Late Phases

I've always been drawn to Werewolf stories.  My favorite of all time is The Howling, but I also have a special place for An American Werewolf In London and Wolfen in my heart.  The big problem, of course, with Werewolf movies is that the rich subtext of internal evils externalized is often shrugged off in favor of the carnivorous beast that stalks the night.  Over the years I've watched my favorite of the movie monsters turned into a boring stereotype of rage and fury, lusting after blood on the moonlit thrill of the hunt.  That or they're played by teenagers who are in love with triangle mouthed girls who can't decide between them or the vampire in their life.  Boring.  So, imagine how happy I am to be writing about Late Phases, a new Werewolf movie from the director of Here Comes The Devil.

Set in a rural old retirement community on the edge of a nondescript mountain town, Late Phases starts off with a bang, so to speak, when curmudgeonly blind Veteran, Ambrose McKinley (Nick Damici) is attacked by a Werewolf.  The story then follows Ambrose as he silently picks through his community in an effort to find out who the Werewolf is and dispatch it.  Sounds pretty straightforward, but where the film does a much better job with the genre than any of it's recent predecessors is by giving it the feel and attention of a true character piece.  By holding Ambrose up in the forefront we are allowed to examine the behaviors of those around him and at times we feel that he may be the luckiest one of all unable to physically see the ugly sides of humanity any longer.

The film still falls in the low budget horror realm, but it makes due with it's budgetary constraints by amplifying the story visually while also employing some excellent costuming and makeup befitting of the bi-pedal hulks of fur and fury.  The whole look of the film has a golden hue to it, visually representing a community of people who's golden years have now passed.  Ambrose, a gruff do-it-yourselfer, doesn't really belong here, but driven by a sense of duty, he stays to put an end to the story.  If I hadn't known any better, I would have guessed that Damici was actually blind, as he does a remarkable job of portraying the physicality of it.

I missed the film's one off theatrical run in Los Angeles, but luckily it can be rented, or even bought, on Amazon Instant.  It's not without it's cheesy moments, but Damici's standout performance is amplified by a good pace and visual element, that when you add in the gore and Wolves you've got yourself one hell of a good Werewolf movie.  Sprinkle in some great supporting performances from Lance Guest and Tom Noonan, what more do you really need?  Definitely on par with some of the greats, if not tugging lovingly at their tails.

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.

[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.

Jug Face: 23 of 31 Horror Movies I've Never Seen

I've never quite understood "the South."  I mean, I've learned about the Civil War, as most children do growing up in the USA, and I've certainly been to my fair share of Southern States, but there is something about the culture that I am completely disconnected from.  It's a weird divide that you most frequently find in arguments where ideology is concerned.  I will say, though, that many a great writer has come from the South.  William Faulkner, Harper Lee, John Grisham, Truman Capote, Anne Rice, Tom Wolfe; all come to mind.  It's that strange Gothic quality that if you transposed it to Europe, you could just change the weather and find some serious similarities.  How does that transpose to film?  Well, Jug Face might be a good example of just that transposition.

Set in a backwater in a nameless southern region where the light has a beautiful golden hue to it, Jug Face tells the story of a strange group of people living pin the woods and worshiping a pit.  From the opening credits we learn that in an older time, the ancestors of these people were claimed by The Pox until a mysterious Pit washed them clean of disease in exchange for human sacrifice (the first of which just so happened to be a priest).  From then on the folk carried on the tradition.  A seer throws clay jugs with the faces that the Pit requires to continue living unabated.  Unfortunately, avoiding sacrifice has it's consequences, and Ada (played with a tremendous energy by Lauren Ashley Carter) discovers that not only is she the next Jug Face, but that her unborn child (conceived out of incest with her brother) is also desired by the pit.  Driven by the need to protect her unborn, Ada hides the Jugs and the Pit starts killing people with impunity.

The story is told much like a piece of Gothic Southern fiction and almost feels like it would have worked better as a novella or short story.  What the film does very well is in it's horrific take on the what goes on in those rural backwoods.  Anyone who lives in more urban settings has had those moments where you see "those people from out there."  It's true, there is a curious fascination that comes with getting a glimpse of a culture you don't understand.  It's even mimicked at one point in the film where a character says "We don't know what crazy things those people are up to."  Perhaps, worshiping a human eating pit is a little bit far, but it's that twisted macabre that elevates the story above most other low budget horror films.

The film is also quite inventive with it's use of light and point of view.  We never see exactly what comes out of the pit, since we are only allowed to see through it's eyes, but we know that whatever it is comes from deep in the Earth and really likes to eviscerate whoever it comes across.  The pit is almost constantly full of blood throughout the movie, leaving a very unsettling bright red to the dark brown clay like dirt in which it rests.

The film has a sort of anti-climax that makes me wonder what exactly was the point, or if there even is a point.  This is probably the weakest thing about the film, as I was left feeling that basically there is no hope for these people but to continue killing their own at the whims of a creepy tree root monster in a bloody watery pit.  I suppose one can argue that it's a morality tale about accepting the burden of sacrifice/martyrdom, but at the end of the day, I wanted to see that monster get his.  Fortunately, the film is not too long, has some incredible production design and stand up performances from the supporting cast to make due for the aforementioned weak points.  Definitely worth a watch, but probably not much repeat value.  In all honesty I don't think I'll ever be able to look at deep rural folks the same way ever again.

3 out of 5 skulls.

House on Haunted Hill: 22 of 31 Horror Movies I've Never Seen

Since I'm sure some of my friends who read this are going to wanna smack me across the back of the head, let's just get it out of the way right now.  I've never seen, to my knowledge, a William Castle film.   It's true.  In fact, outside of most of the universal monster movies and few films from the 70s most of the 50s to 60s horror has somehow evaded me.  Usually it's because I'm not Mr. Horror Movie Guy, despite my knowledge and love for certain genres and eras of horror film.  I simply lack that ability to watch everything just to watch it.  Some call it taste, I just shrug.  Either way, I finally watched the original House on Haunted Hill.

The story is introduced at the beginning of the film.  A eccentric millionaire and his wife invite 7 strangers to spend a night in a supposed haunted house for the sum of $10,000 each.  The caveat, of course, is that the house is supposedly haunted by 7 ghosts of people who died horribly violent deaths and crave to take new souls into their realm.  The eccentric millionaire Frederick Loren is played by the immeasurable Vincent Price who keeps you wondering about his motivation throughout the film.

The film is one of those rare instances of a B-Movie that could easily compete with the A's.  Yes, it has a few cheesy bits and pieces here, but Castle does an excellent job of keeping the audience on it's toes until the grand reveal, which I'll be honest when I say I didn't quite see coming.  I've never seen the remake either so at least I wasn't at that weird viewing disadvantage.  Carolyn Craig plays Norah Manning, a typist for Loren's company and also the face of fear for the audience, though the why is part of the reveal which I am not about to spoil.

Castle utilizes editing and music for what are now considered classic jump scares much like the kinds that flood most films of today.  The brilliance of Castle is in the mood and setting.  He creates an atmosphere where you start to wonder, in context of the events, what is real and what is manipulation.  Couple that with some downright creepy looking actors and moments and you've got some nice classic horror.  Yes there is one moment that falls for the typical, slow moving thing towards screaming woman who also slowly backs away rather than runs, but that's to be expected from this era of film making.  People weren't ready for the hyper realism that dominates much of modern movie making.

The score was also quite good for what was obviously a low budget and the setting equally creepy.  The exterior of the set is the famed Ennis House (used in a plethora of films including The Day Of The Locust and Blade Runner) while the interior is a film set with a Gothic vibe.  All these elements come together and cement the film's place as a classic in horror history.  Not perfect, but certainly enjoyable and a must see for fans of the classics.

4 out of 5 skulls.