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.

The Believers: 07 of 31 Horror Movies I've Never Seen!

Mysticism is always present in ancient religions.  It goes back to the pagan worships or the elements, animals, and the indefinable.  Human's have always sought to define the indefinable.  As the religions grow in power they begin to become organizations and that's when the mystical pasts get altered into a sort of good and evil idea.  John Schlesinger's The Believers gives that treatment to Santeria and it's dark counterpart, Brujeria (i.e. witchcraft).

The film is about a police psychiatrist, Cal (played here by Martin Sheen), who at the beginning of the film, loses his wife to a freak electric accident and in the aftermath moves with his son to New York City, not long after moving in they stumble upon a strange scene in central park followed by increasingly strange business involving Brujeria and Santeria.  All is obviously not well in New York City, but when hasn't that been the case in a horror film?  He and his son become embroiled in a strange plot which is revealed in quite a creepy and violent climax in an under construction high rise.

Formally, the film is quite well shot and edited, utilizing some excellent dolly work to build tension.  It's based on a novel, The Religion by Nicholas Conde (Robert Stuart Nathan), and adapted to the screen by Mark Frost, the Frost half of Lynch/Frost Productions which brought the world Twin Peaks, so I definitely was prepared for some weird stuff and yet some how it missed the mark.  Perhaps because the film was a bigger budget project, with some actual star power behind it, there was pressure to keep it a little safer for a more inclusive audience, but considering it's from the director of The Marathon Man, that explanation isn't really sufficient.

I'll admit that this one may be the first film of this little series where I felt that the climax justified the pacing of the film, as each event leads up to the spectacular conclusion of the Brujera.  It certainly also sets up a great feeling of paranoia, revealing further and further that there are not many people for Cal to trust, including his oldest friends.  However, certain elements of the story were just a little TOO silly for me to believe.  Again, it's an example of that: let's throw of the audience by conveniently removing a character who may or may not have been a red herring all along.  Some people like that, but I tend to read through it.  Unless, of course, the film does a better job of convincing me which, sadly, Believers did not.

That isn't to say that it's a bad film.  There are certainly many worse in this genre and I would go as far to say that it's even a good film.  I think my main issue with it is that it ultimately felt more like a police procedural than a dark magic horror film, but that's not a reason to dismiss it by any means.  It's a tough one, but luckily taste is subjective enough that one of you reading this may decide to watch it and find something I just couldn't see.

3 out of 5 skulls.

The Lords Of Salem: 04 of 31 Horror Movies I've Never Seen!

I often find myself looking forward to a film based on trailers and subject matter only to have my interest dashed apart by opening weekend reviews from friends and professional critics alike.  It's one of those issues where I wish I could shut out everything and just make my own uniformed opinion after a first watch, but I just keep hearing so-and-so saying "It wasn't good at all" in the back of my head.  The only context I can think of is how fans of sports teams go to great lengths not to see the final score of a game that they're recording at home while they're stuck at work.  It doesn't quite work that way with films though.  One such film was Rob Zombie's Lords of Salem.

I like movies about Witchcraft.  I've been fascinated by the lore of witches and demons and black magic since I was a child.  Where in my childhood this interest first manifested, I have no idea, but it's something that has stuck with me ever since, long after I had my falling out with organized religion and began to walk the path of the Atheist.  Though I really enjoyed Rob Zombie's second film, The Devil's Rejects, I found the Halloween reboots to be so-so, making my anticipation of a new original work, that just so happened to be all about black magic in a "what if" scenario involving the Salem Witch Trials, all the more heightened.

Then the movie came out to lack luster reviews, low imdb ratings, and next to zero distribution.  I remembered thinking, "Well, shit..." and I never ended up getting around to the film until today.  The film is about local Salem Rock DJ, Heidi, played in a nicely subdued performance by Zombie's wife and muse, Sheri Moon Zombie, who begins to experience bizarre dreams and flashbacks of a demonic nature after receiving a strange and trance like record in a wooden box from a group calling themselves the Lords.  You can kinda see where this is going already.  I don't want to spoil the film, but let's just say that there is plenty of imagery of debauchery and sadism, naked women speaking in tongues, elderly women who are sweet as sugar but pack a wallop with a frying pan, blood, blood, more blood, and did I mention blood?

This is something that's fairly typical of Zombie's work, as he has always been more interested in the movies that have a "fucked up" quality about them.  Imagery that arrests the viewer and freezes them to the screen in a mesmerizing mixture of revulsion and curiosity.  Lords doesn't quite hit that mark, but it certainly tries to.  That's perhaps my only complaint towards the film is that it is another example of that attempt for the "slow burn" that is a bit more slow and doesn't quite burn hot enough.  The final act, however, is completely bonkers, gonzo, and downright strange with this a scene involving a large golden music hall shot in a way that I can only compare to Stanley Kubrick's The Shining.

Another thing I love about Rob Zombie's films are his casting choices.  He goes to great lengths to pull in horror icons from as far back as the 60s, giving the actors who have otherwise been retired by Hollywood in favor of the new, fresh, meaty, and creepy roles in his films.  For, example, in this film you will see, not only stalwarts Sid Haig and Ken Foree, but Patricia Quinn, Dee Wallace, Meg Foster, and Judy Geeson.  Patricia Quinn and Dee Wallace stand out particularly in their supporting roles.

The production design of the film, while not as over the top as some of his previous work, is full of Zombie's "American Horror" motifs and film buff fetishes.  That grimy rock and roll meets silent film and horror element that he has been cultivating since the start of his music career with White Zombie.  I'd be lying if I said I didn't want an apartment like Heidi's.  It's also probably his best shot film to date, eschewing the shaky hand held camera aesthetic of the scare moments in the Halloween films, opting for more use of smooth dolly movement and steadicam.

Overall, I did like the film, and I do think it's the type of film that is meant to be seen as a late night double feature, perhaps with To The Devil a Daughter (one of my all time favorite films about black magic devil worship), on a big screen with a great sound system.

3 skulls out of 5.