Nevermore Film Festival Recap (Day Three)

 The final day of Nevermore for the Cap'n was a bit of a light one, by comparison to Saturday, but continued the trend of quality over quantity. While I only saw one feature (admittedly one I'd seen before) and one collection of shorts, the experience was consistently entertaining and served as a nice way to close out the fifteenth anniversary of the festival. As has been the case all weekend, the main draw, other than the films themselves, was the jubilant festival atmosphere. There really is something to be said for being at an event where people really want to be there, and not just showing up at the multiplex because it's something to do. Waiting in between screenings was an opportunity to soak in the decorations, take a look at posters new and old, and to trade notes with strangers about something you wanted to see but couldn't fit in.

 And there were more than a few - 2014 may have been the hardest to schedule in the three years I've been going to Nevermore. To give you some idea, here are the movies I wanted to see at the festival but didn't: Here Comes the Devil, Almost Human, Haunt, and Malignant. I'd already seen Last Days on Mars, Big Bad Wolves and The Human Race, so I was trying to catch movies I a) wanted to see with an audience (Grand Piano) or b) wouldn't be able to see on VOD or rental any time soon (The Shower). Since at least two of the movies I didn't see at Nevermore are on VOD (maybe more - I think The Visitant might be on there, too), I'll try to watch them in the next week or so and do a "supplementary Nevermore coverage" set of reviews, as were it not for the festival I wouldn't have known about them. As it was, I don't think I would have known about some of these movies at all had it not been for Nevermore, which is the other reason it's so much fun. But let's get to talking about the movies, and on the other side I'll share a few photos I remembered to snap over the weekend.

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 Grand Piano is a movie that I'm honestly surprised I hadn't heard about before Nevermore. It's a Hitchcockian thriller that wears its influences proudly on its sleeve, and is also being favorably likened to Brian DePalma, in part because it's easier (and maybe safer) to invoke DePalma than to draw comparisons to The Master of Suspense. That's fair (it sets a very high bar and is almost impossible to live up to when you put it up against Hitchcock), but director Eugenio Mira draws attention to his camera work and trick shots than DePalma ever has, and in many ways Grand Piano is a feature length version of the end of The Man Who Knew Too Much. It's a solid thriller with a very good cast that makes the most out of the three main characters being largely stationary for the duration of the film.

 Tom Selznick (Elijah Wood) is a famed classical pianist, or, at least, he was - Selznick hasn't performed in public in five years. Following a botched performance of his mentor's composition, he withdrew from the public eye, just as his wife, Emma (Kerry Bishé)'s, star is on the rise. She's a famous actress, and uses some pull to get Tom back on stage to perform in Chicago for the first time. On top of that, Selznick will be performing on his mentor, the late Patrick Godureaux's custom Bösendorfer piano, flown in especially for the occasion. Most of the orchestra Tom's performing with is glad to see him, including conductor Reisinger (Don McManus), but someone in the audience is determined that Selznick have a perfect performance. If he doesn't, he's a dead man, and once the ground rules are in place, it's up to the pianist to figure out who is threatening his life, and why, without drawing attention while everybody is watching him.

 You can look at the poster and see that Elijah Wood isn't the only marquee name to draw in audiences: John Cusack is listed right afterwards, so it shouldn't be hard to figure out who the voice of the (mostly) unseen assailant is. At first I thought it might be a bad thing to know Cusack was in the film, since when you don't see him it's easy to work out his role in the film, but a friend of mine pointed out to me that it would be much more distracting not to know he was in the film and to suddenly hear his voice. Unlike Kiefer Sutherland in Phone Booth, it's impossible not to recognize Cusack's voice immediately, and it would pull you right out of the story at a critical point. As it is, using his name for marquee value when he's more of a audible presence than a physical one in the film is a necessary evil, but I do wonder why Grand Piano is still mostly an unknown film.

 The selling point of the film, beyond the always reliable Wood (people still content to think of him as Frodo tend to forget that he has quite a range beyond that) and a supporting cast you've seen in many other films, even if you don't recognize the names (Bishé was in Argo, for example) is Mira's direction. The camera is constantly moving, redirecting your focus and masking or revealing critical details at exactly the right moment. There's a split screen that doesn't initially look like one until one half of the screen zooms in on Selznick while the other side remains stationary, and seemingly impossible shots that swirl around the piano as Wood (or someone - Mira masks it very well) plays a series of very complicated pieces. Hitchock is famous for his use of "sound bridges," but Mira makes a great "visual bridge" by cutting to somepne playing a cello at the moment an act of violence occurs. I was impressed by the clever use of camerawork, but never distracted by it (as I sometimes am when watching DePalma).

 My fear is that the fact that Grand Piano is still something no one seems to know about will result in it being released on home video and being treated like a "DTV dump" to sit on shelves with any number of other movies with recognizable names that just aren't very good. Like, oh for example, The Frozen Ground, another movie with Cusack and Nicolas Cage you probably didn't know existed. It's not very good, and certainly nowhere near as interesting visually or structurally as Grand Piano. I don't feel like it would be fair for such a solid, consistently entertaining thriller to be thought of as "just another paycheck" for a few actors whose best days are behind them, which is often what the "DTV dump" implies. Wood was similarly great in the recent remake of Maniac, another movie that went largely unnoticed outside of hardcore horror fans when it drifted through a limited release last year. I'd hate to think that Grand Piano might not get a fair shot with audiences when I think many of them would enjoy it, and it's much better than a lot of so-called "thrillers" that do get wide release. But I'm glad I had the chance to see it again at Nevermore, and it benefits from multiple viewings, as the second time around you can see how much of the main narrative is set up in the first twenty minutes. Oh, and Alex Winter (Bill S. Preston, esquire) takes a break from his Excellent Adventures and Bogus Journeys to play a supporting role in the film, if that helps sway you.

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 After Grand Piano, we walked upstairs from Fletcher Hall to Cinema Two for They're Coming to Get You, Barbra!, the collection of U.S. shorts, which tends to be a highlight of every Nevermore. Generally speaking, it's difficult to see these short films outside of a festival atmosphere, even in a world where you can find nearly every short ever made online somewhere. Of the entries this year, I'd only seen one, and that was because it was an entry made for the forthcoming The ABCs of Death 2, where "M" is the letter up for voting this year.

 There was a bit of a wait outside of Cinema Two as a Q&A from the previous showing was running over, so after talking to a few other attendees and Jim, Nevermore's programmer, I caught up with some friends and had a brief chat with the cast and crew of The Shower who came all the way across the country with the film (seriously, if you can see it, do so. I'm looking forward to a release on DVD or Blu-Ray so I can show it to everybody I know, but in the meantime, keep an eye out to see if it's playing at a festival near you). Once Cinema Two finally opened up, it was time for my last screening of Nevermore, and it turned out to be one of the hardest ballots to choose a winner from.

 Like yesterday's shorts collection, I'll provide a brief synopsis and try to link to the trailer, site, or an IMDB page, because other than one entry, I couldn't find any of the full versions online.

 The Root of the Problem - starting things off on a high note is the story of a woman visiting the dentist in the 1950s(ish), only to discover her fears of dental work may not be unfounded. Are her dentist and his assistant really monsters, or is it just the gas causing her to see something horrible behind their pearly whites?

 Call Me Crazy - A mental institution may not seem like the best place to find love, but when a vampire who murdered her boyfriend meets a cannibal who ate his girlfriend, sparks fly. It starts a little awkwardly but quickly picks up steam and is both funny and rather gory in a way not dissimilar to yesterday's Mr. Bear.

 Out of One's Misery - A man mourns the loss of his family, only to be visited by a stranger that may or may not be real. The premise is a solid one, and it manages to be fitfully creepy, but there's a bit too much repetition of action in the story for me to really take to it.

Songs in the Key of Death - In the world where zombies roam the Earth, it's not always easy to make a living, but FJ Ackerman found a gold mine as a piano tuner with undead accompaniment. Presented as a news piece, ala 60 Minutes, Songs in the Key of Death is at times riotously funny and then flips to a truly gonzo finale that takes the insanity of the premise to a whole new level.

Rope-a-Dope - While not horror in the slightest sense of the word, Eric Jacobus' Rope-A-Dope is an amusing and action-packed variation on Groundhog Day where the Dope (Jacobus) runs afoul of a Martial Arts Mafia and wakes up on the same morning every time they knock him out. He has to learn to fight back, and the use of slapstick and action choreography and editing makes for a very impressive and funny short film.

Christmas Carvings - A locally made film starring one of the co-stars of Out of One's Misery, this short has a Tales from the Crypt-style twist but suffers a bit from pacing issues. A husband and wife celebrate the holidays in a unique fashion, but are they really alone?

Killer Kart - FSU Film School student James Feeney  makes what I ended up selecting as my favorite of a really strong set of contenders with this story of the closing crew at a grocery store trying to survive the shopping cart that "snapped." It combines the best elements of a slasher film with genuinely likable characters, some impressive gore, and one of the most improbable monsters you're likely to see this side of The Gingerdead Man. On top of that, it's really well made an a fun ride from beginning to end.

M is for Mime - I quite enjoyed this brief story of a disrespected mime who has his revenge on a snarky hipster, but realized quickly why The ABCs of Death keeps the credits for each short at the very end of the film - the credits are almost as long as the short itself, which left much of the audience feeling antsy. Don't take that as a slight against "M" is for Mime, because you'll enjoy the short itself, but it somewhat drained the momentum immediately following the end of the action.

Welcome to Dignity Pastures -  Speaking of really short shorts, I'm not sure what to make of this. Dignity Pastures is about a funeral home that caters to families of the undead, which is something we find out after the recently deceased comes back to life in the middle of a service. The funeral director is very quickly called to switch another service to a cremation, and before you know it, Welcome to Dignity Pastures is over. I suppose there's some merit to "get in, make your point, get out" but it felt like a better premise than the execution made it out to be.

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 Finally, here are some pictures I remembered to take (in my infinite wisdom) on Saturday night:

 

One of the many banners.

 Also known as "three I didn't see."

Forgive the glare: I tried hard to avoid it but it just wasn't happening.

 Well, gang, that about wraps it up for the 2014 Nevermore Film Festival coverage. I had a great time, made some excellent new discoveries, and am looking forward to seeing what's in store for 2015!

Nevermore Film Festival Recap (Day Two)

 Saturday is always the grinder at Nevermore, because I have the entire day and try to take advantage of seeing as many movies as I can. After breakfast at a greasy spoon, we were on out way to a healthy mixture of features, foreign short films, and the Retro feature of the Festival: William Castle's The Tingler Starring Vincent Price (yep, still pretty sure that's the title, so no need to check up on that). There wasn't anything that quite matched the surprise and entertainment that was The Shower (well, maybe The Tingler, but that's a movie I'd already seen), but overall Saturday turned out to be a pretty solid lineup.

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 We started with The Returned (which, it turns out, is not the same as the show Les Revenants), which is kind of a contagion / sort-of zombie movie that also isn't. It uses the idea of an outbreak that turns people into flesh eaters and jumps forward twenty years to a world that's learned to cope with the virus. Anyone who is bit (it's only transferred by blood) becomes one of them, but if a retroviral drug is administered immediately, there's a chance they can survive and become what's referred to as "The Returned." They have to continue injecting themselves every day to prevent the virus from breaking down their bodies, but the contagion is largely under control - until the supply of the drug starts running low.

 At the center of the story, which is less about the disease and more about how the world responds to its continued presence are Kate (Emily Hampshire), a doctor who works with "Returned" and prepares them for life outside of the hospital's rehabilitation center, and her boyfriend Alex (Kris Holden-Reid), a guitar instructor who met Kate when he was infected. As Kate struggles to convince private firms to invest money into developing a synthetic form of the drug (the natural can only be made from untreated victims), she works to buy more medicine for Alex, illegally if necessary. After a hospital break-in from an anti-Returned group ends violently, the clinician who was smuggling medicine to Kate, Eve (Melina Matthews) warns her that they also stole information about where registered Returned live, and that she may be in danger. Alex's friend Jacob (Shawn Doyle) and his wife Amber (Claudia Bassols) offer them a place to hide out, but the world seems to be falling apart as tensions increase between pro and anti-Returned groups...

 I was rather impressed by how writer Hatem Khraiche and director Manuel Carballo slowly provide exposition in The Returned. Rather than devoting time to an exposition dump early on, we're eased into the world where the presence of Returned is already accepted (by some, anyway) and learn about its origins and effects through conversation. Alex is nervous about telling Jacob he's Returned, and we don't know what that means or the ramifications of it until later, during one of Kate's presentations, where it's treated like any other life-long disease. There's no long discussion about where it came from or how the world handled it at first, just a handful of flashbacks involving one of the main characters. The Returned deals with this world as it is and is comfortable enough in the strength of the story to let the audience put the pieces together.

 As would turn out to be the trend for the day, The Returned is less of a horror film than the premise might imply and more allegorical, similar in a sense to David Cronenberg's remake of The Fly. It has a similar sense of hope and desperation, but on a broader scale - while there are four main characters, the lives touched by families with Returned is explored repeatedly and in differing approaches. It's an intimate story with a broader scope, one that maybe stumbles a bit near the end (it's really the only way the movie could end, but you can probably guess what's going to happen halfway in) but is quite well directed and acted. Think of it as a sort of alternate universe response to 28 Days Later, story-wise, and it has some nice ideas to wrestle with. A great way to start the day off.

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 After The Returned, we settled down in Cinema Two for the long form and short form foreign shorts, Across the Styx and Revolution of the Foreign Invaders (respectively), which I'll try to cover in short bursts, with links to the films (or their trailers) when possible.

 Across the Styx:

 Agophobia - I'm not going to lie - I watched this film, was impressed by the visuals, but didn't know what the hell I'd seen when it was over. I think the best way I can describe it is if you imagine William Gibson going on a walkabout with some serious hallucinogens. If it helps, the synopsis is on the official site. It was interesting to watch, but I freely admit that I didn't follow most of it.

 The Other Side - A student working on his thesis goes to the home of a writer and her lover, convinced they found a portal to another world. It's a slow build and a bit of a rushed final scene, but has an interesting premise. There are so many results for this title that I couldn't find the specific one based on Nevermore's site, but if I locate it I will update this entry.

 The Crimes of All Hallow's Day - After an introduction from filmmaker Antonio Isasi-Isasmendi, we're presented a story of true crime from Ibiza in the 1970s about a Danish couple who run across the wrong "nice old couple" while out for a drive. It has a very late-sixties, early-seventies vibe to the lighting and cinematography, and a wicked sense of humor.

 AM/FM - A student has a chance encounter with a homeless man who makes a compelling case for alien invaders in this short from Brazil. Some of the cutaways to what the aliens look like are rather amusing and reminiscent of Ed Wood films, but it takes a surprisingly dark turn at the end. After The Crime of All Hallow's Day, my second favorite of the long form shorts.

 Revolution of the Foreign Invaders:

 Euthanas, Inc.- A cheap family wants to euthanize grandma, so they take drop her off with a company who specializes in unique deaths. If you want to die like in your favorite movie, Euthanas, Inc. can make it happen. But Grandma has other plans...

 Don't Look Here - When her fathers dies, a young woman returns home to comfort her mother and sister, but it appears that his connection with the younger daughter is stronger than anyone may have expected. It's a brief, Guillermo del Toro-esque take on communicating with the dead, that's effective but perhaps too quick to conclude. (Searching for the title has been extremely difficult, both in English and in Spanish. I will update accordingly if I locate it).

 Hibernation - An astronaut prepares for deep sleep as he heads out for interstellar exploration, but he's more interested in the girl whose place he's taking. More straight-ahead science fiction than anything resembling horror, but it has some nice cinematography and a distinctly retro-vibe.

 Mr. Bear - Steve and his wife are running late to their children's Christmas dinner, and when the car breaks down next to a mechanic, he's mistaken by the men inside for a "cleaner" of, unusual circumstances. Quite clever and surprisingly gory with some sadistic humor thrown in for good measure.

REM - To be honest, I wasn't a huge fan of this short. It wasn't that it was very reminiscent of Inception (which it is), but that it essentially exists to tease either a) more short films or b) a feature length continuation of the story, neither of which I'm particularly interested in.

 Nexo - A man's new phone has a strange camera: instead of showing what's in front of him, it displays the yard of his friends, where the man appears to be, even though he's inside his house alongside his girlfriend. There's some genuine suspense, but it's often hampered by not seeing the image on the phone and an abrupt conclusion. (I was having trouble finding this short as well in any form online).

 Le Revenant - My favorite of the foreign shorts involves a young man who is convinced he can cheat death, so he tests his theory with hilarious results. Often cartoonish with a healthy dose of black comedy, Le Revenant ramps up the insanity as the now undead man decides he's going to stop Death from doing his job, often with disastrous consequences.

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 The main event for Saturday night was Nevermore's "Retro" screening of The Tingler (shortened title for the sake of brevity), presented by Bruce Goldstein of Rialto Pictures. Goldstein mentioned in his introduction that despite his reputation and recognition for film programming, he's probably best known around the world for The Tingler due to his interest in screening it (and other William Castle films) with the original "gimmick," Percepto. The Tingler also happens to be John Waters' favorite movie, and with good reason. While House on Haunted Hill might be better known, The Tingler exemplifies "camp" cinema before anyone had a firm grasp on what "camp" was, not to mention the distinction of having an onscreen LSD experience in 1959, nearly a decade before it caught on with the counter-culture.

 If you're a fan of very questionable "science" and even more questionable scientific techniques of experimentation, or of characters who exist to out-chew the scenery of their co-stars, or of William Castle / Vincent Price and you haven't seen The Tingler, you're really missing out. Price is gnawing all over the scenery like an overgrown rat as Dr. Warren Chapin, a prison mortician who also researches fear in his home laboratory with his assistant, David Morris (Darryl Hickman). David is dating Lucy Stevens (Pamela Lincoln), the younger sister of Chapin's wife, Isabelle (Patricia Cutts). Warren and Isabelle have a "hate / hate" relationship; she is constantly (and openly) carousing around town with other men, and at one point he tricks her into thinking he's going to kill her for the sake of an experiment. Their dialogue is also dripping with innuendo, like this bon mot from Warren:

 "How is it that the back door slams whenever the husband comes in the front door?"

 I'll let you mull that one over. The title creature comes in after Warren meets Ollie Higgins (Phillip Coolidge), the husband of deaf / mute theater owner Martha (Judith Evelyn). Warren is explaining his theory that an organism lives inside of us and materializes during periods of extreme fear, which gives it enough strength to shatter vertebrae. Ollie suggests calling it "the Tingler," and when Warren mentions it to David, he agrees that "we can't give a Latin name until we've discovered it, so the Tingler works." David also traps a cat, leaves a dog outside in a car, and makes a strange joke about hoping that Lucy can't run fast. Screenwriter and Castle regular Robb White, intentionally or otherwise, packs the film with lines that could imply something far less innocent. Although, considering that Chapin is open to the idea of experimenting with Martha because she can't scream (the only way to stop the Tingler) in order to manifest the creature should give you some idea of how morally questionable every character is in The Tingler. When (SPOILER) Isabelle tries to murder Warren with the Tingler, it hardly seems unreasonable after what he's done in the name of "science."

 The great fun of watching a movie like The Tingler is seeing it with an audience, in particular because Percepto! is designed for theatres. While we didn't get the exact Percepto! experience, it was nevertheless a fun time, and they found a way to throw in another gimmick during Chapin's LSD experiment, where the black and white film turns color for a short period of time in what can only be referred to as "proto-psychedelic." When Chapin tricks Martha later and "doses" her, there's another, stranger hallucinatory sequence that improbably ties into the story's "twist," one that's jettisoned almost immediately so that the Tingler can get loose in the theatre below Ollie's apartment.

 Oh yes, I haven't mentioned what the Tingler looks like, have I? Well, imagine a large rubber cenitpede being pulled along by string and you'll have a pretty good idea. It's gross, but not exactly scary, and when it tries to choke Warren but looks suspiciously like it's humping his chest, it's hard to be frightened. Then again, that's probably not the point. William Castle specialized in "interactive" movie experiences, and the audience in Fletcher Hall was certainly having a grand time shrieking and laughing along with The Tingler, fifty five years after its original release. Call it schlock if you like, but Castle knew what he was doing with his gimmickry.

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 It's hard to imagine topping The Tingler, but at it was barely nine o'clock when we left Fletcher Hall to move to Cinema One, there was no reason not to see one of the two movies closing out Saturday at Nevermore. The options were Battle of the Undead, an Israeli film about zombies, or The Last Days (Los últimos días), a Spanish film set just before and slightly after a sudden disease causes all of humanity to be incapable of being outdoors. While I enjoy a zombie movie as much as any red blooded gore hound, if you're offering me post-apocalyptic cinema, I'm going to take it. (Long time Blogorium readers will attest that if there are two subgenres the Cap'n is a total sucker for, it's anthologies and post-apocalyptic cinema).

 Marc Delgado (Quim Gutiérrez) is a software programmer in Barcelona who lives with his girlfriend Julia (Marta Etura), a puppeteer. He's hesitant about having children and there's some visible strain in their relationship, but something strange has been happening around them. People are shutting themselves in, finding they are incapable of going outside. When Enrique (José Coronado), a corporate restructuring expert (nicknamed "The Terminator") fires an employee who had been living in the office for two weeks, he goes into shock as soon as he leaves the building and dies in front of everyone. Before long, this unexplained affliction is widespread, and Marc finds himself trapped in his office building while Julia is at home. After three months, he'll do anything to get back to her, and when they break through the parking garage to the subway, he sees his opportunity. The only problem is that someone already took the only GPS - Enrique. In order to find Julia, he's going to have to make a deal with a man he barely trusts, but what other option is there?

 There was a technical error at the beginning of the film that, for reasons unknown, prevented us from seeing subtitles on every other line of dialogue, so we'd catch half (or less) of a conversation in the first ten minutes, and every time someone would head outside to tell the projection staff, the subtitles would come back on, only to immediately drop out. Eventually they stopped the film and restarted it (and everything worked that time), but it's a testament to how well The Last Days is made that something that disruptive didn't impact the overall film experience.

 Writer / Directors David and Àlex Pastor crafted a story about the apocalypse that isn't directly about how the apocalypse happened. Scattered throughout the film are flashbacks that fill in details about Marc and Julia's life, including one revelation that increases his need to find her, but like The Returned, there's no grand attempt to explain what happens to everybody that keeps them indoors. We see what it feels like to go outside and understand why they're afraid to try, but the explanation remains a mystery. What's more important is how people learn to adapt to this new world, where humanity is crammed together in pockets, unable to contact each other.

 The Last Days is a very well made film that covers a lot of familiar post-apocalyptic tropes in interesting ways and structures the story in such a way that you're always interested to see where it goes next. The surprisingly upbeat ending feels appropriate, particularly when it could have gone in a much darker direction with one or two minor changes. At the heart of the film is the bond between Marc and Enrique, who each have their reasons for venturing out into the unknown, where anyone is capable of anything. While Marc's quest for Julia is the impetus for the narrative, the performances of Gutiérrez and Coronado are the glue that holds The Last Days together, and the film is a fine addition to the post-apocalyptic cinema family. There's even a tiny reference to the Mad Max films during a conversation about whether all of humanity is affected or not. At least, I choose to see it that way - there's a way The Last Days and The Road Warrior could exist in the same world...

 I'm even more worn out today than I was last night, but Sunday awaits, along with the last two Nevermore experiences of 2014. Join the Cap'n tomorrow for Grand Piano and the U.S. short films, They're Coming to Get You, Barbra!

It's almost time for Nevermore!

 Greetings, readers! It's been a little while, hasn't it? After a month straight of recapping 2013 and then a few reviews to follow that, the Cap'n took a little break to recharge the batteries and to focus on my other, regular job (it's nothing exciting and doesn't have anything to do with the Blogorium, which is why I don't mention it much). And then the Snowpocalypses happened and friends had kids and before you know it, I'm looking at two weeks of nothing new. But hopefully you had plenty to read in the meantime, and maybe now we've all had time to let news like Philip Seymour Hoffman's death to settle. It still sucks (it really sucks), but it is what it is.

 I'd like to have some more reviews up for you soon, and I'll try to, but  the past two weeks haven't been much more movie watching. The Cap'n did see The Bling Ring, and while I wrestled with whether I had anything to say about it, I'm landing on the side of "it didn't do much for me." I'm not convinced that Sofia Coppola really had any point to make about celebrity obsessed culture or that the movie accomplished much of anything at all. A gaggle of teenage miscreants break into the homes of people they idolize on superficial levels, steal their things, and attain a level of quasi-celebrity (the girl Emma Watson is based on had her own show on E!) and end up in jail. Well, some of them. And they betray each other because they're just as superficial... and that's the point. There's no insightful commentary or anything that really makes The Bling Ring stand out from the TV movie version that already existed, unless you count the fact that Coppola had access to Paris Hilton's house and also asked some of her friends to appear on camera, sometimes merely for seconds (seriously, how long is Kirsten Dunst on screen?). Maybe I'm missing something, but I sure didn't feel like I was while watching The Bling Ring.

 Grand Piano, on the other hand, is much better, but I don't want to review that yet because I'm going to watch it again this weekend and will be covering it for the annual Nevermore Film Festival roundup. This will be my third year attending the festival of things dark and macabre in Durham, and it looks to be a fun one. Their "retro" feature is William Castle's The Tingler with Vincent Price (actual title, don't bother fact checking me on that one) with Castle's original "Tingler" gimmick. If you don't know what that is, either look it up or show up to The Carolina Theatre in Durham on Saturday night to find out. It's going to be a fun time and will make it the first time I've seen The Tingler as it was meant to be experienced.

 I'll also be checking out Big Bad Wolves, Here Comes the Devil, The Shower, Open Grave (if I can fit in a showing), Last Days, Proxy, and the short film collections. In particular I enjoy the shorts because it takes me the rest of the year to find them online, and even then sometimes you just can't, meaning that Nevermore is the only time you'll see them. Some of my favorite bite-sized horror comes from the collections, and there's always a surprise or two that really works with an audience. On the features front, I'm looking forward to Here Comes the Devil and if I can squeeze it in, I'd really like to see The Returned, but right now it's not looking likely if I want to catch all four shorts compilations. Haunt is the same way, but with work as it is I can't make it there until Friday night, meaning that some of it's going to have to get left out. I'll see if I can get some of the other attendees to file reports on movies the Cap'n couldn't see.

 If you live within driving distance of Durham, you really should go to Nevermore this weekend - the atmosphere is great, they have three screens running all day with all sorts of different varieties of horror, science fiction, thrillers, and just bizarre stuff. Tickets are pretty reasonable, and there's always something to walk around and see in between - vintage posters, movies for sale, memorabilia. The audiences are always great, which is a major plus when seeing something new or being able to watch a classic like Dawn of the Dead in a completely different way. John Dies at the End also played very well with a large audience, something that most people didn't get to see as a result of its limited release. The Tingler is going to be a lot of fun with a crowd, and for five bucks you really should make the trip out to see it. And at this point I sound like I'm shilling for the fest so I'll stop. The point is that I got my passes yesterday and the Cap'n is rather excited. It's the one fest I don't run myself that I try to make it to every year.

 On the other side of that, there are a bunch of things I'd like to try doing beyond just reviewing movies, but I hate to set something up and then not get to it, so for now I'll leave it mysterious. I will say I've given some thought to revisiting movies that I reviewed a long time ago, both that I did and didn't like, if only because their original reviews are a) terrible, b) too short, c) both, or d) don't give a reader any real impression of the movie. I've gone back and read a few from years ago (particularly ones written in the middle of a Fest) that are too cursory and don't really seem fair to ask you to take at face value. So I might try to rectify that. The way I review films has changed a lot in the last ten years, and the Blogorium is more or less an archive of how that style evolved, but it means that old reviews really don't stand up, and there are a lot of movies in there I think deserve better consideration. Stay tuned on that one.

 I'll see you cats and kittens this weekend for Nevermore!

Summer Fest 5 (Day Two): Treevenge, American Juggalo, ThanksKilling 3, and Demolition Man

 Before the Ninja III: The Domination experience, we watched Jason Eisener's Treevenge, but I didn't feel it would be fair to let that be overshadowed by including it with the previous review. Ninja III stands alone. That said, Treevenge is no slouch. Blogorium regulars will no doubt recognize that Eisener tends to pop up here now and then, both for his film Hobo with a Shotgun and for his short films and entries into anthologies like The ABCs of Death and V/H/S 2. I like this man's short films. I like them a lot.

 Treevenge is the kind of subject that would make Blogorium Holiday Hijacker Douglas Fir squeal about - it's the story of Christmas as told from the perspective of the trees, from cutting down the forest to living room fixture. As blasphemous as this is going to sound (and no doubt by design of the director), the short is designed to feel like a combination of "slave narrative" and "Holocaust survival" story. No, really. It's horrifying, and made even more so by the fact that the trees speak to each other in their own language (it sounds a little bit like Ewoks) and are subtitled so we know what they're saying.

 So after a horrifying set up of families being torn apart and herded in the back of trucks to unscrupulous tree dealers (the ones that are too scrawny go to the "wreath" pile), we get to the degrading "decorating" in the home, and um... how would one even put this? Inter-species man-on-tree sex? Maybe? Yeah, Eisener goes there, or at least shows us the lubed-up stump. But don't worry, because the title is certainly no misnomer. And what glorious Treevenge it is! I'll put this up on the Blogorium in December, because it's definitely going to benefit more than it would in the middle of July. Still, a quality Summer Fest entry.

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 After Ninja III: The Domination, when most of the audience went outside for the customary "too long" smoke break, I gave the folks inside a real dose of the scary by putting on American Juggalo. If you haven't heard of this already, American Juggalo is a documentary filmed at The Gathering of the Juggalos which consists of nothing but interviews with fans of The Insane Clown Posse. While the title is appropriate, I feel you could also call the short documentary "Faces of Meth" and that would also be totally fitting.

 Behold the naked pregnant Juggalo posing for pictures while her boyfriend talks about how being a Juggalo is great. Or the girl that's so high she can't get out of her car. Or maybe the guy throwing M-80s into the middle of a field and manages even to scare himself. Or the guy who has his friend spray paint his face. As these Juggalos desperately try to explain to you that this is an inviting, friendly atmosphere of true fans looking to share in an experience while also doing whip-its. Sometimes they forget where they are in mid-sentence. One guy tries to convince you that he met a brain surgeon who was a Juggalo. Many of them gleefully explain how they quit their job because they couldn't get the weekend of the Gathering off. I wonder how Arby's got by.

 While it's true that there may be no more reliable punching bag than a Juggalo these days, none of the many subjects of this documentary even come close to making the case that they're misrepresented. The girl who insists she's not high, she's just "like this all the time" or the truly terrified looks on the children who were dragged along by their parents tell you that yes, this is a frightening place to be. Unless you like to have Faygo sprayed on you from people riding in the back of a bus with the top cut off, or maybe if you just like to get REALLY high and listen to ear-splitting "music" for the weekend. Apparently I traumatized the mother of two young children by showing her American Juggalo that night, but the upside is that we now have two less social disasters to worry about.

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 So what on earth could I follow American Juggalo with? Well, how about an aborted attempt to watch the sequel to ThanksKilling? You guys remember ThanksKilling right? The "killer turkey" movie so amazing that I watched it twice in one day during Summer Fest III? It was crude, short, and really violent, with a warped sense of humor and everybody loved it. The premise of ThanksKilling 3 seemed like it would be a worthy sequel: ThanksKilling 2: In Space (the sequel promised at the end of the first film) was so terrible that nearly every copy in existence was destroyed. Turkey sets out to find the last surviving DVD of the film and take his revenge!

 I don't know if I ever mentioned this during the Summer Fest recaps, but at the end of ThanksKilling, when the "In Space" sequel was teased, I remarked that I would "happily donate some money to make that happen," which is apparently how ThanksKilling 3 came to be (via Kickstarter). I'm glad I didn't make good on that promise, because while the idea of bypassing your own sequel is a clever idea, the execution is terrible. ThanksKilling 3 is just terrible.

 ThanksKilling worked largely because of Turkey, the foul mouthed killer, but also because of the charming ineptitude of most of the cast and the absurdity of the story. For example, why the kids would ever believe that Turkey was the girl's father just because he's wearing the dead dad's face is hilarious. Even Turkey can't believe how stupid they are. It's a low-fi horror flick with an amusing hook, violence, and a little gratudity. The fake opening of ThanksKilling 3, which shows some of ThanksKilling 2: In Space, seems promising: for a moment it looks like a really dumb knock-off of the game Starfox, with Turkey flying around in space with a talking pumpkin pie as his wingman. But things quickly fall apart.

 Instead of keeping it simple, ThanksKilling 3 expands the scope in unnecessary ways, removing the best part of the first film (Turkey) from the story for long stretches. Instead, it focuses on overlapping stories of a TV turkey roaster salesman, an intergalactic bounty hunter robot with worm sidekick, and a puppet with amnesia. In fact, there are FAR too many puppets in ThanksKilling 3, to the point that the novelty of Turkey disappears almost as much as he does. Other than a Natural Born Killers-esque "sitcom" set-up, the only character we were remotely interested in is missing from the first thirty minutes of the movie, which was as long as people were willing to sit through.

 So out of courtesy, I did something that I haven't done since Horror Fest III: I turned the movie off. It didn't stop people from deciding it was time to call it a night, but for the few that stuck around, I felt like I had to make amends.

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 How do you make amends for something so disappointing? Well, there's always Demolition Man.

 I can't imagine that anyone reading this blog doesn't already know what Demolition Man is, but if you somehow missed the entirety of the 1990s or just assumed that Sly Stallone topped out at Rocky IV, allow me to suggest you check out a very silly action movie that happens to be twenty years old this year. Sylvester Stallone vs. Wesley Snipes in a Utopian future where nobody is allowed to curse of be violent and where all restaurants are Taco Bell.

 Stallone is super cop John Spartan, and Snipes is maniacal supper-baddie Simon Phoenix. When Spartan's arrest of Phoenix goes horribly wrong and hostages are killed, BOTH of them end up going to the same ultra-futuristic prison, where inmates are cryogenically frozen. Phoenix is awakened in 2032 and finds the peaceful society totally incapable to dealing with his brand of psycho-mischief. With no idea how to stop him, the San Angeles police department thaw out Spartan, and our futuristic smack-down begins. Also Denis Leary gets to reuse most of his MTV bumper promo rants again while playing the leader of an underground resistance to the "Utopia" above.

 Demolition Man is a goofy movie, to be sure, but one with its fair share of fun action sequences (the fight in the museum is a standout) and succeeds in being intentionally and unintentionally funny in equal measure. It was definitely the action / sci-fi "comfort food" we desperately needed after ThanksKilling 3 arrived dead on arrival, and with the added benefit of watching it with someone who had never seen it before, which was quite amusing. So we couldn't match the highs of Ninja III: The Domination; at least I was able to level out the low of ThanksKilling 3. I'll settle for that as we head into the final stretch tomorrow...

Nevermore Film Festival Recap (Day Two)

 Welcome back to Cap'n Howdy's coverage of the 14th annual Nevermore Film Festival. Today was a lineup I'd been looking forward to - another collection of short films (from North America this time), a partially "found footage" film about ghosts, and the double feature of a classic (Dawn of the Dead) and a newer film that might end up with its own "cult" following down the line (John Dies at the End).

 The Cap'n started the day with They're Coming to Get You, Barbra!, a selection of ten north American shorts that ran the gamut from scary to funny to darkly whimsical and bizarre. Here's a brief description of each, with accompanying links (they were actually harder to locate online than their foreign counterparts):

 T is for Trash - from what it looks like online, "Trash" began its life as a submission for The ABCs of Death, but I'm glad that Nevermore included it as a short in its own right because it deserves to be seen in its own context. If its possible to call something "a bizarro world take on Boxing Helena," Trash fits that description. When you think you have a rough idea where the story is heading, something very unusual happens, and I have to say I liked it.

 Till Death Do Us Part - a clever horror comedy dealing with a couple having cold feet on their wedding day, exacerbated when their exes show up for the ceremony - as zombies. Did I mention the film is set in 1985? It's not a crucial detail, but it adds to the humor a bit.

 The Stolen - less of a horror movie and more of a dark fairy tale, one that happens to include fairies. A little girl helps a boy after her brother locks him in a cage, and he promises to grant her wish. The final image, while sudden, is effective and unsettling.

 Sandwich Crazy - the first of two short films in the lineup made with the involvement of Hobo with a Shotgun director Jason Eisener, Sandwich Crazy is a twisted Faustian tale about a man with no ambitions, a magic microwave, and talking, bleeding, vegetables. You'll laugh, you'll gag, you'll laugh some more. (Note: the link does not take you to the actual Sandwich Crazy short - I can't find it anywhere online - but another short film that uses some of the same puppets and has a similarly bent sense of humor.)

 Blue Hole - "inspired by a true story," this short is about a lake that the Devil lives in, and if he drags a loved one down, the only way to get them back is with a sacrifice. Three couples learn the hard way that not every bargain is one worth making...

 Take That - is the story of a veteran with an overbearing wife and a friend who wants to make his evening. When he decides to finish up at work, his buddy calls the service anyway, and our hero gets more than he ever wanted to deal with. I wasn't gaga with this film, but it did at least make an effort to keep the protagonist virtuous.

 Torturous - in this twist on "torture porn," a career counselor finds himself in a Hostel-esque room with a "drill" specialist, one not too happy with his job. Can he talk him into a change of career before it's too late? This leans more heavily on the comedy, but there's one impressive gore effect that helps keep the stakes high. The ending is great.

 Klagger - I enjoyed this low key film about a surveyor who walks into a building scheduled for demolition only to discover he's not alone, and the other party isn't interested in talking things over. It has a nice twist at the end and some effectively utilized country music to add to the atmosphere.

 Game - the second Eisener involved short has the edge over Sandwich Crazy for me, only because it takes your expectations of what kind of film you think you're watching and turns it on its head. It shifts from being a straightforward, fairly stark "killbilly" story into something much stranger. I don't want to spoil it, so I hope at some point the short will be available to watch online.

 Lot 66 - returning NC director Robert W. Filion brings us the tale of a man afraid in the dark, alone in his new house. Everything seems to be going well enough until he starts getting messages from a stranger who claims to be wandering around the house... and then the power goes out. It was a little heavy on stylized CGI and the ending reminded me of current events, which contributed to my ambivalence towards the short.

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 The second feature for Saturday was The Casebook of Eddie Brewer, a British film that blurs the line between "found footage" and traditionally narrative horror. Eddie Brewer (Ian Brooker) is a paranormal investigator being followed by a film crew for a special on hauntings, and they join him for two major cases: one involving a mother (Bella Hamblin) and her daughter Lucy (Erin Connolly), who have been experiencing phenomena reminiscent of a poltergeist. Eddie suspects that Lucy's "imaginary" friend, Grimaldi, might be responsible, but to what end?

 Eddie is also called into a renovated building being used by the government because of strange sounds coming from a "hole" in the basement, but it becomes clear that the activity isn't limited to that area. Before long, the staff are dealing with an increasingly hostile force, one that has a particular interest in Brewer, and may have something in common with Lucy's "friend."

 Unbeknownst to Brewer, the documentary producer (Natalie Wilson) has arranged for skeptic Dr. Susan Kovac (Louise Paris) and a team of paranormal investigators to join him at the end of the investigation. Brewer, who works alone and with outdated equipment, is infuriated, but the confluence of events involving Lucy and a message that Grimaldi sends the investigator leave him no choice but to join the rest for a wild night of paranormal activity.

 I was rather impressed with The Casebook of Eddie Brewer, which alternates between the footage being shot by an unseen cameraman (director Andrew Spencer) and a third person, omniscient perspective. Appropriate to the narrative, the bulk of actual "ghost"-related events happen when the documentary camera isn't on, bolstering the case for Kovacs and increasing the doubts of the crew that anything is actually happening, even as it becomes clear to the audience that something horrible is afoot. It takes a moment to adjust because both styles use the same camera, but Spencer is careful to mark points in the film when it's clear which perspective we're watching from.

 The way that the two investigations dovetail is also handled in a clever way, if not one that is always clear near the end. When Casebook goes all out, beginning with the arrival of a psychic medium, Spencer manages to keep the various narrative threads and suddenly swollen cast together in a sensible way, and the imagery is chilling without being too outlandish for the limited scope of the story. Of the two feature films I hadn't seen prior to coming into Nevermore, I'd say that The Casebook of Eddie Brewer was my favorite.

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 After returning to the lobby for a snack and to meet up with friends for the double feature, I settled down in Fletcher Hall to see George Romero's Dawn of the Dead on the big screen for the first time. I'd seen it at home and in classrooms and at parties, but I've never seen it in a theatre, and it turns out that's because it's not an easy thing to do for festival programmers. Producer Richard Rubinstein has, until recently, fiercely resisted Dawn of the Dead being show, but he finally agreed and Nevermore's most requested vintage horror film was ours for the viewing.

 I don't want to say much more about Dawn of the Dead because I've written about the film before here in the Blogorium, but I'd like to share something curious that happened when I saw this with a large audience.

 Dawn of the Dead is, perhaps, the best "zombie" movie in the sometimes cluttered subgenre, even if I prefer Night of the Living Dead. It's a close first and second, but while I side with the stark simplicity of the first film, Dawn of the Dead is continually rewarding with repeated viewings, as without fail I find something I'd never noticed. And this time it wasn't even the "neglige" zombie (and geez, she must have been cold)* - no, this time I was exposed to a different side of the humor inherent in Dawn of the Dead.

 Having seen it in small groups and in academic settings, I was used to what I thought were the bulk of the "jokes" in Dawn of the Dead, many centered around consumerism and the juxtaposition between commercialism and the undead. What surprised me more were the periods when the audience, in unison, reacted to scenes I had always read as somber or bleak with laughter. For example, when Roger and Peter are discussing Fran's pregnancy and the possibility of ending it (while Fran is in another room), the audience began laughing, and laughed even harder when Romero cut to Gaylen Ross' reaction shot as she overhears them. I had never considered the moment funny, but the inherent comedy in that uncomfortable conversation opened my eyes to yet another reading of the film. Perhaps Dawn of the Dead is even more intentionally comedic than I had thought.

 You're not going to go wrong watching this movie with a large group of strangers, especially ones not familiar with the gruesome Tom Savini-created special effects. If you can see Dawn of the Dead in a theatre, if that opportunity ever presents itself, I highly recommending doing so.

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  The final film of Day Two, and the second part of the double feature, was the festival's debut of Don Coscarelli's John Dies at the End. Several years ago, they included Bubba Ho-Tep in their programming, so audiences were looking forward to seeing what the director of Phantasm had in store for us after ten long years (I'm counting John's debut on VOD as its release date, because I saw it in December of 2012).

 I wrote about the film briefly during my 2012 recap, and finally had the chance to see it with a crowd equally composed of folks who had and had not read the David Wong-penned novel the film is adapted from. Unfortunately, I didn't get to talk to many people who hadn't read the book after the film ended, but everybody seemed to enjoy the alternately disgusting and hilarious story of two slackers who save the world from an alternate universe's resident demon, Korrok.

  What I didn't mention last time was the inspired casting of Paul Giamatti as Arnie and Clancy Brown as Doctor Marconi, who along with Chase Williamson's David and Rob Mayes' John keep the film moving at a brisk pace. I also enjoyed the cameos by Doug Jones, Daniel Roebuck, and especially the Tall Man himself, Angus Scrimm, whose character hints at a set of antagonists dropped from the story during the adaptation from novel to screen. I'm still sad that Fred Durst isn't in the film.

 As I mentioned to friends after the film was over, given some of the changes and the relatively low budget of John Dies at the End (he doesn't, by the way. SPOILER), I can't imagine how This Book is Full of Spiders (Seriously, Dude, Don't Touch It!) could ever happen, but I'd welcome it. And I'd watch it. The continued adventures of Dave, John, and Amy in the demonic cesspool that is Undisclosed** are something I look forward to more of, whether on paper or the big screen.

 By the way, if you want to see John Dies at the End now, it's available On Demand. If you're thinking of just pirating the film, David Wong has a special warning for you:



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 This ends my coverage of the Nevermore Film Festival, but if I can cajole some of the good folks I attended with to add reviews of some of the movies I didn't see (Found, Dead Weight, the long-form shorts), I'll put them up some time soon. It was a great time with lots of fans of horror, and I'm looking forward to the 15th anniversary next year!


 * Seen easily in the parking lot when Fran is watching Peter and Stephen move trucks in front of the entrances, and again later in the film.
** By the way, it's not "Undisclosed" in the movie - it's identified as Sherwood, Illinois.

Nevermore Film Festival Recap (Day One)

 Greetings, fright fans! Cap'n Howdy coming to you from the 14th annual Nevermore Film Festival in Durham, where I just spent the last six hours up to my neck in a horror triple feature. As it is the duty of someone who calls himself "Cap'n Howdy" to attend a horror film festival, it seems only fair to report back to you with my findings.

 The Cap'n kicked off this year's Nevermore with a film I hadn't seen or heard anything about, The Last Will and Testament of Rosalind Leigh, a cross between "haunted house" and "religious fundamentalism" spook show heavy on atmosphere and tension starring Vanessa Redgrave and Breaking Bad's Aaron Paul look-alike Aaron Poole*.

  To my pleasant surprise, despite first time director Rodrigo Gudiño's inclusion of creepy angel statues (don't blink!), mannequins, broken dolls, and a particularly nasty "monster," The Last Will and Testament of Rosalind Leigh avoids "jump" scares for most of the film. Instead, much of the film is built around set-ups and pay-offs, some obvious, some not so, but all designed around the separation between the late mother Rosalind (Redgrave, mostly through narration) and Leon Leigh (Poole), who had a falling out as a result of his father's death. While his parents belonged to a religious group that insisted in eternal souls, angels, and a vengeful God who punished non-believers, Leon turned away when the cult drove his father to suicide.

 That, and the "game of candles" that his mother forced him to play, assuring him that if she blew out all of the candles before he "believed" that the angel would turn his back on him and the "darkness" would consume him. The lasting psychological damage continues to wear at Leon, and when he discovers his estranged mother bought his entire collection of antiques anonymously, he finds himself alone in a house confronted by his past, by members of the religious movement, and something lurking outside.

 Oh, and the angel in Rosalind's "worship" room. The one on a video that does something... unusual.

 While I found myself engaged with the story and drawn in to Gudiño's wandering camera and the rather spooky house, and while Pool and Redgrave are more than able to sell the scares as they increase, I can't help but feel like The Last Will and Testament of Rosalind Leigh stumbles a bit at the end. For one thing, there are simply too many lingering plot threads or concepts introduced in the film that don't feel developed or at times even addressed. While the reliance on Redgrave to narrate what isn't clear in the story is understandable, it comes at inopportune times in the film (especially at the end) and breaks up the narrative flow. Despite the story arc of Leon, the ending seems to make the case that this is actually Rosalind's story, which muddles the denouement a bit.

 It's not enough of a stumble to keep me from recommending the film, but I feel the need to give you the head's up that while The Last Will and Testament of Rosalind Leigh builds up a good head of steam, it doesn't quite cross the finish line. Still, in a world of "jump" scares, I'll take a little atmosphere in my ghost story when I can get it.

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 Following that, I sat down for Wrath of the Foreign Invaders, the collection of short subjects from around the world. It was a mixed bag of mostly good subjects, with a few really impressive standouts:

 The Plan - I regret that I can't tell you much about this one, other than it involved head-swapping, brain removal, and some existential musings. The digital presentation began to skip and we missed out on most of the short.

 Ocho (8) - this Spanish short, with no dialogue, tells the story of witchcraft (or voodoo), rituals, birthdays, patricide, and quasi-zombies in the vein of Creepshow or Tales from the Crypt. The cast conveys quite a lot without every saying anything, and it's a suitably dark tale with an ending that made me chuckle.

Refuge 115 - a very short film about a group of people hiding during the bombings in 1938 Barcelona, only to discover that this particular tunnel hides something in the darkness, something very keen on taking them one by one.

 She's Having a Baby - a tense, sometimes disturbing short about the lengths to which one woman will go to a child of her own - even if the other party has objections.

A Joke of Too Much - an Italian take on "grindhouse" films, complete with a fake trailer at the beginning for "Invasion of the Space Worms." It has some good laughs, some inventive gore, and was fitfully entertaining.

 La Dame Blanche (The White Lady) -  tells the familiar urban legend of the mysterious hitch-hiker in white, but with a fatalistic twist at the end. This was tied with Ocho as my favorite of the lot until...

 We Will Call Him Bobby - it's easy to see why this was awarded the Jury Prize at Nevermore for "Best Short Film," because the tale of a father, his son, and the beast they accidentally hit after fishing is frequently hilarious. The subtitles may give away some of the best lines in advance of the actors saying them, but it mixes comedy and horror with great aplomb.


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  I closed out the night with The ABCs of Death, an anthology of 26 short films by different directors. Each was given a letter and had free reign to do as they pleased, and it's a mixed bag. Like most anthologies, there are some really good entries ("T," "E", "Q", "N", "W")  some pretty good ones ( "A", "Y", "B", "M", "S", "C"), some that are just there ("O", "G", "I"), and quite a few you can't unsee, like "F", "P", "H", "X", "R", "L", "Z" and "F", which I will go ahead and identify as "Fart."

 The rest of them I'm being a bit coy with because part of watching The ABCs of Death is guessing what the letter stands for or being surprised that it wasn't what you expected it to be.

 Rather than give you too much more information about the shorts themselves, I'll let you know they come from Ti West (The House of the Devil), Angela Bettis (Roman), Srdjan Spasojevic (A Serbian Film), Jason Eisener (Hobo with a Shotgun), Hélène Cattet (Amer), Yoshihiro Nishimura (Tokyo Gore Police), Xavier Gens (Frontiers), Jon Schnepp (Metalocalypse), Marcel Sarmiento (Deadgirl), Adam Wingard (A Horrible Way to Die), Ben Wheatley (Kill List), Kaare Andrews (Altitude), Nacho Vigalondo (Timecrimes), and Noboru Iguchi (Machine Girl), among others.

 That ought to give you some idea how of bizarre or extreme segments can get, and I'm not just talking about the rampant toilet humor. Any semblance of taste or adherence to boundaries are missing from this film. Sensitive folks, be aware that there's some strongly implied animal cruelty, some child abuse, and then there's "X" and "L", which I probably could have done without ever seeing. So just know that there's some rough stuff in The ABCs of Death in addition to the silly and the trivial. I'd recommend it, but know that it might be better to wait for the DVD to come out so you can skip over certain letters. Either way, it's an experience you won't likely forget for a while.

 Tune in tomorrow for more coverage of Nevermore, including a double feature of George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead and Don Coscarelli's John Dies at the End. See you then!



 * No offense to Mr. Poole, who does a fine job in the film, but the similar features and sounding name are only going to complicate my ability to convince people that it is NOT, in fact, Jesse Pinkman in the movie.

Nevermore Film Festival Blogorium Recap

 This past weekend Cap'n Howdy had the distinct pleasure of attending the 13th annual Nevermore Film Festival in Durham, NC. How it was I made it thirteen years without knowing this festival existed, twelve of which I lived less than an hour away, I do not know. I've been to downtown Durham - although never to its Carolina Theatre - numerous times, and while I was vaguely aware of a horror film festival that happened there, I could have sworn it was in the fall. Either way, I'm happy to report that I did make it this year and it was chock full of pleasant surprises.

 I'm going to focus this article on the short film collections (They're Coming to Get You, Barbara! and Pandora and That Damned Box) from Saturday and provide reviews for the features I saw on Friday later this week. For those curious, I saw Absentia (a great low-budget horror film / fairy-tale), Some Guy Who Kills People (a loopy black comedy along the lines of Heathers) and The Whisperer in Darkness (an H.P. Lovecraft adaptation from the creative team behind 2005's The Call of Cthulhu). I've previously covered Ti West's The Inkeepers and Fred Dekker's Night of the Creeps*, and didn't see Marathon Man or the double feature for Rosemary's Baby and The Sentinel. Uwe Boll's producer credit kept me away from Eaters, although the buzz around it was that it was silly, though not "good."

 While I didn't catch Wrath of the Foreign Invaders, the third collection of short films, I will try to track down those films online (either from their websites, YouTube, Vimeo, or anywhere they might be uploaded). They're Coming to Get You, Barbara! was a collection of short films anywhere from 6 to 15 minute running times, and Pandora and That Damned Box contained longer shorts, usually around twenty minutes. All of the films are worth checking out, and even the ones that didn't knock me off my feet are worth locating. Let's take a look at the Barbara lineup:

 Carpool - an entry from the 48 Hour Film Festival about a young woman pushed too far by her obnoxious boss, and then anyone else who gets in the way of her car. Very short, but mines a lot of humor as the violence increases. Carpool was one shot away from being a classic, and while I can totally understand the impossibility of getting that shot, it missed living up to its title by just a smidge.

 Devilling - a disturbing short film about a mortician with an unhealthy obsession, but not with the dead. No, it's much more unnerving than that, with an ending that left the audience silent. Very creepy, very dark, and very well made.

 Incubator - remember the urban legend about waking up in a bathtub with your kidney missing? This film deals with a different scenario, one that pushes the term "body horror" into uncomfortable territory, to say the least. This was by far the most viscerally extreme film I saw, and while I'd love to find it, I'm not sure how excited I am to watch it. Great special effects, great sound design, and it ends exactly when it needs to.

 Flush with Fear - if you ever thought to yourself, "they can't possibly find a way to make a demonic toilet work," the makers of Flush with Fear respectfully disagree. With clever homages to H.P. Lovecraft and Sam Raimi, it manages to be simultaneously funny and creepy. Believe me, you'll be hesitant to read any bathroom stall graffiti after Flush with Fear.

 The House of the Yaga - told entirely using narration over paintings, this short film tells the Baba Yaga story in a way you haven't heard it before. It's a haunting take on the fable, and its execution is novel and really quite cool to watch.

 Psycho Therapy - I only didn't love this because it seemed like this film was going to go one of two ways, and it did. It didn't go the way I was expecting, and the second half of the short is firing on all cylinders (it's a fantastic mini-slasher and the actors really sell the ending), so I enjoyed it. The beginning takes a while to get where it's going, but once the patient heads home things improve dramatically.

 Dummy - is this the tale of a ventriloquist dummy that has a mind of its own? Is it the story of a blowhard director's inability to make anything work in a film about a ventriloquist dummy with a mind of its own? Or is it both? Played strictly for laughs, Dummy has a few out-of-left-field touches that had me chuckling all the way to its chainsaw-wielding conclusion. I'd love to put a link up for it, but I can't any links to it anywhere. It isn't even mentioned on the producer / director's IMDB page. Sorry.

 Desert Road Kill - a film about a family who pick up a hitch-hiker in the middle of the desert who may or may not be a killer suffered (for me) because it was apparent that the film had a twist and what the twist was. Like Psycho Therapy, it's saved largely because of its novel approach to the ending, which extends into the credits. It made the experience more palatable, although to be honest you're going to be less likely to see where things are going unless you watch TONS of horror movies. That's going to improve the experience overall, I'd say.

 Pandora and That Damned Box is comprised of four shorts, all of which you should find. Two of them are fantastic, and the other two are effective, if imperfect. Let's take a look, shall we?

 Worm - the film is told almost entirely by the interior monologue of a high school teacher who is considerably more disturbed than we think. As the story rolls along, we move further into depths of his psychosis, his desires, and eventually, what he keeps in his briefcase. It's climax and denouement don't quite live up to the build and the tension built preceding it, and there was a general sense in the audience of being underwhelmed. It's a shame, because the ending, while appropriate and (probably) more realistic, doesn't deliver on the promise of the rest of Worm.

 Impostor - I really liked Imposter when I didn't know where it was going. It's very unclear based on the poster what the short film is about, and for a while the character study of a man who wants to be anywhere and anyone other than who he is is promising. Then his identical twin brother arrives to stay with him, and then things become crystal clear. The hapless hero has a crush on his neighbor, and his brother immediately hits it off with her. When the Lothario twin runs afoul of a waitress' boyfriend and ends up in the hospital, Imposter becomes an episode of Tales from the Crypt with a twist that has a lot in common with Dexter. It's all very well done, and the cinematography and performances are great, but I just couldn't quite get behind it.

 Enter the Dark - Okay, the producers who keep making Paranormal Activity films need to watch this short film. Enter the Dark is an eerily effective variant on "found footage" movies, alternating between an objective third-person camera and the night vision on a camcorder. A guy at his wits end invites a friend over to help him confront the "spirit" terrorizing his apartment, and the skeptical buddy quickly becomes a believer when coincidences make a turn to deliberate messages from something else in the apartment. Everything about Enter the Dark works: the tension, the spooky messages, the slow build, and the final, haunting ending with a well-earned "jump" scare. This would have been my favorite film of Nevermore entirely, had it not been for the next short...

 The Headless Lover - holy crap! I mean, just wow! This short from Denmark, the first of a series for The Book of Horror, is a Tales from the Crypt inspired slice of horror comedy. While the site specifically mentions Crypt, I'd say that The Headless Lover, a twisted tale of infidelity, lounge singing, burlesque dancing, and the need to, um, "finish," is more in the vein of Creepshow. There are specific shots and effects in the short that reminded me a LOT of Creepshow, and if this is any indication of where The Book of Horror is headed, that's a welcome comparison. Alternately gross, hilarious, and extremely violent, the twisted narrative and cartoony effects are a winner from beginning to end. I HIGHLY recommend you click on the link and watch the film (subtitles are included).

 So that covers the short films, which are the kind of discoveries you can only make at festivals (I can attest that it is NOT easy to find these films online, even with direct searches). It's one of the reasons I was so gung-ho to see those particular collections. I'd also like to mention that vintage commercials that played between films in the Carolina Theatre, ranging from toy ads for robots to Carnation Instant Breakfast spots that promised "as much nutrition as two strips of bacon." It's given me many ideas for ways to augment the Horror and Summerfest experience, and I look forward to putting them into practice this summer.


 * Okay, that doesn't really count. I'll rectify that soon.