The Blancheville Monster

OCTOBER 4, 2007

GENRE: HAUNTED HOUSE (?), PSYCHOLOGICAL (?)
SOURCE: DVD (BUDGET PACK!!!)

The most terrifying part of The Blancheville Monster was a single chord on the soundtrack, struck instantly after hitting play. Before an image even appeared onscreen, theree was a loud DUNNNNNNNNNN! that scared the bejesus out of me. Sadly nothing else in the film was even remotely as exciting.

Similar to The Ghost or The Game, here we have a horror movie in which everything is fake, leading me confused as to what kind of horror movie it even was. I don’t feel like making a new genre for “Girl who walks around a castle and sees the image of her father, who she thought was dead”. Because that’s pretty much all that happens until the final 15 minutes.

That fifteen minutes save the film, as we get someone buried alive, a decent surprise as to the identity of the “killer”, and the truly hilarious sight of a guy trying to evade capture while running through the woods wearing the largest cape I have ever seen. Dude, take the fucking thing off! Then there’s a hilariously abrupt cut to a “6 months later”-y scene that wraps up some subplots we weren’t really interested in to begin with.

The film is strangely shot, as if the cinematographer or director were afraid to have to edit footage together later. Instead, they pan around wildly to get everything we need to see. But when the camera is actually staying on a person or item, it’s not shakicam. They literally pan the camera around while it’s on a tripod or whatever. Very odd. And annoying. “Look! Over there!” someone will say, and a few seconds are wasted while the camera pans over to whatever it is we should already be seeing.

Also, what kind of goddamn name for a monster is Blancheville? That’s the least foreboding name in all of human history. The Smith Monster would be more exciting.

What say you?

Read more »

Chilling Classics, Haunted House, Psychological,

{[['']]}

October Extras #3 - Haunts

OCTOBER 3, 2007

GENRE: PSYCHOLOGICAL
SOURCE: DVD (BUDGET PACK!!!)
LAST SEEN: OCTOBER 2006 (DVD)

I remember it like it was about a year ago... I was at Best Buy, buying the best things I could find, when I stumbled upon what seemed like a treasure in DVD form: 50 horror movies for 20 bucks. Seeing such well-known titles as Deep Red, Bad Taste, and Driller Killer in the mix, I assumed all 50 films were of equal merit, just not as well known. So I plunked down my 21.64 (fuck you, tax!) and went home.

Opening the box and reading the capsule descriptions for each film, I was bummed to discover that a lot of the movies sounded pretty terrible. In fact, it took me like a half hour to find one that sparked my interest enough to inaugurate the set: Haunts, which promised a slasher movie with a twist ending.

(Note - a few weeks after I bought the set, I bought a new TV, HDTV/16:9 blah blah. The horrendous video quality (not to mention full frame transfers) meant that I would never again watch a film from the set at home. Haunts remains the only one I didn’t watch at work (not to mention the only one I didn’t watch specifically for Horror Movie A Day).)

Now that’ I’ve worked my way through about 90% of the set, I can safely say that Haunts is definitely one of the more interesting movies, worth far more than the 40 cents or so each one set me back. The description makes it sound more like a slasher film than it is, but that’s OK. The film is a strange, atmospheric psychological drama about a woman slowly going nuts as some pretty terrible childhood memories began to resurface. Few people fully enjoy the film, and it’s amazing how many random (read: wrong) sub-genres the IMDb lists it under (among them, Zombie, Demon, and Supernatural – all in a film without so much as a single non-realistic element).

About a month after I first saw the film, I saw the highly underrated The Return, which was similar in pace and “Not really horror!” tone (and, like Haunts, was marketed as a totally different type of movie). Given my undying love of excess, one might assume that a film as sparse and “slow” as these would be the bane of my existence, but that’s not the case. In fact, I love slow movies just as much as fast ones (my two favorite non horror movies this year certainly support this statement – Shoot Em Up and The Assassination of Jesse James...). There’s something about being slowly drawn into a fairly simple story that appeals to me. In Haunts' case, I’ve already described the entire plot; there’s very little else to the narrative. The occasional murder is more or less a macguffin, the film is really about this poor girl’s sexually repressed lifestyle sadly getting the better of her. It doesn’t exactly get the adrenaline pumping, but it works, at least for me.

I mean come on, this guy is the "killer". Would
anyone really make a slasher film based on him?

And also, Cameron Mitchell plays the uncle, which puts him in the cast of a record 10% of the Chilling Classics set. I don’t know if that’s something to be proud of or not, but there it is. As always, he’s pretty bad, but that’s our Cameron! And for some reason he plays the final 10 minutes of the film with his hair drenched in white paint (or perhaps milk).

See?

The transfer on this film is among the poorest on the set, with some sort of odd “Auto-contrast” option being used that turns almost every intentionally dark shot into an ugly, washed out and murky gray. Far as I know, it’s not available by itself on DVD, but I understand the VHS (!!) is actually of better quality.

And how’s this for a weird coincidence – both this movie and yesterday’s "October Extra" were scored by Pino Donaggio (this one’s almost as good too, if a bit too 70s). Note I said ‘weird’, not ‘interesting’.

What say you?

Read more »

Chilling Classics, October Extras, Psychological,

{[['']]}

Gothic

OCTOBER 3, 2007

GENRE: HORROR?, PSYCHOLOGICAL
SOURCE: DVD (BUDGET PACK!!!)

There is nothing that pisses me off more than when someone waits until the cashier gives a customer their total to take out their wallet (this is even more offensive when it’s a place like target, where you slide the credit card yourself and can do so while the cashier is still scanning your stuff). But running a close 2nd is when I read a plot description that is fascinating, and then the movie turns out to be borderline incoherent, like Ken Russell’s Gothic.

According to Mill Creek’s write up, the film is allegedly about the insane night that Mary Shelley got the idea for Frankenstein. She was partying with Lord Byron and some other folks, everyone got high, things got out of hand, etc. That could make for a great movie, wouldn’t you say? Doesn’t say much about Mary Shelley (“She was a drug fiend who hung out with deviants, and viola: one of the greatest stories in all literature”), but still.

Well the actual movie is simply Gabriel Byrne, inexplicably made to look like the brunette guy from Air Supply, and his friends literally laughing and running around like assholes in a mansion, set to a wildly inappropriate score (a game of hide and seek – and mind you, these are grown men and women – is set to music that might accompany the “We won!” music in a Disney movie about a ragtag sports team who comes back and beats their rivals in the championship). Meanwhile, Julian Sands (between this and Phantom of the Opera, I think I’m gonna ban this guy from my Netflix queue) and another guy spend most of the film spinning around and spouting off “insane” dialogue that seems made up on the spot. And the Mary Shelley character seems more or less an afterthought.

The film doesn’t really have a narrative that I can discern, but is more just a series of “shocking” events and “scenettes”, such as this pointless encounter. Gabriel Byrne looks at the floor and sees this:

Then the camera cuts to this:

Then he pokes it and it turns back into the pig head. Fine, movie.

I won’t call the movie crap, because there’s something undeniably appealing about it. In fact, if I was in the mood, I’d probably spend the entire movie laughing, especially during the last half hour, which features a guy saying “Pot pig... pot penis.... pot belly...” and a woman with eyes where her nipples should be:

I bet that creepy thing from Pan’s Labyrinth would love to hit that.

Also, the production value and Russell’s direction are inspired; you can watch any one scene out of context and be left intrigued. But it adds up to nothing, and you’ll find yourself saying “Where the hell did THAT come from?” with every other scene. I’ve seen better narrative flow while flipping channels at two in the morning. Way to mostly waste a potentially interesting concept (as a horror film or not)!

For no real reason I should point out that this movie is one of the very few on the Chilling Classics set that retains the film’s end credits sequence, giving it an air of legitimacy among the others. Had I taken notice of the dialogue editing, it’s nice to know that I could give credit to Peter Pennell for it without having to do any research.

What say you?

Read more »

Chilling Classics, Horror?, Psychological,

{[['']]}

October Extras #2 - Tourist Trap

OCTOBER 2, 2007

GENRE: BREAKDOWN, SLASHER, SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)
LAST SEEN: AUGUST 2005 OR SO (DVD)

God I love this movie.

From the opening circus-y music by Pino Donaggio, to the fact that it’s a breakdown movie that begins after the car has already broken down (!!!), to the opening murder (which is explained to death on the DVD’s surprising wealth of extras), you know that Tourist Trap is far from something you’re used to for a slasher movie (which it only really qualifies as in loose terms) before the 10 minute mark. And it keeps getting better.

Several times on this site I have pointed out that the House of Wax remake from 2005 was really more of a remake of this film. And it’s not really a joke: both films feature a car full of teens that breaks down in the middle of nowhere, both have “two” killers of a sort, both involve an abandoned town, and both utilize wax (well, plaster in Tourist, but used the same way) and mannequins. Also they’re both pretty awesome, though Tourist adds more than just a touch of weirdness, putting it a few notches above Paris Hilton’s film.

There’s a scene about 1/2 of the way through the film that ranks as one of the creepiest and yet hilarious scenes in slasher history. Tanya Roberts finds herself in a room full of mannequins, and then, one by one, the mannequins let out a choir note (“La!”) and fall onto her. Eventually there’s like 10 mannequins on top of her. It’s one of my favorite setpieces in any horror film ever, and now, anytime I pass a mannequin at the mall or whatever, I usually let out a “La!” before throwing one on top of Tanya Roberts.

I hope this is how I check out.

If you haven’t seen the film (for shame!), you can probably ascertain from my examples that it’s a bit off-kilter. Chuck Connors’ character is a hoot, going from sad and melancholy one moment to needlessly angry the next. And the film does a pretty good job of covering its twist. Also, the killer “speaks” in a manner not entirely dissimilar from Billy’s in the original Black Christmas at times; other times he simply sounds like the “Fitter, Happier” guy speaking through a tracheotomy box. And man, the score in this thing is so damn good, I nearly paid 40 dollars for a vinyl copy of the soundtrack (I don’t even have a turntable to play it on). I’d also love to dress as the killer for Halloween, but since the movie is relatively obscure (for some goddamn reason) I’d probably spend all night explaining that I wasn’t dressed as the tranny Leatherface from TCM 4:

You can probably see the similarities.

The commentary track is definitely worth a listen. He repeats some stuff, but among one of the many great tidbits to learn is that while they were shooting in LA, John Carpenter was on the other side of the mountain shooting parts of Halloween. Making it all the more impressive – it’s a damn good slasher film that WASN’T spawned off of the success of Carpenter’s film.

Also, I should note that this is one of maybe 5 movies with Charles Band’s involvement that I would actually recommend to a person of taste.

What say you?

Read more »

Breakdown, October Extras, Slasher, Supernatural,

{[['']]}

Tenebrae (1982)

OCTOBER 2, 2007

GENRE: GIALLO, ITALIAN

SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

I think I’m about halfway through the Dario Argento filmography now, thanks to Tenebrae (aka Unsane). Also, I’ll use this space to point out I will be adding more tags so folks can find a collection of reviews more easily. I have added Chilling Classics, and now that I have about a half dozen, I’ll be adding “Argento” as well. Hurrah!

This one’s sort of similar to Deep Red, except the main guy is a novelist instead of a musician. And it’s a lot more coherent. In fact, this may be the most logical and accessible of Argento’s films (at least of the ones I’ve seen). The murders aren’t overly graphic (the victims even seem to have skeletons for once), there aren’t too many “Huh?” moments, and there’s even a relative lack of nightmare scenes (the few that we do see are actually flashbacks of a sort). Granted, there are a few things that require the characters to do things for no reason (like when the main character puts his bag down at the airport and walks away), but that’s nothing compared to the utterly baffling nature of something like Phenomena (aka Creepers). The strangest moment in the film is probably when John Saxon, apropos of nothing, demonstrates how stable his hat is by sort of headbanging. There’s also a delightful scene where Saxon laughs at some guys fighting in the background (something that occurs a few times in the film – there’s almost as much background violence as there is murder scenes). Good to know ol’ Chief Thompson enjoys other folk’s misery.

I watched the English dub, which was quite good (I’m pretty sure most of the actors were speaking English). The only time the Americanization is ever evident is in the first scene, where the killer is reading a book that is written in Italian, yet magically translates to English for close-ups. Also, in this scene, Argento demonstrates that when he speaks English, he sounds like David Warner (though maybe this isn’t Argento’s voice, he says it is but maybe he means the Italian dub version).

As always, the music by Goblin (not actually called Goblin here for some legal reason I can’t recall) is fantastic. Hilariously, the characters seem to like it too, as one of them is actually listening to the score on her record player at one point. Another character even yells “Turn it down!” OK, so maybe the movie is a little weird.

The commentary is pretty great, despite the usual gaps I’ve come to expect on an Argento track (since it’s always been like 15 years since he last watched the movie). “She was kind of a whore, right?” someone comments about a particular actress, “A bitch?” And they all get confused at the pop song placed over the credits, which none of them are familiar with, leading to the otherwise unheard of extra feature “Alternate End Credits” which features the song they got so miffed at (as the DVD producers went back and put the right song in for the feature after Argento complained). DVD is not anamorphic, but otherwise it’s a nice little package. But apparently, out of print, hence the lack of an Amazon link. Figures. A rare movie I not only recommend to fans but non-fans as well, and I can't help you buy it. Yet, goddamn Fright Club is easily located for sale! Fuck you, whoever invented moratoriums.

UPDATE: Anchor Bay has re-released the film. Woo!

What say you?

Read more »

Argento, Giallo, Italian, Video Nasties,

{[['']]}

October Extras #1 - The Evil Dead

OCTOBER 1, 2007

GENRE: INDEPENDENT, POSSESSION, SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)
LAST SEEN: HALLOWEEN 2004 (DVD)

It’s amazing how revered Sam Raimi is in the horror community when you consider that he’s really only made one true horror movie: The Evil Dead. The first sequel was half comedy, the 3rd film wasn’t horror at all, and all of his other films fall more into the action/fantasy realm. The closest he’s ever gotten to a straight up horror movie (in a directing role anyway – let’s ignore his Ghost House productions) in the past 25 years is The Gift, and even that was more of a mystery anyway. Still, it contained the most terrifying image in horror history: I knew the film had a nude Katie Holmes (back when it meant something), so when they pulled her nude, rotted corpse out of the lake, I was terrified. “That was it?!?!” I yelled. Luckily, a true frontal shot came along near the end of the film. Anyway, back on subject, while he may never make another legit horror movie again, the goodwill he earned from this one has yet to expire.

The DVD of The Evil Dead (any of the 7,000 or so that Anchor Bay has released will do) should be given to budding filmmakers in their first year at film school, if they didn’t have it already. From the very first frame, Raimi and his crew’s inspired (and infectious) delivery of their otherwise simple little tale is 100% evident; you never feel like they were going through the motions or anything like that. When I saw the film for the first time as a 14 year old (I watched the entire franchise backwards, which is cool because I got to see it get “better” instead of worse, since I think Army of Darkness is not only the weakest in the series but possibly Raimi’s weakest ever), I was borderline aroused by how cool it was, despite not having any of the perks I was accustomed to from a horror film (this was in the early/mid 90s, when most “Horror” movies I was seeing were things like Bram Stoker’s Dracula and the Village of the Damned remake – big budget, glossy studio pictures).

I should note that I chose this film to kick off my "October Extras” at Horror Movie A Day because it was recommended in one of the comments by someone who couldn’t think of the title. All they remembered was “kids in the woods with a tape recorder”, which was all I needed to identify the film. Because, like Halloween (which, it shouldn’t surprise anyone, will be the “closing night” film for October), it’s a film that exceeds in taking an almost non-existent story and getting as much as possible out of it. Raimi and Carpenter got what so many other horror directors didn’t (and still don’t) – it’s almost impossible to be scared if your brain is too busy trying to work the plot out. Keep it simple, and you keep it scary.

Is it a perfect film? Heavens no. Bruce Campbell is barely competent at times; there are continuity errors and the like, etc. But it doesn’t matter in the slightest. This is a film for people who genuinely love film and more importantly, filmmaking. It’s obvious right from the start that they had no money and little crew (and even the actors sometimes disappear out of scenes), which makes the effects and camerawork all the more impressive once all hell breaks loose. If you’ve ever had even the slightest interest in “how to make movie magic”, then you can’t tell me that you watched the film and didn’t wonder how they did the tree rape scene (and if you’re a would-be Raimi, wonder if you could pull it off yourself).

Also, the film is just fucking FUN. Although Bruce is the recognized hero of the film, Scotty is a hoot as well (I still laugh out loud when he yells at the hitchhikers early on: “Aw go to hell I’m not honking at you!”). And the girls are pretty cute. Basically, none of them are annoying fodder that you want to die. While it barely ever slows down, it does inject some decent characterization. I might tear apart something like The Roost for some of the same things Evil Dead is guilty of (continuity errors, mismatched editing), but the difference is, Raimi and his buddies didn’t stop the film cold over and over to pad the film into feature length territory (even more impressive when Dead started off as a short film). I assume both films had roughly the same amount of money (with inflation), so a miserly budget can’t be used effectively as an excuse for a boring film.

There’s a book that covers the franchise, though the first one gets the most attention. Along with the commentaries, and perhaps Bruce Campbell’s autobiography, there’s a wealth of information and anecdotes about the shoot that are every bit as entertaining as the film itself. The limitations the crew faced, and Raimi’s borderline insane dedication to seeing the project through, are the stuff of legend. It’s an ironic shame that Raimi’s most recent film, Spider-Man 3, had literally a blank check for a budget (reported to be the most expensive film ever made) and yet wasn’t half as fun or exciting as this, possibly one the most literally “independent” movies ever made.

What say you?

Read more »

Independent, October Extras, Possession, Supernatural,

{[['']]}

Hands Of A Stranger

OCTOBER 1, 2007

GENRE: HERO KILLER
SOURCE: DVD (BUDGET PACK!!!)

The thing about movies like Hands Of A Stranger is that they are all more or less the same. Guy gets new body part, at first he’s all excited, then things get weird, and sooner or later he’s killing folks. Part of why I like Body Parts is that it actually had the original owner come back for his appendages (though this was introduced so late into the film it felt very awkward).

This one also takes quite a bit of time to get going. The sympathetic people take far too long discussing whether or not the guy should be given new hands. Since there would be no movie if he didn’t, it’s sort of a waste of everyone’s time to spend like 10 minutes debating the matter. Hilariously, the sister of the eventual killer even points out that she fears the hands will be those of a psychopath and thus her brother will turn into one as well. I guess she’s seen some of the other movies (though I should point out this one pre-dates all the others I know of, such as Oliver Stone’s The Hand).

But there’s some good stuff here and there. One of the first victims basically dies of her own clumsiness, knocking over a lamp and causing a fire. And then, as she becomes engulfed in flame, her body immediately turns into a lump of ash and collapses in a heap on the floor. It’s hilarious.

Also, there’s a child murder, always a plus. And the kid is so goddamn annoying, you gotta figure the guy would have killed him regardless of whose hands he had. The guy tries to play piano, and does miserably, leading the kid to say “Wow mister, you sure do stink!” or something. Fuck you, you little brat!

The film’s ending is also worth a chuckle. After the jerk killer is killed, the cop and the doctor who performed the surgery look into camera for a full minute or so, barely emoting at all as they say their “What a shame” style offerings. We are then told, for whatever reason, in full screen letters: “What is past is prologue!” ....True?

What say you?

Read more »

Chilling Classics, Hero Killer,

{[['']]}