a matriarchy and right the countless wrongs that have been inflicted on women since the dawn of time. As love affairs pop up left and right, however, loyalties will be tested: when Eva experiences the first pangs of true love, she must make the impossible decision to either betray her family and her gender or her own heart.

As with all of de la Iglesia’s films, there’s a lot going on in Witching and Bitching: at times, the film seems to move from one complex setpiece to another, with very little room in-between to catch one’s breath. This only ends up being an issue if the film’s setpieces are lacking which, fortunately, is not a problem that de la Iglesia ever seems to be saddled with. From the dynamic, thrilling and hilarious opening robbery (seeing SpongeBob Squarepants get all murdery with a shotgun is, to be frank, a sublime joy that my mind never knew it was missing) to the jaw-dropping special effects showcase that ends the film (I wasn’t lying about Peter Jackson approving: it’s one hell of an awesome sequence), there’s very little about the movie that isn’t captivating, visually stunning or flat-out hilarious.

As a comedy, Witching and Bitching works on a variety of levels, from the silly and slapsticky (Eva serves “finger food” that consists of actual fingers; the various chase scenes remind of Scooby Doo cartoons, at times) to the more subtle and cutting (Eva’s family frequently reminds her that she should be out engaging in “fist-fucking, golden showers and zoophilia,” not falling in love with a wimpy man…they didn’t send her to “the worst schools” just to suffer this indignity!). In addition, there’s plenty of commentary on the “battle of the sexes” from both sides: neither men nor women escape the film’s withering glare unscathed.

As a horror film, de la Iglesia’s movie is, likewise, a home-run – despite the near-constant comedy, he manages to sneak plenty of pure horror beats into the mix, as well. The town of Zugarramurdi is ridiculously atmospheric, coming across as nothing so much as the return of the fog-shrouded hamlets of Hammer Studios’ glory days. There’s a nicely tense bit involving a mysterious person reaching up through a toilet-bowl that’s nearly Hitchcockian in its sustained sense of suspense and the previously mentioned climax, featuring the massive, ancient and blind goddess (brilliantly depicted as a towering combination of the Venus of Willendorf and one of Jackson’s trolls from LOTR) is a real showstopper: they even manage to throw in a nifty mid-air “witches’ battle” to keep things lively.

Despite the nearly constant spectacle, the cast of Witching and Bitching manages to hold their own against the onslaught. Hugo Silva is a charismatic hero and he’s ably paired up with Mario Casas to give the film a pair of sympathetic (to a point) protagonists. Jaime Ordonez is, likewise, pretty great as the kidnapped taxi driver: the scene where he decides to “join” the gang, only to be met with mass confusion by Jose and Antonio (“Does this mean you want a cut or something? How do we know we can trust you?”) is an easy highlight and Ordonez’s nervous, fidgety energy contrasts nicely with Silva’s more traditional heroism and Casas’ kind-of/sort-of nice-guy dumbass.

On the female side of things, Carmen Maura, Carolina Bang and Terele Pavez pretty much steal the film from the rest of the cast: the bit where Pavez puts in razor-sharp steel teeth and Maura scuttles across the ceiling, like a fly, are undeniably badass, as is Bang’s ridiculously hot-headed Eva whenever she’s on-screen. More importantly, none of the witches ever come across as overly shrill or needlessly bumbling: unlike many genre films that purport to detail a (literal) battle of the sexes (Jake West’s Doghouse (2009) comes immediately to mind), there’s never the notion that de la Iglesia has unfairly stacked the deck against his female antagonists.

In fact, one of the most interesting aspects of the film is the way in which the notion of feminism is handled. Early on, we get a pretty much never-ending stream of misogyny from the likes of Jose and Manuel: even nice-guy Tony joins in after he realizes that his girlfriend actually “holds the reins” in their relationship. This is qualified, of course, once we get to Zugarramurdi and get the other half of argument from the female participants. As Graciana makes plainly clear, men are really afraid of women because they realize that God is actually female and are too terrified to admit the truth: by bringing about the return of their goddess, the women hope to usher in a new, enlightened era, one where women are not subjugated, abused and ridiculed. In a way, neither gender makes it out of Witching and Bitching completely intact, although most of de la Iglesia’s sharpest rocks are reserved for the lunk-headed men in the film.

Ultimately, de la Iglesia’s latest film is proof-positive of why I absolutely adore his movies: they’re big, brash, colorful, lively, funny and intelligent…pretty much any and everything that I possibly hope to find at the theater. While del Toro and Jackson might be better known, I’d argue that de la Iglesia is, without a doubt, the more accomplished, interesting filmmaker: he has a way of blending the fantastic and the mundane in some truly invigorating ways. While The Last Circus will probably always be my favorite de la Iglesia film (if there are flaws in that film, I haven’t found them), Witching and Bitching is an instant classic and should be required viewing for genre fans. Start with this one, start with The Last Circus or pick a random title out of a hat: whatever you do, make yourself familiar with the films of Alex de la Iglesia. If you love films as much as I do, I’m willing to guarantee that you might just find yourself with a new favorite director.

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The 31 Days of Halloween (Week Five)

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31 Days of Halloween, Alien Abduction, All Hallows Eve, Argento's Dracula, cinema, Diary of the Dead, film reviews, films, Halloween, Halloween traditions, Land of the Dead, Movies, No One Lives, October, Shadow of the Vampire, Shivers, The American Scream, The Cottage, The Vampire Lovers, Trick 'r Treat, Unidentified

At long last, we find ourselves starting the final week of October which, of course, includes the all-important lead-in to the big night. We have quite a large log-jam to clear here at the VHS Graveyard, thanks to a busier than usual last couple of weeks. Never fear, however: we’ll get everything posted even if it takes us until next Halloween!

As usual, let’s recap what was screened last week, followed by our final five nights of entertainment:

10/20/14 — Kill Zombie! / The Returned

10/21/14 — Botched / Inbred

10/22/14 — Outpost / Outpost: Black Sun

10/23/14 — Omnivoros / Ravenous

10/24/14 — Cube / Splice / Haunter

10/25/14 — Under the Bed / The Monster Squad

10/26/14 — Mr. Jones / Static

 

For this final week of October, here’s what’s on deck:

 

10/27/14 — Shadow of the Vampire / Shivers

10/28/14 — The Cottage / No Ones Lives

10/29/14 — Land of the Dead / Diary of the Dead

10/30/14 — The Vampire Lovers / Argento’s Dracula

10/31/14 — Trick r Treat / All Hallows Eve / The American Scream / Alien Abduction / Unidentified

Thanks for spending your October here at the Graveyard: we’re almost at the finish line, so hold on tight!

10/13/14 (Part Two): The Way Out Is Through

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31 Days of Halloween, Alex Reid, all-female cast, auteur theory, cave system, Centurion, cinema, cult classic, cult films, Dog Soldiers, Doomsday, favorite films, female friendships, feminism, Film auteurs, film reviews, films, friends, horror films, horror-adventure, isolation, Molly Kayll, Movies, MyAnna Buring, mysterious cave, Natalie Mendoza, Neil Marshall, Nora-Jane Noone, Oliver Milburn, Saskia Mulder, Shauna Macdonald, spelunking, subterranean monsters, The Descent, underground exploration, unexplored cave system

One of the biggest problems with the horror film genre, practically from its inception, has been the way it tends to marginalization women. In many cases, female characters exist solely as either cannon fodder or eye candy: the concept of the “male gaze” is so intertwined with the slasher film, for example, that it’s nearly impossible to separate that particular sub-genre from its inherent misogyny. One of the laziest defenses of these decidedly old-fashioned ideals, of course, is that the genre has “always been this way”: Dracula chased virgins, masked maniacs hunted nubile co-eds and T & A was just something to hold interest in-between creative kill scenes. This is, quite obviously, a pretty huge load of horse-shit: these things “have always been like this” because they benefit the status quo, pure and simple. Audience enjoyment of a horror film shouldn’t be precipitated on the need to constantly see bare breasts any more than it should be precipitated on the need to constantly see gore: the horror genre is so much more than the sum of (some of) its small, mechanical parts.

For the time being, the film world (particularly the horror genre) is predominantly a “boy’s club”: male directors still overwhelmingly outnumber female directors, although there are certain small in-roads being made. The Soska sisters, to name but one example, seem poised on the cusp of a massive filmmaking revolution…if ever there were folks duly suited to picking up the torch and burning down the institution, the fearless creators of Dead Hooker in a Trunk (2009) and American Mary (2012) seem like them. We’re a far cry from anything actually approaching equality, of course, but the same could be said for the subject, in general. The most important thing to keep in mind, I think, is the notion of the doctor “doing no harm.” If filmmakers are not willing (or able) to completely right the imbalance, then they should, at the very least, not be contributing to it. It may be a small gesture, in the end, but it’s often the smallest gestures which can lead to the biggest breakthroughs.

British auteur Neil Marshall’s sophomore feature, The Descent (2005), is one film that I honestly feel “does no wrong” as far as the subject of gender politics goes. For one thing, Marshall’s film features an almost exclusively female cast, a complete rarity in the horror genre: the only male in the film is featured in the intro and he’s out of the film within the first five minutes. For another thing, Marshall’s neo-classic is informed by feminism to the degree that patriarchal notions and power dynamics are largely left by the wayside: the focus here is firmly on the various interpersonal relationships between the women, rather than having the female characters serve as plot devices to complete a male character’s arc. The Descent is that most impressive of “message” films because it’s message is so basic, yet important: women are capable of kicking as much ass, sowing as much chaos, getting in as much trouble and being just as strong as their male counterparts.

Like Tarantino’s From Dusk Till Dawn (1996), The Descent is, basically, a two-fer-one: a bracing, thrilling caving adventure and a claustrophobic, terrifying monster flick. For the first half of the film’s running time, there’s no notion whatsoever that this will develop into anything more than a thrilling drama about the ways in which best friends can drift apart. Via a gripping white-water-rafting intro, we’re introduced to our protagonist, Sarah (Shauna Macdonald). Sarah’s happy, now, but sudden tragedy will strike, stripping her of her family and her old life all in one fell swoop. In order to help their friend recover from her devastating loss, Sarah’s friends, led by alpha female Juno (Natalie Mendoza), decide to “get the band back together” for one more spelunking trip, just like the good old days. The friends haven’t seen each other since Sarah’s family was killed, so this is an excellent time to re-ignite old friendships…and reopen old wounds.

Seeking a suitable “adventure” for her decidedly less-experienced friends, Juno ends up taking the group to an unexplored caving system rather than the “beginner” cave that she promised she’d take them to. Once the truth is out, Juno’s thrill-seeking new friend, Holly (Nora-Jane Noone) is stoked but everyone else is decidedly less enthused: what was supposed to be a nice get-away among former friends has now turned into something decidedly more intensive and, potentially, life-threatening. As they continue to explore the cave, a roof collapse cuts off their way back, forcing them to push forward into the unknown. There’s a great sense of thrill and adventure here: as the friends press on, they fear the unknown but there’s a visceral punch to the notion that they’re all boldly going where no one has ever gone before.

No more is this sense of hesitant excitement more pronounced than the white-knuckle scene where they must make their away across a seemingly bottomless chasm: as Rebecca (Saskia Mulder) makes her away across the cave ceiling, one agonizing inch at a time, there’s a genuine sense of the pioneer spirit. And then, of course, Marshall drops the other shoe: as Rebecca traverses the ceiling, she comes across something not only unexpected but existentially terrifying – an aged, rusted climbing spike driven into the otherwise untouched cave ceiling. The realization hits the friends hard: they’re obviously not the first cavers to explore the system, yet it doesn’t exist on any maps. This, of course, means that the previously explorers never actually made it out alive.

With this new knowledge firmly in mind, the group begin to notice odd things here and there: an abandoned mining lamp, strange cave drawings, mysterious shadows that seem vaguely humanoid but melt into the background whenever examined…it all culminates in the jaw-dropping reveal where they find themselves in a huge antechamber filled with all manner of skeletal remains…including, of course, human bones. From this point forward, The Descent becomes a no-holds-barred battle for survival as Sarah, Juno and the others engage in bloody, life-or-death combat with a group of subterranean creatures that appear to be an awful combination of human and bat. As the friends are hunted through the darkness by creatures that thrive on the inky emptiness, they must pull reserves of strength from deep within themselves, reserves that many of them never knew they possessed. Old rivalries and betrayals will surface, pitting friend against friend, even as the ravenous monsters press in from all sides. Far under the ground, hidden from the “normal” world above and completely off the grid, they most wage the most desperate fight of their lives or snuggle into their cavernous new tomb and accept that there are just some places that humans do not belong.

The first half of Marshall’s film is so gripping and enthralling, similar to the nature-based adventure setpieces from Deliverance (1972), that the appearance of the monsters seems destined to tip the film’s serious edge into total pulp territory. Instead, the horror-based second half actually dovetails perfectly with the more adventure-oriented first part, creating a beast similar to Master Blaster from Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985). It’s a nifty hat-trick but one that Marshall pulled off with similar aplomb in his feature-length debut, Dog Soldiers (2002), which grafted an action-packed military film onto a werewolf movie. As an interesting parallel, Marshall’s first film featured only one female role (albeit a prominent one), whereas the follow-up featured only one (brief) male role in an otherwise all female cast.

While The Descent’s casting is certainly noteworthy, there’s absolutely nothing gimmicky about the concept: the film never feels like a jaded attempt to shoehorn diversity into a largely male-oriented genre but, rather, an honest, genuine attempt to tell a horror story from a feminine perspective. Most impressively, the cast never feel like female actors subbed in for their male counterparts: the themes and ideas explored here – friendship, betrayal, the importance of the family unit, the need for emotional honesty – all feel organic to the characters and there’s appears to be a genuine focus on the female characters. Despite a plot point that involves infidelity, there is a refreshing lack of male needs guiding the overall story: these are women who are perfectly capable and happy on their own, without the need to be intrinsically connected to male counterparts. In the truest notion of equality, the characters in The Descent are just allowed to be their own characters, for better or worse, and there’s no notion, at any point, that they’re merely marionettes being forced to dance for the male gaze. In a genre that seems to thrive on finding inventive ways to showcase distressed young women wearing as little clothing as possible, Marshall’s extraordinary film does the zaniest thing possible: it opts to just treat them like human beings and let the drama arise organically from the characters and situations. Fancy that!

As with Marshall’s debut, The Descent is an absolutely stunning bit of craftwork, featuring some truly gorgeous cinematography (the scenes lit solely by red flares are genuinely beautiful, conjuring up a haunted atmosphere that’s equal parts dreamy and Stygian) and some of the most impressive locations ever committed to celluloid. Truly, The Descent stands as one of the crowning achievements of the cinematic caving subgenre (narrow as that might be) and is practically the first and last word on caving-based horror films: there have been a handful of others but they all look pretty impoverished compared to Marshall’s flick.

The acting, as befits all of Marshall’s films, is note-perfect. Shauna Macdonald, in particular, is an absolutely riveting hero: while she doesn’t possess the steely reserve of someone like Lt. Ripley, there’s an honesty to her character’s actions that feels both suitably dramatic and grounded in reality. Sarah is not a fearless character strutting through an apocalyptic wasteland with gum in one cheek and her boot up someone’s ass: she’s a regular person whose preservation instincts propel her forward, even as her options seem to be running out right and left. Similarly, Natalie Mendoza could have played Juno as a shrill, one-note antagonist, someone whose sole function was to awaken a change in the main character. Instead, Mendoza infuses Juno with enough nuance to allow audiences to empathize, at least to some extent, with her actions. One of the most powerful moments in the entire film comes from the scene where Juno accidentally kills one of the party: her character has been cocky and obnoxious, up to that point, but the fear, pain and horror in her eyes are new emotions and Mendoza is a capable enough performer to allow each to bubble to the surface, in time, even if only briefly.

I fell in complete love with The Descent after my very first screening of the film (which happened to be in a theater, thankfully) and my opinion hasn’t wavered one iota in the decade since. The film is easily one of my favorite horror movies, of any era, and is one of the modern horror films that I feel completely comfortable with canonizing: I think that The Descent is a film that audiences and critics will be returning to for many decades, similar to any of the greats in the genre. Even viewed as critically as possible, I can find very few real faults with the film and the high points soar handily above the high points of many, many other films. The fight sequences are visceral assaults to the senses, the feeling of claustrophobia is so complete as to be almost suffocating and the film has one of the single greatest, most perfect endings in the history of cinema. No lie: if I were Marshall, I’d get a bumper sticker that says “My film kicked your honor student’s ass.”

 

10/13/14 (Part One): Going to the Dogs

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31 Days of Halloween, action films, aliens, auteur theory, British films, Centurion, Chris Robson, cinema, cult classic, Darren Morfitt, Dog Soldiers, dogs, Doomsday, Emma Cleasby, extreme violence, feature-film debut, Film auteurs, film reviews, films, horror films, horror movies, isolation, James Cameron, Kevin McKidd, Leslie Simpson, Liam Cunningham, Movies, Neil Marshall, Sam McCurdy, Sean Pertwee, soldiers, The Descent, Thomas Lockyer, war games, werewolves, writer-director-editor

Like horror-comedies, action and horror hybrids walk a pretty fine line: too much of the action side of things and you get, well, an action film. A film which features endless scenes of zombies engaged in bone-crunching MMA action might be thrilling but it probably won’t be very blood-chilling. Likewise, traditional zombies that pop out of the background, stumble around and bite people might be horrifying and blood-chilling but probably won’t elicit the kinds of fist-pumping responses we might get from our mixed-martial artist gut-munchers. It’s a real formula, in a way, a formula which very few films really get right. The gold standard for these types of horror-action hybrids, as far as I’m concerned, is James Cameron’s classic Aliens (1986), the direct sequel to Ridley Scott’s horrifying sci-fi classic. Coming in at a close second, however, would have to be writer-director Neil Marshall’s extraordinary feature-film debut, Dog Soldiers (2002). Soldiers fighting werewolves? It doesn’t get much more thrilling than that, friends and neighbors.

As befits its no-nonsense style, Dog Soldiers jumps us into the action fairly quickly and keeps the accelerator floored for the majority of its running time. A small squadron of British soldiers, led by Sgt. Harry Wells (Sean Pertwee) and including Pvt. Cooper (Kevin McKidd) among their ranks, are in the Scottish Highlands for a run-of-the-mill training exercise. They seem to be a good bunch of guys, close-knit and good at what they do: we’ve already spent a little time with Cooper as he tries out for a Special Forces position and know that he’s a helluva fighter with a strong moral center and a particular respect for dogs, which seems to befit the protagonist of a werewolf film.

In short order, our intrepid group of soldiers begins to get the idea that things might not be as copacetic as they originally thought: they constantly hear odd noises in the surrounding forest and someone/thing tosses a slaughtered cow in their general direction, which would be enough to unnerve just about anyone. The situation gets even more extreme once they stumble onto the destroyed campsite of Capt. Ryan (Liam Cunningham) and his Special Forces unit. Ryan was the son of a bitch from the intro to shot the innocent dog but he appears to have seen much better days: he’s cut up pretty bad and looks as white as a ghost. He’s also babbling that “They tore them apart!” and the even more sinister, “There was only supposed to be one!”

Faster than you can say “Full moon,” the squadron are under siege and end up taking refuge with a passing Good Samaritan (Emma Cleasby) at a nearby abandoned farmhouse. As the enraged werewolves try to storm their meager safe house, the soldiers must band together against a foe that seems to be not supernaturally strong but also unbelievably cunning and vicious. There’s more than meets the eye here, however, and the odious Capt. Ryan appears to be right at the very heart of the mystery. What is the secret behind their hirsute attackers and will any of them survive to greet the new day?

Horror films have incorporated action elements for generations but this really became explicit with the rise of horror franchises, such as Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street, in the ’80s. One of the conventions of these type of films, perhaps best exemplified in something like A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: The Dream Warriors (1987), are the scenes where the protagonists engage in heated battle with the main villain. These “action” moments are almost always qualified, however, with the knowledge that the “normal” people are never a match for foes like Jason or Freddy: they might temporarily get the upper hand (at least until the finale) but they’re way to “wimpy” to ever pose any real threat to these super-strong monsters. This is one reason why Scott’s Alien (1979) can be considered a horror film, whereas Cameron’s follow-up is distinctly horror-action: in Alien, the human characters (with the exception of Ripley) are all too weak to even finish off one Xenomorph, let alone a handful of them. The hat-trick that Aliens pulls, then, is to give us a group of protagonists who are utterly and completely badass: Space marines, as it turns out, and set them loose against the alien menace.  This way, we don’t question when the marines are kicking alien ass up one side and down the other (although this doesn’t happen quite as easily as I’ve, obviously, made it sound) because that’s what rough-and-tumble space marines are supposed to do: kick ass.

By making our protagonists tough-guy soldiers, Dog Soldiers levels the playing field quite a bit and allows us to suspend disbelief for the resulting action sequences. We don’t question that these guys have sharp reflexes and are able survivalists because, well, that’s kind of what we expect of soldiers. Since the opponents are more evenly matched (at least slightly more, as the werewolves are still towering, mountainous and furry buzzsaws), this allows for a more even balance between the action and horror elements. There are genuine horror elements in the film, not least of which is the ultimate “reveal” about the werewolves identities, which are allowed to play out at a more leisurely pace. For the most part, however, Dog Soldiers definitely plays like one all-out action sequence after another, similar to the way that Dario Argento liberally sprinkled murder set-pieces throughout his early classics.

For a debut film, Dog Soldiers is a remarkably assured and nearly flawless construction. Marshall also handled the editing of the film and displays a deft talent for putting action scenes together in fast-paced and evocative yet clear ways: this isn’t the chaotic chop-chop editing of Greengrass’ The Bourne Ultimatum (2007) but something that’s altogether more fluid, with characters being much more delineated on the screen. The cinematography, by extension, is also crystal clear and sharp: Sam McCurdy, the director of photography on all of Marshall’s films, thus far, has a real eye for color and detail that gives the proceedings a rich look.

Effects-wise, Dog Soldiers is a complete marvel: the violence is sudden, harsh and well-done, while the creature effects are simply stunning, recalling nothing so much as Rick Baker’s groundbreaking work on The Howling (1981). Unlike films that hide their monsters behind shadows and off the edge of the frame, Dog Soldiers is (rightfully) proud of its lycanthropes and takes every opportunity possible to trot them before the camera. Thanks to the stellar effects work, the creatures look equally imposing whether shot in a long shot or in close up: you won’t see any zippers on these costumes.

One of the most important aspects of any “squadron-based film,” of course, is the effectiveness of the ensemble cast: as with everything else, Dog Soldiers knocks this out of the park. Sean Pertwee does a great job as the Sarge who just wants to get his guys out of the shit and Kevin McKidd (from TV’s Rome) injects enough grit into his performance of Pvt. Cooper to prevent the character from seeming like too much of a “goody-goody” cliché. Cunningham is a rather teeth-gnashing, over-the-top villain, but the performance ends up working, perhaps because it gives the group someone entirely more “manageable” to fight against.

One aspect of Dog Soldiers that sets it a bit apart from similar films (and parallels it with Cameron’s Aliens) is the film’s overall serious tone and intent: while there are the occasional clever one-liners and cheeky moments, the emphasis is definitely on adrenaline over the easy release that comic relief affords. Truth be told, the film’s funniest moment is also one of its most badass: as Spoon (Darren Morfitt) is about to be devoured by a werewolf, he tosses out the immortal retort, “I hope I give you the shits, you fucking wimp!” Epic, indeed.

For my money, Neil Marshall is, hands-down, one of the single most impressive genre directors in the business. While I’ve enjoyed some of his films more than others (Dog Soldiers and The Descent (2005) occupy a pretty lofty perch, whereas Doomsday (2008) and Centurion (2010) reside a bit closer to solid ground), I’ve never been anything less than completely entertained with any of his work: he’s the kind of director that can get me excited for any project, sight unseen, and is a filmmaker that I expect to follow for several good decades to come. It’s always handy, however, to go back to the beginning and see how it all started. For Marshall, it started with this thrilling, edge-of-the-seat classic about werewolves and the soldiers who fight them and it doesn’t show any signs of stopping anytime soon. Utterly essential for genre fans and anyone who relishes a ripping good, military-themed action film.

10/12/14 (Part Three): The Most Deceiving of Looks

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31 Days of Halloween, Australian films, auteur theory, Christopher Kirby, cinema, Dead Calm, Domenic Purcell, drama, Everett De Roche, father-daughter relationships, Film auteurs, film reviews, films, foreign films, hallucinations, insanity, isolation, Link, mental illness, mother-daughter relationships, Movies, ocean voyage, Ozploitation, Patrick, pirates, Radha Mitchell, Ray Barrett, Richard Franklin, Road Games, sailboats, sailing around the world, Susannah York, suspense, The Shining, Tottie Goldsmith, Visitors, voice-over narration

When it came time to put together my potential horror viewing for this year, Visitors (2003) definitely felt like it deserved a spot on the list. After all, it was directed by Richard Franklin, one of the godfathers of ’70s-’80s Ozploitation cinema, starred genre vet Radha Mitchell and had a tag that read “Fear runs deep.” The film’s logline mentions strange encounters during an ocean voyage. Hell, the cover art features more sinister screaming skulls than a teenage metalhead’s Trapper Keeper. All of the signs pointed to a nifty little ghost story, perhaps even a twisted time travel scenario like Triangle (2009) or maybe something grounded a little more in reality, ala Dead Calm (1989). The sky, as they say, was the limit.

Visitors, alas, is a decidedly more low-flying affair. While the film flirts with elements of the supernatural and sinister (there are, indeed, mysterious figures that appear during an ocean voyage), it tips its hand way too early and establishes a thoroughly mundane explanation for the occurrences: our faithful protagonist, Georgia Perry (Radha Mitchell), is off her rocker. With that knowledge firmly in pocket, it becomes impossible for the film to muster any sort of tension whatsoever. Imagine a Wizard of Oz (1939) that begins with Dorothy discussing how she’s about to have a very detailed dream and concludes with her waking, looking at the camera and declaring, “Wasn’t that a crazy dream that we just watched?” It’s one thing to be handed an “It’s only a dream” ending after the fact: it’s a cheap tactic but at least you get to enjoy the action, as is, until you realize you’ve been had. It’s another thing entirely to know, up front, that what we’re seeing is fictitious: talk about low-stakes storytelling.

There’s plenty of potential with Visitors, although much of it ends up being unduly squandered. Mitchell plays Perry, a driven young woman who’s hell-bent on setting a record for sailing around the world, solo, in 140 days. She’s a troubled young woman with a concerned husband, Luke (Domenic Purcell), a wealthy benefactor (Tottie Goldsmith) and a complicated relationship with her parents (Susannah York, Ray Barrett) that hints at some past trauma. Georgia is also one hell of a sailor, as we witness thanks to a montage that shows her easily handling the various travails of life on the open sea. With only her cat for company, Georgia seems eminently capable of taking her place in the record books.

Georgia has a habit of talking to her cat, which isn’t surprising: the eye-raising moment comes when the cat actually answers back, speaking in an urbane but distinctly human voice. Since this particular revelation occurs right at the beginning of the film, we’re handed a fairly important bit of information right off the bat: Georgia has actual conversations with her cat. Since nothing in the film has led us to expect any sort of magical realism whatsoever, we can really only draw one conclusion: Georgia is losing/has lost her ever-loving mind.

Once we know that Georgia isn’t playing with a full deck, it completely removes the tension from any of her future interactions. There’s a creepy guy wandering around the boat: could it be real or Georgia’s imagination? Take a guess. Strange, unexplained sights, such a neat scene involving a horde of supremely creepy sea spiders? Please see above. Georgia getting involved in potentially life-threatening scenarios? Are we sure? Advise from a talking cat? Yeah…why not?

Once it’s established that Georgia is cracking up, it’s a pretty clear line to see that all of her “visitations” will somehow revolve around whatever her central issue is. In other words, these “hauntings” are distinctly of the Christmas Carol variety and will serve to help make Georgia a better person and bring her closer to her dysfunctional family, yadda yadda yadda.

Personally, I’m not a fan of this kind of “twist”ending but I’ve encountered it often enough to just shrug and accept it as one of those “clever” ideas that writers always feel they came to first. In the past, however, at least there’s been some sort of attempt to make this a genuine surprise. Once Georgia’s cat lets loose with that mellifluous human voice, all bets are off: unless you’re willing to assume that this is a film about a woman and her talking cat sailing around the world, we can pretty much assume that trusting our eyes and ears will be a bit of a fool’s errand.

It’s a shame, really, because this could have been a much better film if Franklin would have just kept us dangling a little longer than 10 minutes. There’s plenty of nice atmosphere here, including lots of truly creepy fog-shrouded shots of the sailboat at night. The sea-spider scene is pretty damn great, to be honest, and stands as the highlight of the film, despite its relative brevity. Mitchell is typically sturdy as Georgia, although she takes a note from the Jack Nicholson Guide to Actin’ Crazy and starts the performance dialed almost to 11, leaving her precious little room to move around, emotion-wise. By the time the film hits its climax, Mitchell is pitched at a fever-pace, which ends up seeming decidedly silly since we know everything is just in her head.

As a genre film, Visitors tanks because there’s no actual tension but it doesn’t fare much better as the kitchen-sink, mother-daughter relationship drama that it seems to want to be, either. The central conflict between Georgia and her mother feels arbitrary, since it occurred when Georgia was so young, and ends up setting the mother up as an almost inhuman shrew. Her father comes across as one of those slightly lumpy “white knight dad” characters and there’s nothing about the family dynamic that feels particularly important or even interesting. By the time we get to the climax where Georgia’s mom chases her around the ship’s cabin and tries to get her to commit suicide, there’s been so little actual connection between the characters that they might as well be strangers instead of flesh and blood.

I’m inclined to say that this doesn’t feel much like any of Richard Franklin’s previous films (Patrick (1978), Road Games (1981), Psycho II (1983), Link (1986)) but there are actually plenty of moments that directly recall his earlier (and better) work: the aforementioned sea-spider scene, the foreboding bit where the cat calmly pokes holes in Georgia’s delusions, the creepy scene involving the mysterious figure walking about the boat…it’s not like the film can’t build a decent head of steam, it’s just impossible to maintain any consistent sense of tension when you know nothing’s real.

Ultimately, I like Franklin’s filmography enough to give Visitors a shot, even though it was clear from a pretty early stage that the film didn’t really fit my traditional October viewing bill. That being said, the film just isn’t very good, even when viewed as a generic “family in crisis” drama: it’s too often silly and self-deflating (the final line is the sassily-delivered “What’s the matter: cat got your tongue?”, which seals the film’s coffin with a resounding thud). The movie has potential, as mentioned earlier, and I still think there’s a really great story to be made about someone encountering spooky happenings during a solo ocean voyage (how amazing would a horror mash-up of All Is Lost (2013) and Humanoids From the Deep (1980) be?!). Visitors isn’t that film, however, which is kind of a pity.

10/12/14 (Part Two): Zombies, Aliens and Meteors…Oh My!

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31 Days of Halloween, aliens, Australian films, Australian horror films, cinema, co-directors, co-writers, Daybreakers, Dead Alive, Dirk Hunter, Edgar Wright, Emma Randall, feature-film debut, Felicity Mason, film reviews, films, Gaynor Wensley, gore films, horror-comedies, infections, meteor, Michael Spierig, Movies, Mungo McKay, Peter Jackson, Peter Spierig, Rob Jenkins, sci-fi, sci-fi-horror, small town life, the Spierig Brothers, triple shotgun, twist ending, undead, writer-director, zombie, zombie film, zombies

For the most part, it’s extremely hard to surprise me with a twist in a horror film. This has nothing to do with me being some sort of super-astute audience member (although I like to think that I pay careful attention will watching) and everything to do with the fact that I’ve spent the majority of my life watching every single horror flick I could get my hands on. Trust me: if I’ve seen some of this shit once, I’ve seen it a hundred thousand times. “It was only a dream” ending? Check. Unreliable narrator? Yup. “I see dead people?” That one sounds familiar. How about that old classic “It was only a dream but now it’s about to come true?” Yawn. “We were ghosts all along?” Sounds familiar. “This desolate wasteland is actually Earth?” Move along, folks…nothing to see here. For the most part, cinematic twists are like any other aspect of pop films: if it worked once, conventional wisdom says that it will work forever, ad infinitum.

The first time that I sat down to watch the Spierig Brothers’ (Michael and Peter) feature-debut, Undead (2003), I was pretty sure that I knew what I would be getting in for. This was a modern-day zombie film, so I was pretty sure this was either going to follow the Shaun of the Dead (2004) mode (although Undead actually preceded Wright’s British rom-zom-com) or Zack Snyder’s ultra self-referential Dawn of the Dead (2004) remake (although Undead actually came before that one, too). It was an Australian film, so I was pretty sure that it would be suitably gory and/or rather insane, as Aussie genre films are wont to be. At the time, I didn’t really know much more about the film than that: it was just the newest genre film that I’d yet to see, which pretty much made it must-see for me, sight unseen.

Little did I know, of course, that Undead is anything but your average zombie film. Hell, it’s not really like your average anything, to be honest: if I had to classify the film, I’d say that it exists in a suitably daffy territory somewhere between Peter Jackson’s classic gore comedy Dead Alive (1992) and Edgar Wright’s gonzo alien-invasion comedy The World’s End (2013). It’s a zombie film, to be sure, but it’s also an alien invasion film that features deadly acid rain, a hulking, nearly silent hero with a triple-shotgun and a happy-go-lucky finale that’s like a sloppy make-out session between Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and Stephen King’s Under the Dome. It’s a gore film, through and through, featuring some mighty impressive practical effects mixed in with some less than thoroughly convincing CGI but it’s also a good-natured, character-based comedy that places a premium on convincing acting and keeps the scenery chewing to a bare minimum. In short, Undead isn’t really like any one thing: it’s more like the rag-tag Voltron of out-of-control exploitation cinema, come to save the world while tearing as many people in half as possible. It is, to be honest, a complete treasure.

Since part of the unmitigated joy of watching Undead involves all of the ingenious little ways in which co-writers/directors Michael and Peter Spierig constantly screw with expectations, it behooves me to say as little about the actual plot as possible. Suffice to say that the film begins with a meteor shower, turns into a zombie apocalypse film and then proceeds to morph into something completely batshit crazy. While I’ve referenced several things that would seem to give a pretty good indication of the film’s intended direction, nothing can really prepare one for the bizarre ways in which the Spierigs decide to connect the dots. The best advise I can give with the film is to go in as blissfully unaware as possible and just surrender yourself to the insanity. Trust that the Spierigs will get you from Point A to Point Z intact (despite how insane the film becomes, it always makes perfect, if cracked, sense which is something of a minor miracle) and just get to the business of enjoying the film.

And, boy howdy, is there a lot to enjoy here. Despite the occasionally dodgy effect (the CGI sky, in particular, never looks quite right), Undead is an absolute special effects marvel, filled with one eye-popping setpiece after another. Picking favorites is kind of moot, since they’re all so good but particular standouts would definitely include the amazing convenience-store battle (the makeshift broom/circular saw weapon would make Ash weep with joy) and the bit where Marion (Mungo McKay) strides through the landscape bare-ass naked, wasting zombies just as ruthlessly as when his delicate bits were covered up. The finale is a completely gonzo joy and the seemingly never-ending zombie mayhem is handled with as much cheeky aplomb as the similar material in Jackson’s Dead Alive, pretty much the gold standard for these types of films.

In most horror/action films, you’re lucky if you get one truly great hero: Undead actually gives you two, the aforementioned absolute badass Marion and the film’s heroine, Rene (Felicity Mason). In any other film, a character like Marion would steal the film from the rest of the cast and head straight for the hills: how in the hell are you supposed to compete with a one-man zombie kill-squad who carries a triple-shotgun and comes straight out of the “Man With No Name” school of near-silent asskickery? One iconic character isn’t enough for Undead, however, since we also get Rene, a former beauty contest winner who ends up being the most no-nonsense, take charge, ass-kicking heroine since Ripley had a little problem with an uninvited interstellar guest. While McKay and Mason are both absolutely amazing performers, they’re handily supported by a better-than-average cast, including Emma Randall as an asthma inhaler-armed deputy and Dirk Hunter as a ridiculously macho gun-nut police officer who constantly attempts to assume authority without ever actually assuming it.

From a craft-point, Undead is an exceptionally well-made film. There’s a sense of whimsy to the proceedings that helps to temper the extreme violence (and Undead is extremely violent, no two ways about it), in a similar strategy to Dead Alive, and the film is full of nuance and subtlety, despite the filmmakers’ “go-for-broke” approach to the craft. The movie never feels silly, however, and proudly earns each and every one of its horror beats: this is a full-throttle horror film, first and foremost, despite the wealth of laugh-out-loud moments. And laugh-out-loud moments there are aplenty: Marion engaging in fisticuffs with a zombified fish…Rene cutting a zombie in half with a steering wheel club…Dept. Harrison assuring everyone that “people hallucinate sometimes when they panic…I know that I do,” which has to rank as the last thing you want to hear a cop say in an emergency…Marion hanging upside down from the door frame, by his spurs, and blowing away zombies left and right…as I said earlier, it’s literally one amazing setpiece after another for the better part of 90 minutes.

The Spierig Brothers would go on to make Daybreakers (2009), the Ethan Hawke-led vampire film, although that’s a solid step down from what’s on display here. Like Peter Jackson, the Spierigs are at their absolute best when indulging all of their (many) whims: larger budgets and the participation of more “respectable” agencies just seem to dilute their impact. While there’s nothing terrible wrong with Daybreakers, there’s also nothing particularly exceptional about it, either: when compared with Undead, however, the deficiencies become that much more glaring.

Like Dead Alive, Undead will absolutely not be for everyone’s tastes. It’s hard not to oversell the film’s violence and gore quotient but sensitive souls should take note: the film thrives on graphic dismemberment and bodily explosions in a way that indicates that New Zealand and Australia might be close, geographically, but they’re even closer, cinematically. The film might not revel quite as much in the over-the-top obscenity of Jackson’s classic (you won’t find any zombie wombs in this, period, much less ones large enough to stuff a protagonist into) but it never shirks on either the red stuff or clever ideas, either. And there’s actually one point on which Undead absolutely trumps Dead Alive: while Dead Alive had a rip-roaring finale that made you want to pump your fist in the air, Undead has a mind-blowingly cerebral one that really makes you think about everything that came before. Bloody, hilarious and thought-provoking? Without a doubt, Undead is the real deal: if your stomach is strong enough, give this a try and meet your new favorite film.

10/12/14 (Part One): Beat on the Zom-Brat

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'90s films, 31 Days of Halloween, auteur theory, Bad Taste, Brenda Kendall, cinema, co-writers, Dead Alive, Diana Penalver, Elizabeth Moody, favorite films, Film auteurs, film reviews, films, foreign films, Fran Walsh, gore films, Heavenly Creatures, horror-comedies, Ian Watkin, Meet the Feebles, Movies, New Zealand films, Peter Jackson, practical effects, Raiders of the Lost Ark, special-effects extravaganza, Stuart Devenie, The Frighteners, The Lord of the Rings, Timothy Balme, writer-director, zombies

Fans who flocked to Peter Jackson after his groundbreaking adaptation of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings (2001-2003) must have really had their worlds expanded once they started to take a trip through his back catalog. The Frighteners (1996) isn’t such a stretch, obviously, and Heavenly Creatures (1994) is certainly a strange film but it’s more of an arthouse curio than a truly deviant piece of filmmaking. Go back further than that, however, and you truly start to hang out in the weird part of town. Jackson began his career with a trio of films that managed to explore perversity, gore, shock, taboos and humor in some pretty bracing ways: Bad Taste (1987), Meet the Feebles (1989) and Dead Alive (1992) are just as shocking today, in many ways, as they were over two decades ago. Very few films have ever dared to tread ground half as controversial as Jackson’s X-rated puppet spectacular Meet the Feebles and his Bad Taste manages to live up to its name in just about every way possible. And then, of course, there’s Dead Alive.

For horror fans of a certain age, especially those who’ve always sought out the more extreme ends of the genre, Jackson’s Dead Alive has been something of a right of passage since it was released 22 years ago. Popular mythology states that Dead Alive is the goriest film ever made and, to be quite frank, I’m more than inclined to agree. Oh sure, there are plenty of films out there are more extreme and unpleasant, more focused on mean-spirited body torture and nerve-wracking surgical procedures than Jackson’s zombie-comedy. There’s been twenty years of special effects improvements since the early ’90s and even network TV shows (think about some of the setpieces in NBC’s Hannibal and recall a time when NYPD Blue’s bare butts were a sign of the impending apocalypse) are trafficking in the kind of gore effects that used to be the sole purview of underground horror flicks. Conventional wisdom would seem to make it impossible for Dead Alive to keep its throne after all this time. After rewatching the film, however, I was struck with a realization: this is still just as bracing, intense and hardcore as it ever was. In fact, I’m hard-pressed to think of any other film that manages to maintain such a consistent level of gleefully insane, gore-drenched mayhem as Dead Alive does: that the film also manages to come across as sweet-natured and decidedly old-fashioned is not a fluke…it’s one of the reasons why Peter Jackson has been one of the world’s most interesting filmmakers since he first burst onto the scene.

At its heart, Dead Alive is a sweet love story about clumsy, mild-mannered nice-guy Lionel (Timothy Balme) and fiery shop-clerk, Pacquita (Diana Penalver). Pacquita has fallen madly in love with Lionel thanks to a Tarot reading and is determined to get her “happily ever after,” even though poor Lionel seems more bemused than smitten. There is, of course, one big problem: Lionel’s absolutely wretched mother, Vera (Elizabeth Moody). Vera is a complete harpy – nasty, vain, hectoring, verbally abusive, snide, stuck-up…she makes Anne Ramsey’s awful mother in Throw Momma From the Train (1987) seem like Mary Poppins, by comparison. Vera has Lionel completely wrapped around her finger and likes it that way. When she notices that her little boy is showing an undue interest in the shop clerk, Vera springs into action, determined to keep them apart at all costs.

As Vera spies on the young lovers at the zoo, however, she manages to stand just a little too close to the Sumatran Rat Monkey cage. We’ve been introduced to this particular critter already, of course, thanks to an ingeniously gory intro that manages to parody both Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and King Kong (1933) and we know what’s coming: in due time, Vera has contracted a bit of the ol’ zombie sickness and has got to the business of rotting and eating unsuspecting people and animals. Soon, Lionel’s full-time job becomes keeping an eye on his zombified mother and her increasing horde of victims, all of which he keeps tranquilized in the basement, in order to prevent the kind of mass zombie invasion that seems all-too imminent. Poor Lionel is getting run ragged, however, and has started to push Pacquita away, in order to keep her safe from the mounting chaos. When Lionel’s unbelievably shitty uncle, Les (Ian Watkin), shows up and wants a piece of his dead sister’s estate, however, Lionel is pushed to the breaking point. Over the course of one insane night, Lionel, Pacquita, a mob of Uncle Les’ obnoxious rockabilly friends and a horde of ravenous zombies will all converge: heads will fly, limbs will fly, guts will fly, lawn mowers will be used as melee weapons, lawn gnomes will be jammed into bloody neck stumps and Lionel will learn that mother doesn’t always know best, particularly when she’s trying to chew off your face.

In any other hands, it would be easy to see how Dead Alive could have been nothing more than a grueling test of one’s cast-iron stomach, the horror movie equivalent of a game of freeway chicken. It’s absolutely no hyperbole to say that the film is drenched in blood: the intro features multiple dismemberment and the resulting blood “splashes” onto the screen, forming the film’s title…this is nothing if not truth in advertising, friends and neighbors. Jackson’s gore epic features everything that you expect from the “typical” zombie film (graphic flesh-eating; gut-munching; zombies blasted into pieces) but manages to add sequences that vault the film into a whole other stratosphere, such as the bit where a zombie pushes through another character and wears them like a mask or the bit where Lionel runs in place for several minutes because the floor is completely covered in slippery blood and body parts. Very little in this world really compares to Lionel being forced back into his (now enormous) dead mother’s womb, however, and this certainly serves as one of those horror watershed moments: if this film doesn’t bother you, congratulations…in all likelihood, very little will.

The gore effects and setpieces are absolutely astounding and jaw-dropping, no two ways about it, but the film’s real ace card is it’s totally wacky sense of humor. Despite being as intensely violent as anything out there, Dead Alive is also remarkably silly, goofy and, most surprisingly, good-natured. The film often fills like a fairy tale or kids’ movie gone awry, thanks to Jackson’s heightened use of magical realism and his trademark production design. Rather than feeling forced or out-of-place, the numerous comedy setpieces shine as brightly as the gore ones. One of my favorite scenes in any film, ever, is the spectacular moment where Father McGruder (Stuart Devenie) runs up to assist Lionel with his zombie problem and immediately springs into gleeful kung-fu mode: “I kick ass for the Lord,” he chortles, as he (literally) karate-kicks a zombie into multiple pieces. The scene is silly, sure, but it’s also a ton of fun and is tonally perfect. Likewise the scene where Lionel takes the zom-baby for a stroll in the park and tries to emulate the behavior of the parents, especially once the situation manages to spiral completely out of control: there are few joys quite as sublime as watching Lionel elbow-drop onto the rubber baby or drop-kick it across the park as concerned mothers raise eyebrows sky-high.

This, then, becomes the film’s true legacy: the movie is astoundingly gory and frequently completely disgusting (you’ll probably never look at custard the same way again) but it’s never anything less than good-natured, fun and 100% entertaining. Dead Alive may just be the perfect party film, for horror fans, especially if one can watch the film with neophytes: it’s one of the few films where I truly envy newbies the experience of seeing it for the first time, especially when one reaches the show-stopping party climax. Personally, I’ve always liked Meet the Feebles a little more than Dead Alive, probably because the former film will always seem like a nasty, transgressive marvel to me while the latter has increasingly achieved the kind of warm and fuzzy sentimentality that most folks probably associate with their favorite Christmas movies. That being said, Dead Alive is one of those films that made its way to my “favorite films” list after one viewing and has never left. I’m a fan of lots of different things, from the cute-and-cuddly to the soul-shattering but Dead Alive has always been a guideline for me, in a way: if you don’t like the film, we can still exist in the same orbit…I’ll always understand if the movie isn’t someone’s cup of tea. If you love this movie as much as I do, however, than you and I are gonna get along just fine.

The 31 Days of Halloween (Week Four)

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31 Days of Halloween, Botched, Cube, Diary of the Dead, Doc of the Dead, Fright Night, Halloween, Halloween traditions, Haunter, horror, horror movies, Inbred, Kill Zombie, Land of the Dead, Omnivores, Outpost, Outpost: Black Sun, Ravenous, Splice, The Monster Squad, The Returned, Under the Bed, World War Z

Hello boys and ghouls: looks like we’ve officially arrived at Week Four of the 31 Days of Halloween. Since last week featured a number of changes (farewell, Stepfather, you marvelously wrecked DVD), it’s probably helpful to start with a recap before going into this week’s screening. Here’s what I actually ended up watching last week:

10/13/14 — Dog Soldiers / The Descent

10/14/14 — Witching and Bitching / Suspiria

10/15/14 — Mama

10/16/14 — The Haunting / Dead Silence

10/17/14 — Dead Birds / The Burrowers

10/18/14 — House of 1000 Corpses / The Devil’s Rejects

The Den / Antisocial

10/19/14 — Thale

 

This week, our screenings look a little like this:

10/20/14 — Kill Zombie! / The Returned

10/21/14 — Inbred / Botched

10/22/14 — Outpost / Outpost: Black Sun

10/23/14 — Omnivores / Ravenous

10/24/14 — The Monster Squad / Fright Night / Under the Bed

10/25/14 — Splice / Haunter / Cube

10/26/14 — Land of the Dead / Diary of the Dead / Doc of the Dead / World War Z

 

This is all, of course, subject to change but I’m hoping that it stays fairly consistent. My pick of this week’s litter? I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t eager to get to Friday and relive a bit of my childhood with Fred Dekker’s Monster Squad, although the Natali mini-marathon on Saturday should also be lots of fun, especially since I’ve yet to see either Splice or Haunter. That being said, this week also features two of my old favorites (Botched and Ravenous), as well as my first (belated) viewing of World War Z…should be a spooktacular extravaganza!

10/11/14 (Part Three): Mutants on the Rocks

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31 Days of Halloween, Arctic setting, Benjamin Hessler, Blood Glacier, Brigette Kren, cinema, Edita Malovcic, Felix Romer, film reviews, films, foreign films, Gerhard Liebmann, German cinema, global warming, Hille Beseler, horror, horror movies, isolation, Marvin Kren, melting glaciers, Michael Fuith, monster movies, Moritz Schultheiss, Movies, mutants, mutations, Peter Knaack, Rammbock, scientists

Back in 2010, German director Marvin Kren ended up on my radar due to his debut feature, the modest but highly effective zombie film Rammbock. In a field of lackluster, identical products, Rammbock stood out by means of its intelligent script, focus on human interactions versus zombie gore (although there was plenty of that) and some nicely emotional bits that helped to frame the zombie apocalypse in slightly more personal terms. I was instantly hooked and eagerly looked forward to his next production, particularly when I heard that Kren would be tackling my beloved “frozen horror” subgenre. Would this outstanding new filmmaker continue the trend he started with Rammbock and come up with a film that proudly stands shoulder-to-shoulder with Carpenter’s iconic The Thing (1982) or would he fall prey to the dreaded sophomore slump? Lucky for me, it appears that Kren is much more than a one-trick pony: Blood Glacier might not be as good as The Thing but it’s a pretty damn impressive film, nonetheless.

Similar to Fessenden’s The Last Winter (2006), Kren’s Blood Glacier approaches its subject matter from an environmental angle: in this case, the melting of the glacial ice appears to have released a long dormant organism back into our world. In this case, the organism takes the form of blood-red liquid and appears to be seeping from the very ice itself, handily providing us with our title. This organism has the unique ability to genetically combine animals, using stomach contents as a catalyst: if a fox eats a beetle and then comes into contact with the liquid, the resulting mutation will be some sort of beetle-fox hybrid. Inevitably, this leads to such creative creations as an insect-ram hybrid (truly horrifying), bird-insect combinations and some pretty nasty fox abominations (the fox-pill bug creature is particularly nightmarish). Humans are also animals, of course, so don’t think the bipeds are getting off any easier.

As with The Thing, Blood Glacier focuses on a small team of scientists (Felix Romer, Hille Beseler and Peter Knaack) and one technician, Janek (Gerhard Liebmann), who are stationed at the isolated research base, this time somewhere in the Austrian Alps. To make matters worse, a group of dignitaries, including Minister Bodicek (Brigette Kren) and Janek’s ex-girlfriend, Tanja (Edita Malovcic), are scheduled to visit the site and they’re about to walk right into a mutated animal feeding frenzy. When the scientists seem more interested in protecting their potential scientific goldmine than trying to save their unsuspecting visitors, Janek must spring into action and become the hero that everyone needs. As he’ll find out, however, Mother Nature isn’t something to trifle with: Janek and his teammates might just end up paying for humanities environmental sins with their own lives.

While there’s nothing inherently derivative about Kren’s film, it’s pretty impossible to avoid at least some comparisons to The Thing, ice-bound setting notwithstanding. Both films revolve around isolated teams of scientists, both feature heroes who are decidedly rough around the edges and less than ideal leader-types and both films deal with the ramifications of rapid-fire mutations on both humans and animals. Hell, both films even prominently feature a dog, although Blood Glacier’s Tinnie is much more sympathetic than the mutating monster from Carpenter’s film. There’s also a shared sense of cynicism between the films: both end with the notion that the ultimate resolution of the events will be up to the capricious whims of nature…mankind can only affect so much, after all, when we’re merely ants crashing the picnic.

Despite these pretty basic similarities, however, Blood Glacier is definitely its own beast. For one thing, Kren has his tongue a little further in cheek than Carpenter did: while Blood Glacier is the furthest thing from a horror-comedy, it tends to display a rather sardonic worldview, a POV that was also a big part of Rammbock. There’s also the inclusion of the characters of Tanja and Minister Bodicek, which injects a much-needed female perspective into the film. While Tanja also fulfills the role of love interest, Bodicek is just allowed to be a complete and total badass: she gets some of the film’s best lines, performs impromptu surgery (take that, American politicians!), keeps her head at all times and actually seems to give a shit about the common folks rather than seeking to protect only her own, privileged skin. Minister Bodicek is a great character and Brigette Kren brings her to glorious life. Gerhard Liebmann, for his part, is a more than capable hero, even if he’s no patch whatsoever on Russell’s classic MacReady. Liebmann ends up displaying quite a dramatic range in the film, particularly during the rather sad Tinnie storyline, and amounts to a pretty good protagonist.

Using the same cinematographer that he employed for Rammbock, Moritz Schultheiss, Kren comes up a similarly rich look for Blood Glacier. As with any film like this, the creature and special effects are a pretty pivotal part of the overall experience and, for the most part, Blood Glacier doesn’t disappoint. The creature designs are suitably icky and often quite ingenious (the insectile rams are just short of amazing), although they don’t always hold up in close-up: what looks more homogenous in a medium shot tends to look rather cluttered and ill-defined once we can see the particulars. Ultimately, however, this doesn’t really become a deal-breaker: the effects in The Thing set a new industry standard, so it makes sense that Blood Glacier would have a problem topping them. The Thing also dealt almost exclusively with practical effects, whereas Blood Glacier’s creatures are mostly CGI, which tends to produce a very different visual effect. Nonetheless, Blood Glacier’s SFX are miles beyond similar films and the film, in general, looks great.

As someone who absolutely idolizes The Thing, I was expecting Blood Glacier to be a competent, if less than revelatory, successor to Carpenter’s classic. While there were a lot of parallels to the ’80s landmark, however, Blood Glacier proved to be a thoroughly captivating film in its own right and a great entry in the “frozen terror” subgenre. At this point, Kren is two-for-two, so he’s officially made his way onto my “Must See” list for future productions: here’s to hoping that the burgeoning horror auteur keeps finding new and interesting ways to mess with old horror conventions. Watch this on a double-bill with The Thing, pour yourself a hot toddy and while away the frigid winter hours. And remember: stay away from the red snow.

 

10/11/14 (Part Two): Who Goes There?

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31 Days of Halloween, aliens, Arctic setting, auteur theory, based on a short story, Charles Hallahan, classic films, cult classic, David Clennon, Dean Cundey, Donald Moffat, dopplegangers, Ennio Morricone, favorite films, Film auteurs, horror films, isolation, Joel Polis, John Carpenter, Keith David, Kurt Russell, paranoia, Peter Maloney, remakes, Richard Dysart, Richard Masur, sci-fi, sci-fi-horror, scientists, shape-shifters, T.K. Carter, The Thing, Thomas Waites, Wilford Brimley

Although we horror film fanatics tend to be a fairly diverse bunch, there are still a handful of films that are pretty much accepted as canon by discerning viewers. This doesn’t, of course, mean to speak for everyone: many fans who call themselves horror fanatics have no interest in the genre’s history, past or anything more academic than watching the newest collection of gore scenes. I’ve long argued that horror is a genre and field as worthy of deep exploration as any other but it doesn’t change the fact that many viewers are still just after a visceral, momentary experience.

For every “casual” fan of the genre, however, there are plenty of what could best be described as “rabid” fans, folks who live, breathe, eat and sleep the stuff, tearing into everything from silent, black and white films to the newest CGI spectacles. For these fans, there are a few films that have managed to stand out from the crowd, proving endlessly influential and sources of much repeat viewings and continued exploration: Night of the Living Dead (1968), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), Halloween (1978), the classic Universal monster films, A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), Peeping Tom (1960), Psycho (1960) and The Exorcist (1973) are but a small handful of the films that would probably show up on most hardcore horror fans “Best of” lists. One would be remiss, of course, if they didn’t also include one of the single most influential, popular and well-made horror films of the ’80s: John Carpenter’s ferocious, ground-breaking and utterly essential sci-horror masterpiece, The Thing (1982).

Although I’m pretty sure that almost everyone is, at the very least, familiar with the basics behind The Thing, the plot is pure simplicity. A team of American scientists at a remote research base in the frozen Arctic come into contact with something decidedly not of this world after they run into a group of Norwegian scientists who are violently pursuing a seemingly innocent dog. What at first seems like an extreme case of “snow madness” is soon revealed to be something much more terrifying: the dog is actually a grotesque, shape-shifting alien organism. The creature is cunning, quick and extremely hungry: with the Norwegians out of the picture, the Americans become the new snack du jour. As resourceful, gung-ho chopper pilot R.J. MacReady (Kurt Russell, in one of his most iconic roles) takes command of the increasingly paranoid and frightened group, he’s faced with a real devil’s dilemma: since the monster can look and act like any of them, how do the men really know which of them are from planet Earth and which are from a location just a little further away in our galaxy?

Full disclosure: I’ve been a pretty nutso fan of Carpenter’s classic ever since I first saw the movie, an impression that hasn’t changed one iota in all the years since. To be frank, The Thing is just about as perfect as a film gets, a classic case of intention meeting craft in a perfect creative spark. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve been able to appreciate different aspects of the film: when I was younger, I was all about the ooky effects, rewatching the key setpieces so often that I practically had the creature’s movements memorized. Now that I have a few years under my belt and have become a little more jaded regarding special effects in films, I find myself focusing more on the film’s exquisite use of location and the exceptional ensemble cast: I still dig the ever-lovin’ shit out of the effects scenes, don’t get me wrong, but the subtler aspects of the film are the ones that really push it from something special to something essential.

There’s so much about The Thing that exemplifies the film as one of the very apices of the horror film genre, a perfect storm of disparate elements. There’s Carpenter’s sure-handed, expert direction, of course: the auteur is one of the very best filmmakers for combining action and horror into one Voltron of awesomeness and he has a rare eye for background detail that adds immeasurable tension to every frame of the film. The film was shot by Dean Cundey, the masterful cinematographer responsible for everything from Halloween to D.C. Cab (1983) and Jurassic Park (1993): the film looks absolutely gorgeous and Cundey is expert at making the principal characters seem as small and insignificant against the unforgiving immensity of the Arctic wasteland as possible. The score was done by the iconic Ennio Morricone, the creator of some of the most legendary, unforgettable film scores in the history of the medium. While Carpenter’s self-made synth scores have always a particular highlight of his films, Morricone’s epic, sweeping score really adds a new layer to the proceedings. The groundbreaking practical effects work was done by industry pioneer Rob Bottin and would go on to influence at least the next generation of effects creators, if not more.

And then, of course, there’s that cast. Jeez…what a cast. Taking a cue from Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979), Carpenter stocks his film with some of the best character and genre actors in the biz, ensuring that no one comes across as generic “cannon fodder.” Kurt Russell…Wilford Brimley…Richard Masur…Keith David…Richard Dysart…Donald Moffat…each and every performer brings their A-game to the proceedings, adding up to one hell of an ensemble performance. The shining star of the group, of course, is Russell: while he’s been behind some of the most iconic action heroes in cinema (any conversation about kick-ass heroes that doesn’t include Snake Plissken is fundamentally flawed from the jump), MacReady is easily one of the highlights. We first meet Russell’s character as he plays computer chess: when the machine beats him, MacReady pours his bourbon down its access panel, shorting the computer out. Classic Kurt, in other words. Regardless of what’s happening on-screen, Russell is always the magnetic, undeniable center of everything: MacReady is one of the great screen creations and much of the credit for this must go to Russell’s inspired performance.

In fact, the cast is so perfect that my one quibble with the film’s actors has always been the same: I’m disappointed that there are no strong female characters here, ala Alien or Aliens (1986). There are certainly room for them, as the previously mentioned examples state. While some have pointed out that an isolated research station wouldn’t be co-ed, this has always seemed like a rather spurious assumption: after all, women have been successfully integrated into many such films (Aliens pretty much makes and ends this argument, thanks not only to Ripley’s character but the other female space marines, as well).

Integration complaint aside, The Thing really is a perfect film. It’s unbelievably tense, expertly crafted, looks amazing and is an absolute blast to watch. So many of the film’s setpieces have been burned into my brain over the years that it’s hard to imagine a world without them: the dog transformation…the hot wire and the blood…the defibrillator gone horribly amok…the spider-head…the cynical, utterly badass ending…the jaw-dropping reveal of the UFO…to be honest, a good 80% of the film plays like a highlights reel, similar to an award-winning band that scores eight hit singles out of ten on their album. I attempted to watch The Thing with as critical an eye as possible, this time around, but my earlier impressions were all just reaffirmed: this thing really is one of the all-time classics. I can’t even knock the film down a few points for being a remake of the Howard Hawk’s classic The Thing From Another World (1951), since it’s one of the few remakes to not only do justice to the original but to improve upon it in pretty much every way: Carpenter’s film has never felt like a cash-grab to me, like other remakes. The Thing has always seemed like a complete labor of love, pure and simple.

As someone who constantly finds myself re-examining and re-evaluating my impressions and opinions on films, I find that my “Best of” lists are, likewise, in constant flux. One thing that’s always remained constant, however, is my love and appreciation for Carpenter’s film. I’m not sure that I’ve ever left The Thing off of a list, to this point, and I can all but guarantee that I probably never will.