Phantasm: 31 of 31 Horror Movies I've Never Seen

This is a somewhat momentous occasion.  Here we are, Halloween of 2014, and rather than failing like I did last year I have completed my little challenge to watch 31 Horror Movies that I had not previously seen.  Some of them were really good and some of them were really bad and some of them still I'm not really sure what to make of.  In fact, this last one, which numerous people gasped and told me "You're Kidding?!" when I confessed to not having seen it, is one of those.  Don Coscarelli's debut, Phantasm.

Strange things are happening at the cemetery and youngster Mike (Michael Baldwin) is determined to discover the cause.  A Tall Man appears to be causing general havoc with some strange dwarf-like minions, who look remarkably like Jawas, killing people and stealing their souls to another dimension.  With the help of his blank faced brother Jody (Bill Thornbury) and the Ice Cream Man, Reggie (Reggie Bannister), Mike attempts to not only discover just what the hell is going on, but put a stop to it as well.

Made in the spirit of the original Night of the Living Dead, the film is a lo-budget late 70s picture that enlisted the help of Coscarelli's local town and aspiring actors.  While the film is somewhat disjointed, the passion to create is evident on every frame, in the attention given to the formal aspects of the craft.  The film has a somewhat slow pace to it and the inspiration from Italian Horror is evident in the camera movements and the music cues.  This influence is also very evident in the second half of the film when things start going absolutely bonkers visually.

In all honesty, I'm still not exactly sure what the hell the story is supposed to be telling me.  It has an unfortunately double cop out kind of ending that actually left me completely confused, which was probably intentional.  That doesn't mean that it's a bad film per se, just that I don't really get it.  I'm coming late into the game with Coscarelli, having only seen Bubba Ho-tep and John Dies At The End, but it appears the Phantasm spawned a cult fan base and numerous sequels, the fifth of which is in post production and is due out next year.

Most of the "acting" in this film is pretty damn bad, but Michael Baldwin actually carries the picture quite well compared to his older co-stars.  I swear, I don't know if anyone has as blank of an expression as Bill Thornbury in this movie and judging from his imdb page, this didn't quite help him into a future as an actor (most of his final credits are Phantasm Sequels.)  Luckily, Coscarelli is quite inventive visually which it makes up for it.  There's a particularly enjoyable FX gag involving a blood spewing silver orb with knife points.

3 out of 5 skulls.

The Devil Rides Out: 30 of 31 Horror Movies I've Never Seen

I have this terrible habit of trying to watch a movie when I should be going to sleep.  Usually this happens after I get home from an incredibly late shift from work and I'm all wind blown from riding in the cold on my motorcycle.  I can't sleep quite yet so I always figure, "Well, I'll just watch a movie and by the end I'll definitely be tired."  It always ends up the same way, about 20 to 30 minutes in I pass out on the couch and wake up three hours later realizing that I passed out, stumble to bed, and go back to sleep.  This has happened to me with some movies a number of times, enough times that I feel like maybe I'm cursed not to finish them.  Tonight I broke the curse for The Devil Rides Out and I'm quite glad to have done it.

The plot of the film centers around a reunion of three friends, Duc de Richleau (Christopher Lee), Rex van Ryan (Leon Greene) and Simon Aran (Patrick Mower), except that Simon appears to have missed the reunion.  Richeleau and Rex decide to drop in on his house where they uncover a group of Black Magic practicing Satanic Worshipers led by a coldly calculating Mocata (Charles Gray) planning to Baptize Simon and a girl named Tanith (Nike Arrighi) in the name of the Dark Lord.  Through many set backs they take it upon themselves to halt this baptism and put an end to Mocata's sinister plans.

The script is penned by Richard Matheson, based off of a Dennis Wheatley novel.  The dialogue is quite good, but some of the character decisions made little sense.  For example, if a character has proven themselves time and time over to be correct why would anyone question them after a certain point?  It's a behavior common to horror movies that I've always felt was a rather weak device to steer an event.  Luckily the film makes up for these weak points by a great use of special effects and cinematography.

All in all, the acting ensemble represented in the film was quite strong and supported each other greatly through the story.  It's hard to hold a candle to Christopher Lee but Leon Greene played off of him quite well and Charles Gray's Mocata is such a downright sinister man that Lee's usually dark imposing quality is lightened by contrast.  It's no secret that I have a soft spot movies about Black Magic and Witch Craft so it should also be no surprise that I liked this movie quite a bit, regardless of a few of the strange choices on the writing side of the script.

It felt like quite a bit of research into the scientific side involving the power of suggestion had been done as well as the Seance Rituals of communicating with the spirits.  Such research served to really heighten the mood of the film, steering the audience to wonder just how much could be possible and how much is farce.  At the end of the day, it's a tale of good and evil, and good most certainly trumps evil in this case.

4 out of 5 skulls.

Horror Of Dracula: 29 of 31 Horror Movies I've Never Seen

The Hammer Horror films have been on my mind for quite some time now.  There's something peculiarly unique and so very British about them, that even at their worst they tend to have some sort of redeeming quality that sits with me.  As I wrote earlier, me and vampire movies don't usually agree, but there are occasions where I overcome my bias and get to watch a few gems.  It was completely shocking to my friends that I had never seen Horror of Dracula, so I've decided to set it straight.

Based on Braham Stoker's Dracula, the film stars Christopher Lee in the role of the titular character and Peter Cushing in the role of Dr. Josef van Helsing.  While certain elements, like the boat of dead bodies and the Renfield character are removed, the film purportedly maintains a fairly close resemblance to the novel.  It sports a bit of a slow pace for the majority of the film, but the climactic battle between Helsing and Dracula is so commanding that it makes up for other places lacking in the pace department.

Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee work so well off of each other that it's no wonder they would become best friends and co-starts on a number of Hammer productions including, but not limited to, the Dracula series.  The color, for 1958 is nicely saturated and it seems that not a single color on the spectrum is missed in the production design, which is also rife with the Gothic imagery that made Hammer famous in the first place.

Easily, this is one of the most enjoyable versions of the Dracula story and is every bit of a classic in it's own right.  It brought sensuality to the otherwise monstrously cold Lugosi Dracula and even though Lee is an imposing 6'6" of gaunt British awesomeness, he still brings a charm to the character that is unmistakable.  Cushing's eyes alone are so arresting that you want to slap every other character in the film for ever doubting him!  A wonderful treat for the old and new fans alike, Horror of Dracula is not to be missed.

5 out of 5 skulls.

VAMP: 28 of 31 Horror Movies I've Never Seen

When I was a young lad, I loved Vampires.  Everything about Vampires was sexy and mysterious.  The fetishism surrounding blood drinking, the concept of having to hide in the darkness among society, the violence; pretty much everything about it spoke to my frustrations with growing up.  As I grew older I watched my idea of Vampires get slowly morphed into this strange pop culture thing where they were suddenly the sullen outcasts that desperately clung to any shred of their lost humanity.  These are not the Vampires I love.  The Vampires I love hide in plain sight and are merciless hunters of a common prey.  So I had a falling out with the depiction of Vampires and 1986's VAMP sure as hell ain't bringing me back into the fold.

Two savvy college kids desperate to get into a college frat make a plan to obtain a stripper for an upcoming party.  Heading into the city, in one of the weirdest and longest spinning vehicle car sequences ever, they come across a Bar called After Dark which just so happens to be inhabited, like much of the surrounding neighborhood, by a pack of Vampires led by an Egyptian Vampire Queen.  Plenty of magenta and green lit mayhem ensues in a movie that carries every single stereotype from an I Love The 80s episode.

This movie is bad.  Not bad in the unwatchable way, it's just so god damned silly that unless you are drunk with friends or completely brain dead you will most likely turn the damn thing off.  Don't get me wrong, it's got it's fair share of witty dialogue and an adorably spunky Dedee Pfeiffer, but that doesn't save it from it's cemented place in 80s nostalgia hell.  I don't even need to get started on the obvious White vs Black, Man vs Woman subtext (if you can call it SUBtext) of this film, but let's just say that the heroes of the story are all White kids.

There are a couple of moments that are just fun enough that they're not pure cheeseball silly, like a skeletal middle finger from an animatronic skeleton, but so much of the film is centered around the basest gags and thrills that it loses it's credible.  Anyone who drinks alcohol knows that brandy does not create enough vapor to catch fire within 2 seconds of being spilled on a bar or on the floor and it most certainly doesn't light a person's clothing on fire like fresh kerosene.  Even with all these faults though, I have to admit I had a good time making fun of the movie with my buddy Patrick, Still, I would never have put the film on had we not already been half-cocked.

2 out of 5 skulls.

You're Next: 27 of 31 Horror Movies I've Never Seen

Home invasions movies stormed the cinema for a brief spell.  It seemed the more explicit the torture the more money the films could make.  The problem is that they were all basically the same movie.  Family, or couple, is tormented by masked and unknown assailants for no apparent reason other than the glee of killing and chaos and have to fight tooth and nail to survive in their own home.  Sound familiar?  So what happens when you turn that prospect upside down and make one of the survivors, a survival expert? You get, You're Next.

The film is about a delightfully screwed up rich family gathering at a large estate somewhere in some rural area to celebrate the Mother and Father's 35th Anniversary.  The first 20 minutes gets the exposition out of the way, introducing the tension between siblings, the mother's life of medication, as well as the wives/girlfriends/boyfriends of the siblings.  Then in the midst of a fight at dinner Tariq (Ti West), boyfriend of sister Aimee (Amy Seimetz), notices something out the window, goes to investigate and gets a cross bolt in the head.  As you may guess all hell breaks loose from there and the rest of the film is about survival as family members are picked off left and right by three men clad in black tactical gear and creepy animal masks.

The delightful twist in this story is that middle child Crispian's (AJ Bowen) girlfriend Erin, played by Sharni Vinson seems to have a knack for what to do in a crisis situation, which we learn later has to do with her being raised on a survivalist commune by her dad until she was 15, in the Australian outback.  Bad luck for the killers, who she seems to thwart by every, and I mean EVERY, means necessary, including a meat tenderizing mallet, a blender, screw driver, axe... You get where I'm going with there.  There's a lot of carnage in this movie and the pacing is damn near perfect.

I'm not generally a fan of movies like this.  I hated The Strangers and most of the films that came out in that era.  You're Next, however, has a very dark sense of humor that I seemed to get.  Who doesn't have that family member that drives you up the wall so much that you almost wish they would get stabbed a dozen times by various screwdrivers and knives?  While certain aspects of the movie were a bit cheesy and a bit unbelievable, it was refreshing to see three masked killers, who look like cinematic badasses, continuously get set back by a tough as nails Australian girl.

4 out of 5 skulls.

[REC]3 - Genesis: 26 of 31 Horror Movies I've Never Seen

This review is probably going to be my briefest one yet.  I'm starting to firmly believe that there is the third movie of any given trilogy.  If the second one is good, the third almost always fails.   This has not been true in the case of Star Wars (the original trilogy that is) and Indiana Jones (the third is actually better than the second in my opinion and the fourth suffers the curse) whereas, in the Alien franchise, the third, while not terrible, was badly received and it's production plagued by problems due to the producers, the second and third Jurassic Park movies were pretty damn terrible when compared to the first (the third being utterly ridiculous in a bad way), and almost every slasher franchise's third film has been too awful to even be worth writing about.  With all that said, [REC]3 - Genesis can only be described as garbage.

The film takes place at the wedding of Koldo and Clara, the events of the prior films are not mentioned whatsoever, and we begin with found footage style shooting by family members at the wedding videographer.  One of the groom's Uncles, Victor,  has a bandage on his hand from a dog bite at the clinic he worked at, giving us a pretty clear idea of who is going to be patient zero in this little outbreak scenario.  Sure enough, as the wedding goes on, Victor show more symptoms until a balcony falling incident followed by a bite, followed by more infected people and there goes the wedding.

Where this film changes is that the "found footage" style is abandoned in favor of the traditional narrative style of film making with a symbolic destruction of the videographer's camera before the opening title card.  Sadly, this ends up making the film worse for wear.  The actors all become cliche's, the naturalism which enhances the chaotic terror of the opening goes out the window, and the story then becomes about the bride and groom finding each other against all odds.  People die, there's a kinda cool scene with a chainsaw, and there's blood everywhere, but ultimately that doesn't save this film from the curse.

The main area, where ANY film suffers is the writing, and this film suffers from abysmally poor writing.  This film is directed by one half of the directing team (and one third of the writing team), Paco Plaza, of the first two films and if I had to guess, his partner, Juame Balaguero probably didn't like the direction Plaza took this film because Plaza has zero involvement on the upcoming [REC] 4 - Apocalypse.  I found myself rolling my eyes again and again at the tritely pathetic direction the story took, feeling more like a collection of scenes with no real character development, and no conflict other than the possession zombies.  All in all, avoid this one.  The fourth film picks up where the second one left off (according to the synopsis on imdb) so here's hoping that film makes up for it.  What an awful film.

1 out of 5 skulls.

[REC]2: 25 of 31 Horror Movies I've Never Seen

By now, if you've read any of these little reviews, you should realize that I'm not terribly fond of the "found footage" genre of film making.  Generally, I find it to be a cheap way of telling a story that capitalizes on even cheaper thrillers and sudden jump cut editing.  I realize that there is a certain freedom that it allows to the filmmaker, to use said jump cuts for example, but something about that shaky camera style just does not do it for me.  However, every so often I see one of these films that either reaffirms my distaste, or surprises me in a good way.  Back in 2007, that film was Spanish made [REC], remade in America as the utterly forgettable Quarantine.  I enjoyed [REC] quite a bit and found it to be a very refreshing spin on the classic infection story.  Somehow, though, the sequels evaded me and when Paranormal Activity came out I decided I was completely done with "found footage" horror movies.  Luckily, a friend of mine refreshed the idea of [REC] and convinced me to take the time to watch the 2009 sequel [REC]2 which I finally, not so begrudgingly, have.

[REC]2 not only picks up on the tail of [REC] but shifts the genre in the most awesome way possible.  In the first film we are lead to believe that it is merely some crazy mutation of rabies that causes the outbreak of infected violent people in the apartment complex.  In the second film, we join an elite squad of SWAT type men who go into the building with a Doctor from the National Health Department.  We discover, after the first encounter with an infection victim, that things are not as they seem.  The Doctor is a Priest from the Vatican and the infection is in fact a mass Demonic Possession.  From there it's all about survival and finding the blood from Teresa Madeiros (the original possession victim) to attempt to synthesize an antidote.

WTF?  So, not only is this film a "zombie like" infection movie, it's also about demons.  Well who didn't invite me?  The film is like a modern, found footage, Demons, which to some may salt it's credibility as a horror film, but for me piques my interest intensely.  I have a soft spot for Euro Demon movies and man does this one deliver.  Blood vomiting, voice changing, levitation, frighteningly fast moments of violent frenzy; [REC]2 delivers and delivers until at the incredibly twisted climax you realize "There has got to be a third one of these coming soon."

The actors playing the squad are riff off of each other quite well and the opening scene in the van reminded me a little bit of the helicopter scene in Predator.  They do a good job of creating that sense of camaraderie that comes with working in a tight knit group.  The Doctor/Priest, played with an obsessive intensity by Jonathan D. Mellor, provides that motivation that drives the story towards it's incredibly edited (eat your heart out Paranormal Activity) and incredibly creepy ending.

Since, no movie seems to escape me unscathed, I do have to say that there are a few moments that are utterly cheese balled and pulled me out of the movie.  Luckily, the film still has so much going for it that it sucked me back in almost as fast as it took me out or this would have been a much more negative review and since I've already mentioned that I find the ending twisted, creepy, and incredibly edited, AKA really dang good, I guess it's time to watch the third one and see where it goes from there.

4 out of 5 skulls.

Discopath: 24 of 31 Horror Movies I've Never Seen

If you've been reading any of my reviews in the past you'll know that I'm a hopeless fan of the Giallo genre.  That sleazy exploitation of sex and death, stylized by music and camera genre.  It appears I'm not alone in this strange attraction as there have been a number of films in the recent years that pay loving homage to it.  Between Berberian Sound Studio, The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears, and The Editor it seems that us Giallo fanatics are coming out of hiding.  Unfortunately, like many Giallo's from the 70s and 80s, they're not all good and 2013's Discopath is a prime example of one of the unfortunate lesser films of the genre.

Set in New York and Montreal, the film follows a twisted killer named Duane Lewis, played by newcomer Jeremie Earp-Lavergne, who suffers from psychotic breaks at the sound of music.  Set in the 70s while Disco is the rage, Duane is brought by a girl to a discotheque where he loses his mind, never to regain his sanity.  While Earp-Lavergne is quite good at making the stereotypical psycho face, his performance in this piece was blandly straightforward as "the bad guy."  Don't get me started on the "cops" of the story.  It's like writer/director Renaud Gauthier just couldn't be bothered to do any actual research, writing the characters completely off of other Giallo films.  This would work if it were intentionally funny, but the actors didn't seem to be in on the joke, if there was one intended in the first place.

Most Giallo's don't let you know who the villain is until the end, in an Agatha Christie whodunit way, but there have been a few notable exceptions like Hatchet for the Honeymoon and The Stendhal Syndrome.  With that the experience then becomes about how is the killer going to get caught?  The audience already knows who he is, but the characters do not necessarily which adds to the tension.  At least, it's supposed to if done properly, but Discopath unfortunately fails at this.  The key problem of the film is that the characters are all flat and there is no real focus to them.  This is an issue in most lesser Giallo's, the focus becomes all about the camera style, lighting, music, and the kill sequences and the story and acting takes a tremendous back seat.

The film is indeed shot quite well and the lighting is quite superb, especially in the discotheque club sequences.  The music is a plethora of disco and synth, including an often used disco rendition of Flight of the Bumblebee.  The gore is indeed inventive, I've never thought of someone sticking a body full of broken LPs and they certainly don't scrimp on the blood.  The problem, of course, is that just focusing on these details does not the save the movie from bad acting and bad writing.  Were it not for the incredible embellishment to all the other details I'd probably have just turned it off and called it a loss, but I stuck through it regardless.  This is another one that belongs in the MST3K category.  Watch it with friends, an ample amount of alcohol, and take the piss out of it.

2 out of 5 skulls.