Cut And Run/American Gothic

MARCH 28, 2008

GENRE: HORROR?, INDEPENDENT, SURVIVAL
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTALS)

Here’s a first for Horror Movie A Day – A dual review! Why, you may ask?

As has happened a few times before, Blockbuster sent me the wrong movie. I had asked for American Gothic, which is a late 80s inbred horror thing with Rod Steiger. They sent me American Gothic, a short film by some guy named Carlos Batts. “Fine, whatever,” I said to no one in particular, and put in Cut And Run (aka Inferno in Diretta), a Ruggero Deodato film that had a plot similar to that of his Cannibal Holocaust, only it was a conventionally filmed movie, not a ‘mockumentary’. Except the problem is, despite what IMDb claims, it wasn’t really a horror movie at all. But after doing some research, I discovered that the short film WAS horror, so I will combine: Horror (short film), and (full length) Movie A Day!

The horror angle of Cut comes from Michael Berryman, playing a guy who seemingly lives in the river and seeks to murder drug dealers (and pretty much anyone else). His scenes, largely inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, are gory and violent, and could be mistaken for a Hills Have Eyes sequel. And being a Deodato film, the gore is over the top (beheadings, guttings, etc), something you certainly don’t find in many non-horror films. However, the rest of the film is basically an action movie a la Rambo II, in which a couple of folks (including that hot blond from Prince of Darkness) go into the jungle to rescue their friend, and kill a bunch of “bad guys” with automatic weapons and such. Not exactly horror, right?

The cast is also very HMAD friendly. In addition to Berryman and the Prince of Darkness woman (Lisa Blount, for the unnecessary record), we get Karen Black (Burnt Offerings), Leonard Mann (Flowers In The Attic), and Richard Lynch (Halloween remake). Plus the score is by Claudio Simonetti, aka Goblin.

As for the movie itself, well, whatever. 80s action movies of this type sort of just run along on rails, and if you take away the random gore (and Willie Aames’ ridiculous character) you’re left with any old Chuck Norris/Michael Dudikoff movie; the type that I can only appreciate if I grew up with it. Or I’m at the New Bev (this movie would be ideal for that place, actually). The idea of a group of natives going out of their way to kill drug dealers is pretty awesome, but the movie is kind of dull. There’s a lot of stuff that we really don’t need to watch, like Aames and some broad laying out and then lighting a bunch of flimsy runway lights. And for the life of me I can’t figure out what Eric LaSalle’s strip club owner character has to do with anything, or why he is tossed off a platform into a train by two guys we never see again.

Strangely, the end of the film seems to have influenced the execrable Welcome To The Jungle more than Holocaust did. Our heroes are kidnapped and then held hostage by the very man they were seeking (Lynch), who has now become a sort of Kurtz like madman, and the natives all serve under him. The only difference is, this movie had something fucking happen previously, so there wasn’t any need for him to kill off the heroes like in Jungle (which saved any sort of action or violence for this final minute of the film, and even that was mainly offscreen).

Anyway, not too great, but it was a fucking masterpiece compared to American Gothic. While it was certainly more of an actual horror movie than Cut (what with zombies, a guy covered in blood, etc), it was also an utterly awful and pretentious pile of crap.

The thing about experimental films like this that I don’t get is why anyone besides the filmmaker is watching them. They are experiments! Do scientists hold press conferences and then say “OK, we’re gonna try something”? Of course not. They do their experiments in private, and then show us the finish results. Why can’t these films work the same way? No matter, this experiment certainly failed. The idea is fine (the psychological horror behind the creation of Grant Wood’s eponymous painting) but the execution is as botched as anything can possibly be.

Here is the entire 25 minute movie: An old guy talks to himself, a montage of moving images animated with After Effects, a zombie lies on the ground, two zombies dance, three dead chicks play with children’s letter blocks, the old guy begins stabbing himself with his paintbrush while saying “I wandered aimlessly among the living” over and over, more After Effects, credits. Throughout this nonsense we hear some metal songs. In fact the imagery often resembles a Matt Mahurin music video (think "Unforgiven") but without a. the entire song (the metal songs fade in and out at random, or to allow the guy to say “I wandered aimlessly among the living” again) or b. a point being made in a timely manner. Why this needed to be 25 minutes, I have no idea. It’s pretty sad when a short film is padded and overlong.

Oh fuck you, movie.

There was a kid in my film school who made shit like this. Any time we’d have to present our stuff to the class, he’d show his and there would be utter silence (everyone else in the program made films that were more or less accessible). When the teacher asked about it, he wouldn’t even be able to explain it himself. I’m all for being weird or whatever, but the problem is that shit like this can literally be made by anyone. Film a bunch of random shit, edit it with a blender, throw in some “film damage” filters, and viola! Instant art film! And when someone questions it, you can just say “look, you don’t GET IT.” Oh blow it out your ass. If we’re too dumb to understand your masterpiece why’d you show it to us? And in this case, I got the point of it, I just didn’t get why it had to be so long and obtuse. Like the film Gothic, it’s a fascinating idea to me to show the “real” horror behind a well-known work of art, but I don’t see why it’s apparently so difficult to tell this type of story without being a pretentious windbag. I may not have the slightest clue what’s going on at times, but at least David Lynch’s films are nice to look at (save Inland Empire) and reasonably entertaining. This crap is ugly and boring to boot.

Whatever I watch tomorrow better be a full length horror movie or else there will be hell to pay! I’ll grab Michael Berryman and a few machetes and begin wiping out anyone who ever said “Well, my film is CEREBRAL...” in a dismissive manner.

What say you?

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Crap, Horror?, Independent, Short, Survival,

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Screamfest LA - Short Films

OCTOBER 13, 2007

GENRE: INDEPENDENT, SHORT
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (SCREAMFEST LA)

In addition to the twenty or so features that Screamfest is showing this week, they also presented a block of shorts from around the world. I don’t really agree with this practice; I like it more when a short is shown before a feature. Not only does it give the filmmakers a potentially larger audience, but it also prevents folks from walking out before your movie starts. Since the directors for each short were in attendance, many of them with family/friends, you notice that after a short, those people would sometimes leave. By the time the last short screened, what was a full audience was down to like half. That’s pretty rude if you ask me, but also not entirely fair to the filmmakers whose films show near the end, as they are showing their film to an audience who had just been bombarded with 7 or 8 other stores.

Naturally, not all of them were anything worth writing a blog about, but I would like to talk about a few that really grabbed my attention.

One was called Stem, and it was a really nasty, darkly hilarious piece about a guy who discovered a new way of healing himself via stem cells. Think Christopher Reeve in that one South Park episode, and you’d be on the right track. There’s a nurse character in the film that is possibly the most cold-blooded woman in cinema history (the guy’s almost completely paralyzed, and as he longingly stares at a photo of him with his girlfriend, the nurse says “When they stop visiting it means they’ve moved on to someone else.” - Christ!). A great little piece.

Another, called Dara, was good, but the director seemingly forgot that he was making a “short” film. It went on about 5 minutes longer than necessary, after the joke/point was made, the film was just sort of treading water. But otherwise it was also darkly funny, with a lot of blood spilled in 15 minutes, which is always a plus.

Then there was The Election, which had the great casting of Ray Wise and Lin Shaye. Wise was rather subdued, but Shaye made up for it (since she was also an ace for many of the shorts on Fox’s On The Lot, this might be her calling as an actress). This was also one of the more visually interesting pieces of the bunch, as the director and DP found some really nice compositions in the middle of a junkyard (no easy task). Could have used a bit more of a zing at the end, but otherwise a solid piece. And one scene was shot near me! Valley power!

Eli was possibly the best LOOKING film of the night, with that cold bluish filter applied over almost the entire film, but unfortunately the script (and the music) was pretty much lifted wholesale from Michael Bay’s The Island (why rip off the one Bay film that didn’t make a shitload of money?) and other sci-fi/action movies. However, it did star that swordsman guy from Heroes and had a cameo by that ridiculously cute woman from Flight of the Living Dead. This one looked like it had the biggest budget of the lot too, it’s just a shame it was all somewhat wasted on a generic script.

And the last, and longest of the notables was In The Wall, another nasty one (I love how mean-spirited so many of these shorts were! Hurrah for assholes!), confined to a single apartment. It clocked in at 30 minutes (though felt shorter than some of the others) and was paced perfectly. The lead may be the least sympathetic character in horror movie history, but he gets his due, as does just about everyone else. I don’t want to spoil it, but suffice to say there were some great (and fairly shocking) kills packed into the piece, and an applause worthy ending. Also: MUTANT BABY PUPPET. Fuck yes.

No offense to the other filmmakers, but those were the only ones that were really memorable to me. Also, many of the films suffered from truly terrible compression/projection. I don’t understand how folks can submit a film to a festival and not make sure it’s formatted and presented in the best possible way. Many shorts are simply calling cards to get feature work – you’d think they would make sure their film looked as pristine as possible in order to catch someone’s eye. There was one film where I couldn’t even make the facial features of the main character out, because it was compressed for like Youtube or something and then blown up on a theater screen. Christ.

What say you?

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Independent, Short,

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