John Dies At The End: 09 of 31 Horror Movies I've Never Seen!

Something that consistently boggles the mind of a friend of mine, who I am going to refer to here as Papap, is the fact that I have never seen the Phantasm.  What is probably going to boggle his mind further is that rather than watching the Phantasm by NOW (with this whole series and what not) that I chose to watch Don Coscarelli's John Dies At The End instead.

Okay, okay, Papap, I'm sorry, I'll get to it before this is all over, I promise.  Here's the thing: My last year in highschool a bunch of buddies of mine were fresh off of an obsession with The Evil Dead Trilogy when a Bubba Ho-tep came out.  On the basis of Bruce Campbell playing Elvis we bought tickets and we ended up absolutely loving the movie.  We walked out of the theater feeling completely fulfilled, satisfied, exhilarated, etc.  So when I first saw a trailer for John I thought, "Awesome, I loved Bubba Hotep!" and then it came out and I read a rather disgusted post by a filmmaker friend, Damon Packard.  He really disliked the film, said that Coscarelli has lost it, and though I've always been one to eschew critical reviews (sue me) it definitely made me think twice and ultimately I missed it in theaters.

So finally I have a chance to see what was so bad about it.  Is it cheesy? Sure.  Is it believable? Hell no.  It's utterly ridiculous.  Completely, maniacally, insanely ridiculous.  That's why it's probably one of the better movies I've seen since I started this little jaunt.  This is a film who's pure intention is worn on it's sleeve.  It doesn't wax philosophy, but it also doesn't distract from life.  It's a satire of great form.  Is it shot as well as some of Coscarelli's previous efforts?  I can't say, I've only seen one, but I thought it was put together quite well considering obvious budgetary constraints.  I applaud it for the mere fact that they used practical creature effects, not to mention for the first time, at least for me, I got to see a performance from Doug Jones out of make up!

So what's the damn story about?  It's about a strange drug, Soy Sauce, that is most definitely some insane living bacterial creature that allows human beings access to alternate dimensions as well as see manifestations from the afterlife.  It's never quite clear if these manifestations are hallucinations or reality, but they certainly seem real enough to the protagonist and vicariously to the viewer.  Best friends David and John get pulled into some struggle in which a crazy ultimate being from another dimension is seeking to take over other dimensions of Earth and the only way to stop it is to toss a bomb on it that is packed with a hallucinatory substance that will "Fuck it's shit up."

Do I still have your attention?  I love how the film rationalizes the irrational by accepting the fact that there is no rationality.  It's not trying to shove some new idea down everyone's throat.  It simply is what it is.  I don't generally like to refer to movies as rides, but I definitely understand that some movies are meant to just play off of our more visceral needs and give us an escape from the mundanity of human existence.  What I like about this film is that it does that while still poking fun at those little things that we take so seriously, but which are ultimately banal.  Things like having to help that crazy friend who's blowing something out of proportion, but you help them anyway even though you're annoyed as hell that you have to do it and you know you're going to give them shit for life.  John does this and then throws creepy demonic monsters and spores from another dimension into the mix as that "thing" that your friend is blowing out of proportion.

Sometimes, after a long day you just want a movie to be fun and different.  John Dies At The End is that and maybe a little bit more.  The cast worked off of each other remarkably and you never quite feel like they're just actors playing dress up.  There was a chemistry on screen that is only visible in great films.  The only thing that's keeping me from giving it a 5 skull rating is the fact that I felt like the second half of the film rushed forward without the real threat to rush it forward.  My room mate owns the book it's based on.  I'll have to give it a read.

4 out of 5 Skulls.

The Amityville Horror (1979): 08 of 31 Horror Movies I've Never Seen

There are plenty of films about Haunted Houses and each one always seems to draw a little bit from a film before it.  Call it part of our obsession with the inexplicable, or our desire to find proof of some sort of afterlife, even if it may be a hellish purgatory for the spirits.  It's a subject that I haven't seen too many films about and if I'm being honest, it's because I don't believe in ghosts.  It's really that simple.  Still, these movies are fun, in that they give the filmmaker free reign with ways to make a house attack it's inhabitants.  The Amityville Horror takes it's time, but certainly delivers plenty of creepy motives and motifs that helped cement the subject matter within the horror genre.

Based on a "true" story, the film and house itself have drawn the curiosity of casual interest to devotee's of paranormal research and phenomena.  Most people who have even the slightest interest in the story know that it's about George and Kathy Lutz who bought a house at 112 Ocean, 14 months after Ronald DeFeo, Jr killed 6 members of his family within it's confines.  The story goes that within a few days of moving in the family began to experience strange phenomena and claimed that a spirit within the house was terrorizing them.  By the 23rd day they fled the house.

The Lutz family was the subject of many television interviews, books, and critique.  They stand by their belief that it was supernatural, but as the scientific method says, if you can't disprove it, that does not mean it's impossible, merely improbable.  Personally, my money is on stress, hysteria, and good old fashioned denial, but we're not here to discuss fact and fiction, we're here to talk about a film.

Before I get TOO negative (yeah, it's coming) I'd like to say that Margot Kidder and James Brolin (Josh Brolin's father) both deliver convincing performances as Kathy and George Lutz.  You really get the sense that they're being shaken to pieces by the film, although there is one Brolin moment that's almost reminiscent to the infamous "You're tearing me apart Lisa!" line from the awful pile of cinematic shit that is known as The Room, which nearly made me burst out loud with laughter.  Rod Steiger delivers a wonderfully emotional performance as Father Delaney.  It's reported that he was so unnerved and disgusted by a scene in which he had to be surrounded and slightly covered by flies that he found himself unable to eat for some time after and lost 30 pounds.

This film makes use of a gamete of gags to instill fear and suspense in the viewer, via the score, sound design, and visual gags.  A room full of flies, blood leaking out of a wall, explosive lightning, etc.  You name it, they do it, only skipping out on walking corpses.  While some of these gags are great, for the most part it played a little tame for me.  The movie clocks in at about 118 minutes including ending credits and unfortunately that hurts it.  It was cut together more like a diary of the bizarre events that took place rather than building suspense.  Each day where something of import takes place is preceded by a super title: Day <insert number here>.  This merely breaks the story apart when it starts to get juicy.  The climax delivers as one would expect, but is unnecessarily drawn out for no real reason that I could see except to say, "Hey look, blood! Woah why does she look so old! Hey wait, we can't leave the dog behind!"  Pardon the deliberate ambiguity, but I don't want to spoil it for anyone who may decide to watch it anyway following this review.

It's not that the film is bad, it's just not really good either.  It falls in that "meh" category that requires someone to be legitimately interested in, or full blown obsessed with the paranormal.  Me, I prefer the idea's of humans wielding supernatural power upon each other rather than the idea that their spirits would have any cause to linger in the physical plane.  Perhaps I need to see a few more to really make up my mind, but so far The Legend of Hell House is the only film of this sub-genre that I could really enjoy watching again.

2 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.

Night of the Creeps: 06 of 31 Horror Movies I Have Never Seen!

There's a fine line between good and bad, rich and bland, light and dark, etc.  Horror movies are the same.  Some simply try to hard, miss the mark, and show us something unbelievable that it hardly passes as farce.  Other's still go all the way cheesy and just become dull as the plot continues.  It's walking that fine line between silly and serious that makes for good old fashioned camp.  Fred Dekker's Night of the Creeps, walks that line quite well.

The film opens with the silliest homage to Alien that I have ever seen with these bizarre looking chubby Alien's chasing each other down a hallway to a dump hatch where a mysterious tube is released into space.  Cut to the 1950s, said object hits the Earth at the same time as some psychopath is chopping the hell out of a girl in a convertible.  Cut FURTHER to the present day, 1986, and we meet our lovable 80s protagonists who will drive the rest of the story.  Think Shivers/Night of the Living Dead, and to make it even better, all of the characters are named after famous Horror movie directors.

What I liked about this movie is that it is knowingly poking fun at the entire genre, while simultaneously trying to creep out the audience (pun intended) as much as possible.  After seeing the creepy crawlies on screen, you can see where James Gunn pulled some inspiration for Slither.  Equally, it should be said that Creeps takes influence from David Cronenberg's Shivers, and even names the female lead of the story Cynthia Cronenberg.  The point of course is that the tongue in cheek approach works quite nicely here.  You get the feeling that these are typical 80s college kids caught up in a bizarre situation when really all they want to worry about is who's getting with who and the upcoming Formal Dance.

Dekker followed this with Monster Squad in the 1987, further blending humor and camp with action horror goodness.  That is not to say that Creeps doesn't suffer from some of the typical issues in 80s horror films.  Namely, there are moments where characters are inexplicably removed from a scene, leaving us to wonder what became of them only to come back to them in a half hazard manner as if nothing ever happened in the first place.  It's something that always makes me think that they were in editing bay after a long day of everything going wrong and cutting it together when they looked at each other, shrugged, and said "Fuck it, no one will notice."

However, the film pokes fun at this fact when Jason Lively's character Chris is being grilled by Tom Atkin's Det. Ray Cameron, he responds with "Aside from trying to come clean about a murder you committed, what is the point of this story?"  The line got a chuckle out of me as I was starting to wonder the exact same thing.  Also, anyone who doesn't find it absolutely hilarious when a dude gets a slug spit into his mouth by a zombie dog puppet may not have the sense of humor required for these kind of movies.  In fact, they probably shouldn't be watching horror movies at all, let alone anything made for mainstream 80s Cinemas.

All in all, Night of the Creeps is a fun movie with a couple of decently creepy gags, some great gore effects, smart ass one liners, and a friggin flame thrower, so it wasn't half bad in my book.  It was certainly a welcome relief to yesterday's viewing of Nightmare City, which was so bad I still can't get over it.

4 out of 5 skulls.

Nightmare City: 05 of 31 Horror Movies I've Never Seen!

I think it's safe to say that most people have had a moment where they watch a movie by a director that they appreciate figuring that at the bare minimum, EVEN if the film is bad, that it will have some quality that shines through that makes it feel remotely watchable.  Then that hope is promptly dashed to pieces and the film watching experiences ends up feeling like a boring waste of time that can never be gotten back.  It's these experiences that allow us to develop a certain taste in the hopes that we can avoid such an experience in the future, but we always end up trying to give those awful movies a chance.  Where am I going with this?  Umberto Lenzi's Nightmare City, a movie so bad that it makes a 1hr 32min run time feel like a god damned eternity.

Where do I begin?  It's not so much that film is poorly shot, so much that the acting is atrocious, the story is laughable at best, and the hallmark gore that defined Lenzi's early career in the horror exploitation genre is subdued, except for maybe two or three scenes, for some bizarre reason, taking all of what would otherwise be called fun completely out and throwing it into a bottomless ravine.  What can I say?  This movie is total shit.

Hugo Stiglitz delivers one of the most wooden performances of any actor's career, as Dean Miller, a television news anchor who happens to witness a plane full of nuclear contaminated zombie like things that can run, communicate (non verbally of course), use weapons ranging from knives to sub-machine guns, and have an insatiable lust for blood.  You can't sympathize with him at all as he blunders his way through the situation set up in the film, whose ending is one of the biggest let down's of all time.  If I didn't have any integrity, I would just spoil the whole thing to save the rest of you some time, but who knows, maybe you want to watch the film anyway.

Okay, three paragraphs of utter venom, I suppose I should try and make some lemonade out of this situation.  I can at least say that it's pretty well shot, using stylish camera movement which was a staple of the mid 70s to early 80s Italian horror genre.  It's got a pretty funky soundtrack, also a staple of that era, but the choreography of certain shots is just utterly ridiculous.  There's one scene in particular which ALMOST was good had I not noticed the fact that each stab, mauling, and bludgeoning performed by the "zombies" was done after a solid beat where the stunt actor receiving the blow stops moving, as if to just LET the "zombie" hit them.

Maybe I could have enjoyed this film more with a few beers and a few friends.  It's perfect fodder for a Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode.  If you're just plain curious, or you want the proof of what I'm talking about, you can find Nightmare City on Netflix, though you can only watch the Italian Dubbing.

1 skull out of 5.

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.