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.

The Legend of Hell House: 03 of 31 Horror Movies I've Never Seen!

When people think about British Horror movies, the most common association is that of Hammer Studios.  While Hammer was certainly a bench mark of the industry in England, there are a few stunning exceptions to their massive catalog made by outside studios.  Filled with a Gothic atmosphere of the clash between the normal and the paranormal, it is almost hard to believe that The Legend of Hell House is NOT a Hammer film, but it is precisely because it is not that makes it so arresting and, well, just good!

The story is adapted by Richard Matheson from his own source novel Hell House.  Matheson wrote a number of screenplays, including many of the Edgar Allan Poe scripts for Roger Corman in the 60s.  He even wrote the Devil Rides Out, which was produced by Hammer Studios.  Many of his novels and short stories have been adapted to film, often the screenplays being written by Matheson himself, Hell House, being a superb example.  The story is about a group of parapsychologists who are hired to investigate a haunted house, The Ballasco House, where on two separate occasions investigating parties had been killed, crippled, or severely disturbed.

From there the film leads us through a series of strange occurrences and events that put the characters at odds with each other, at odds with their beliefs, and at odds with themselves, making for an atmospheric slow burn towards a startling conclusion.  As I said before there's a sort of Hammeresque Gothic vibe to the film, in it's setting and design, but the film is distinctly not a Hammer film in that the characters are so convincingly real.  Credit for this must be handed to director John Hough and the actors, Roddy McDowall, Pamela Franklin, Clive Revill, and Gayle Hunnicutt.

Made in 1973, the film bares a few similarities and comparisons to The Haunting, also based on a novel, enough similarities that many people wrote it off as a rip-off when it was released, but Hell House takes a very serious approach to the ideas it presents and brings with it a strong unabashed sexuality and violence.  Ultimately, Hell House is about finding the truth midst an ocean of conjecture and it's paid off in the final scenes of the film. The film doesn't so much go for cheap jump scares as it uses a more suspenseful approach, but there are a number of sudden moments, including a scene where Pamela Franklin is attacked by a cat and another where a fireplace erupts forth in an attempt to char Clive Revill to a crisp.

A good film that sticks to it's plot, sometimes unrelentingly, and delivers plenty of mood along with it's scares.

4 skulls out of 5.

From Beyond: 02 of 31 Horror Movies I've Never Seen!

Last year I watched The Reanimator for the first time.  Blasphemy, I know, especially because I'm 29 and it was one of those films that I used to stare at the VHS Box Art on the shelf of the local video rental for years and years as a child.  I don't know why I took so long to watch it, but when I finally did I realized that regardless of how terrible the dialogue or how flimsy the plot could get, there was a strange quality to it that just grabbed at my visceral side.  I tend to attribute this to the H.P. Lovecraft source material, but I have to also hand it to director Stuart Gordon for his incredibly disgusting interpretation of Lovecraft.  Therefore, it seemed fitting that I should watch his follow up to The Reanimator, the special fx orgasm that is: From Beyond.

The story is about two scientists creating a device that stimulates the Pineal Gland and ultimately opens a gateway to an invisible world full of creatures harking to Rob Bottin's make up fx in John Carpenter's remake of The Thing.  This film is pretty damn gruesome, but that's also part of it's charm.  It was made in an era before computer generated effects had overrun the film making process as they do now and the make up and prosthetic effects are so lovingly crafted that it's easy to ignore the silly dialogue and blatant sexist/racist stereotyping.  Well... almost.

Here's the thing, Gordon obviously loves Lovecraft, pun intended, and the era that From Beyond was rife with neo-exploitation film making.  I can't really say whether or not Gordon is a sexist pig, or even a racist, because I don't quite believe that such issues mattered to him in making the film.  I think the only thing that mattered to him was to make something that both terrified and titilated his audience.  It is an exploitation film in every sense of the word.  You have the blatant stereotypes, sexual tropes, an unfortunately white friendly Ken Foree character (I half expected him to start talking like a minstrel show character at one point because of the way he was playing it), and oodles of violence and gore.

The gore almost outweighs most of the other aspects of the film, but not quite.  Critics and Historians seem to be split about Lovecraft's politics on the subject of race.  In his early to mid works he referred rather disparagingly to non-Anglo characters, but appeared to have softened these views and refocused on greater class issues.  In that sense, if Gordon is merely translating the work, it is possible that he simply ignored the implications in favor of being a true adapter.  However, if he was at all sensitive to these issues, I think he could have done a better job to show that sensitivity.

The formal aspects of the film are pitch perfect.  Excellent camera work, thematic lighting, make up effects, and editing keep the pace going strong and helped to keep my attention. It was just impossible for me not to see Peter being reduced from a strong lead to a shucking and jiving support.  That's what I get for falling in love with horror through the lens of George Romero.

3 skulls out of 5.

The Innkeepers: 01 of 31 Horror Films I Have Never Seen!

Last year I made an attempt at a personal challenge to watch 31 Horror films that I had never seen before.  Due to my work schedule and my personal life being in a state of turmoil I was unable to complete this challenge so this year I’m taking the plunge once again with the intention of completing it come hell or high water.

For film number one, I settled on Ti West’s The Innkeepers.  The film is a loving homage to the Haunted House Ghost Story, while simultaneously being a bit of a critique on the millennial generation.  The main characters, Claire and Luke, are spending the last weekend at work before the Yankee Peddler Inn will close its doors once and for all.  Luke is really more of the supporting character of the story as the central focus is Claire, an early 20s college dropout who has no idea what she wants out of life.  Sara Paxton plays Claire with sort of manic energy that certainly harkens to a younger generation which is contrasted nicely by Pat Healy’s dead pan malaise.

West throws us into the story with very little exposition other than a few remarks that ultimately lead us to our central focus, the search for proof that a spirit is haunting the Inn.  From there the story unfolds in a fashion that was a bit too typical for my tastes.  The film is very well shot, very well lit, very well edited, and even very well scored, but West spends too much time trying to make the world real before getting to the juicy bits. 

Ultimately I found it rather tedious and not nearly as arresting as his previous film, House of the Devil.  I couldn’t relate with Claire and Luke, because I have nothing in common with them.  Overall, I think West, who wrote/directed/edited the film, could have gotten to the actual conflict in the story much faster than he did.  He opted for a slow burn type of story, but the climax fell short.  Still there were a few enjoyable jumpy moments, great make up, and Kelly McGillis was perfectly cast as a retired actor turned spiritual guru.

For all its short comings, I still enjoyed the film more than found footage ghost films like the Paranormal Activity series, a series which needs to die horribly in a fire.  West does a good job setting up the atmosphere, but all the atmosphere in the world doesn’t quite save this film from the “meh” factor.

I gave it 3 out of 5 Skulls.

A Letter To Momo: Light Fare From The Man Who Gave Us Jin-Roh.

I like anime.  Now that we've cleared that hurdle, I have to clarify that I am not the type of person who just likes ALL anime.  I have taste.  I have a standard for the quality of the animation, the story, and the seiryu (voice acting).  I've been known to be harsh on quite a few shows and films that many of my peers deem excellent.  When I discovered that the theater I work at was going to be screening the first film of director Hiroyuki Okiura since Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade. I jumped at the opportunity to watch it.  It is called A Letter To Momo.

The film centers on Momo and her mother Ikuko who have returned to a small island town of Shio to live with Ikuko's parents following the death of Momo's father.  She caries a piece of paper with the words "Dear Momo" written on it, but the rest is blank.  Throughout the film we discover more about Momo and her father, but more specifically the film is about adapting to life after trauma.  That being said, this film is still a rather lighter take on such subject matter and plays well within the realm of magical realism that most people have become familiar with in Studio Ghibli films.

Momo is somewhat of a typical young girl.  City born and raised, she has a very closed off attitude to her new environment.  She's not dealing with her trauma at the beginning of the film, rather, she's holding it inside.  This is a key plot factor to much of the film as both she and her mother are very much alike in how they deal with their grief.  What makes Momo's situation unique, of course, is the presences of three goblins who follow her and her mother around.  The problem?  Only Momo can see them.

The animation is stellar, most of it is hand drawn with a few cg bits for background and special devices, but they are not distracting in the slightest.  This is only Okiura's second film as director, but his list of credits as a key animator, animation director, and storyboard artist range across some of the greatest Japanese Animated Features ever made, including Akira, Ghost In The Shell, Roujin Z, Coyboy Bebop: The Movie, and Paprika.  I'd also like to pay a special note of attention to the 5.1 Sound Mix which was incredibly good.  There are scenes where I felt like I was in the setting of summer with cicada's noisily singing all around me, enhancing the feeling of environmental realism.

While I liked the film, I have to admit that there are moments of the story that were definitely geared towards younger audiences than I would typically be found sitting among.  However, I think that Okiura was very brave to tackle issues of emotional isolation, grief and trauma in the lens of a children's film.  There are obvious comedic elements to keep the film light, as it's intended audience are family, but that doesn't prevent the film from having an impact on the way we see and deal with grief.  The film culminates to a climactic race against time and the elements teaching us that no matter what we must cherish and protect the one's we love.

Good for families, this film with be screening at The Aero Theater on Friday, April 26th, at 7:30 PM in Japanese with English Subtitles.

I chose this trailer because the TiFF trailer is utterly pathetic.  Comic Sans font?  Really??

"Do you ever die in your own dream?": Shunji Iwai's Vampire

Often when a director comes from abroad to North America to make a film, the result is lackluster, panned by critics who previously screamed with praise, or misses out on wide release because distributors fear anything that smells remotely of monetary loss.  It's the age old battle of art versus product and Shunji Iwai's newest film is an English language piece that falls into the sad latter of the three.

Vampire opens with two people, a man and woman, meeting up in an undisclosed location with the express intention of committing suicide together.  They drive through the rainy Canadian weather talking about their reasons and their disconnects with life trying to have a good final day before ending it all.  It becomes apparent, however, that one of them has an ulterior motive.  The woman doesn't want to feel any pain so the man suggests blood draining.  He offers to assist in her death first before doing himself in.  Obviously we wouldn't have a film if they both die, so it's safe to assume that he's not going to kill himself.  Rather, he lives up to the title of the story.  Simon (the protagonist of the story) drains Jellyfish (her online name) of her blood via needs and bottles, and when the process is complete he gorges himself upon one of the bottles.

So is Vampire a horror movie?  No.  At least, not in the typical archetype of horror.  Is it then a story about a serial killer?  Perhaps, but the film is more than even that.  Any good film is multifaceted.  Rather than shoving meaning or ideology in your face, a truly good film with allow you to follow it on a journey and give you an idea to ponder.  It will inspire thought.  Everything else is just surface value.  I could pontificate on the ideas of spiritual isolation and addiction that are present in the subtext of this story, but I would also be giving too much of it away in the process and since I want you all to go out and find this movie by whatever means necessary and WATCH it, I think I'll take a break from that.

What I do want to talk about is how this film is a rare example of a director being capable of maintaining his artistic sensibilities while filming outside of his country.  It's debatable whether or not any Hollywood studio would fund a film like Vampire (the film was produced and shot in Canada) given Iwai's body of work.  Iwai is not a throw it in your face kind of film maker.  Rather, he is an artist, a poet, and a painter with a camera for a brush.  His body of work includes Love Letter, PiCNiC, Swallowtail Butterfly, All About Lily Chou Chou, and Hana and Alice to name a few.  These films are known for their intense emotional honesty, creative camera and editing work, and experimental poetic story structures.  They do not play on our more visceral senses, but speak more to our hearts and minds.

By all rights, Simon should be looked at as a villain, and yet by the end of the film, you love him.  Iwai takes us on a journey side by side with Simon in which we see that his fragile state of being is something he is out of empathy rather than a sadistic desire to feed on the blood of others.  It dares to ask a difficult question about human connection.  Is it possible, as Iwai stated at Sundance, for a victim and perpetrator to see each other in the light of moral understanding and acceptance? Food for thought.

Throw in superb lighting and honest performances and you've got one hell of a film.  Another striking thing about the film is that none of the characters remotely resemble each other.  They're all uniquely played by the actors.  Look for a strangely obsessive performance by Rachel Leigh Cook and an understated brilliance from Amanda Plummer, the two bigger names on the film, but there is something so arresting about Kevin Zegers' performance of Simon that I just couldn't part from him.

This film is a hard one to find.  It is in English but currently there are no official channels to purchase the DVD in America or Canada.  The only way to currently purchase it is through the Pony Canyon Shopping Club, which is linked on the film's website.  While Navigating the Japanese site may be a semi-daunting task, it is a worthy one.  This film, is easily one of the better films I've seen in the last couple of months.  Not for those who just want mindless fun and entertainment.  Vampire is an intriguing and captivating story that begs the question, are we all just waiting to die?

Evil Dead or Evil Dread?

NOTE: Normally, I do not review films that are so readily available as it is not part of the original intent of this blog.  However, I felt compelled to write this review.  It won't happen again.

I don't get to see many new movies that move me.  Call me a cynic, but most of the films that have come out lately have been rehashes, sequels, and prequels to films that were already good in their own right, but for some reason the big kids in Hollywood think it's a better idea to throw some modern glitter on them repackage and sell to the A.D.D. generation.  Why mince words, it's what we've become.  We're so busy posting on facebook and twitter, being constantly updated about what's going on miles apart that we've forgotten what it's like to read a newspaper in the morning or sip a cup of coffee while looking at life outside the windows.  I'm guilty of this behavior.  I think we all are at this point, so let's just jump right in and allow me to say that the Evil Dead remake, while filled with many things that I love about horror films is a continuing example of everything that is wrong with the Hollywood studios right now.

"But-but-but," you may be protesting right now.  "Isn't it a little harsh to say that THIS is everything wrong with Hollywood?"  No.  I don't think that's too harsh, but before I explain why, let me say that I did have a bit of fun watching this film.

"Wait a minute, didn't you just say-"

Yes.  I went into the film with low expectations.  I had eaten a delicious meal with some friends and then we drove off to Westwood Village where we bought our tickets and pricey concessions and took our seats in a wonderfully old single screen theater (complete with red velvet curtain), sat down and immediately took notice of the much YOUNGER audience surrounding us, complete with cellphones, loud voices, etc.

This also didn't really bother me, it's to be expected of the UCLA area.  So let's dive into it.  I went in with low expectations, because I'm an ardent fan of Evil Dead 2.  I've always been of the opinion that while I can respect Evil Dead (the original) for what it started off, that the sequel was a perfect blend of pulse pounding rhythm, creative story telling, horrific gore, and hilarious slapstick camp.  However, I knew that this was a remake of the first film so I accepted the fact that it couldn't really be what I was hoping for and leaned back in my chair to see how it would unfold.

The first big mistake the film made was by attempting to make an emotional back story about the two leads for the audience to care about them.  Mia and David (the brother and sister) had a crazy mom, David left Mia to take care of her while he went off to Chicago, she got hooked on Heroin from the stress of it all, she's trying to quit via isolation and cold turkey deprivation, everyone has mixed feelings because of their past BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH, enough.  This is not creative storytelling in the slightest, it's just formulaic plot building coupled with bad writing.

Furthermore, the audience is at this movie for one thing and one thing only, to see 4 out of 5 teenagers (or 20 somethings in this case) accidentally unleash an evil upon themselves and get picked off one by one in increasingly creative ways.  So why are we wasting time with this over used back story?  You know how long it took until Ash's sister gets taken by a tree in the original?  Not as long as it took them to discover the "Book" in the remake.

While I should be applauding the effort to create anything outside what has become the norm of modern horror conventions this is the one place where I say: No.  Stick to the original.  Add poorly written dialogue, 4 rather wooden terrible actors, and the only thing left is the production value and the gore, which THANKFULLY, lived up to my expectations.

Jane Levy, ironically, was the only actor that I cared about seeing on screen, because she was capable of being subtle among a bunch of future soap opera stars and day time TV movie actors, when she's not being a crazy possessed demon creature or portraying the horrifying nature of quitting heroin cold.  The rest of the film manages to pander in semi-subtle ways to fans of the original while amping the pace up to 200mph for the new which brings us to the carnage at last.  The kind of carnage that should have started about 10 minutes into the film instead of the junior high "Where were you when we needed you?" dialogue that had me stifling laughter.

I like Diablo Cody, but she, like anyone else, is not infallible.  The same way that box office numbers only tell you just how easy it is to trick people into buying a movie ticket, or conversely, just how many people want to see some creative slaughtering in a safe environment.  So, okay, I liked the editing, I liked the gore, and there were a few times I felt genuinely anxious.  Why am I blasting this movie as hard as I am?

Ultimately, Evil Dead has taught us that remakes/re-imaginings/sequels/prequels will continue to flow from Hollywood rather than new and creative ideas from new and creative people like the bloody vomit in the above picture, right into our faces.  Some of my friends will tell me: Why can't you just shut that off and have some fun with the movie?  I need to remind you, I did have a little fun, I was laughing quite a bit through the film, but that doesn't make it good and that doesn't make the implications of it's success in the box office any brighter for the future of the Horror Genre.  Quite the opposite, it's spelling out a death toll to creative story writing and reminding us that all you need is good make up, editing, and a lot of fake blood.

"Aren't you contradicting yourself?"  A little bit, but life is built on contradiction.  Evil Dead is an escape film. The problem is that while I escaped during the viewing, I came back to reality and realized that I could have just watched the original and enjoyed it just as much, if not more.  Taste is subjective and THIS Evil Dead just didn't taste good.