Shocktober Review: Deathgasm

 Deathgasm is far and away the best discovery of Shocktober movie coverage. It's a scrappy, low budget film from New Zealand that wears the influence of early Peter Jackson on its blood-soaked sleeves. It's the second film I've seen this year about a metal band that uses cursed music to bring demons to Earth - the first was MegaMuerte - but of the two I think I'm giving Deathgasm the edge. MegaMuerte gets a lot of points for creativity, and for bringing back puppet monsters, but Deathgasm has such an infectious sense of fun, of not caring about who might be offended, that I can't wait to share it with friends.

 Brodie (Milo Cawthorne) is a young metalhead who finds himself dumped in Greypoint, New Zealand with his fundamentalist Uncle Albert (Colin Moy) and Aunt Mary (Jodie Rimmer) after his mother has an unfortunate incident involving methamphetamines and a mall Santa. Transplanted to a small town that sees him as a total outsider, Brodie is tormented by his cousin David (Nick Hoskins-Smith) at school, but strikes up an unlikely friendship with Dion (Sam Berkley) and Giles (Daniel Cresswell), two Dungeons and Dragons fans who share a similar "outcast" status. Things brighten up for him when he meets Zakk (James Blake) while browsing the metal section at the local music store / fortune teller. Zakk and Brodie share a love of raising hell, listening to brutal metal, and when they break into the legendary Rikki Daggers (Stephen Ure)'s place to try to steal one of the 666 existing copies of HaxanSword's first album, the boys end up with crudely handwritten sheet music instead. Since they're forming a band that Zakk has determined will be called Deathgasm*, it only makes sense to play the music, right?

Well, maybe they should have boned up on their Latin first, because with a title like "Vocavitique Rex Daemonia Virtutem Fortuna Hymnus Nigrum"**, they probably should have considered translating it first. Brodie eventually does, and it says "Summoning the King of Demons, A Black Hymn for Gaining Power and Fortune" (or, The Black Hymn for short), but they decide to play it anyway. That's after the first attempt, when Uncle Albert begins vomiting blood and the boys nearly pass out. The second time, everyone in Greypoint begins vomiting blood, and the boys do pass out. When they wake up, half of the town have become minions of the King of Demons, also known as The Blind One or Aelos (I think - you don't hear the name clearly). Summoning The Blind One is exactly what a nearby cult was looking for, which is why its leader, Aeon (Andrew Laing) sent Vadin (Tim Foley) to kill Rikki Daggers and steal the music. He failed, so he loses his head and bleeds all over Aeon's custom rug, much to his displeasure. His second-in-command, Shanna (Delaney Tabron), doesn't seem to notice, for reasons that are better for you to find out yourself.

 Brodie has problems beyond raising The Blind One, as David's less conventionally metal-oriented girlfriend, Medina (Kimberly Crossman) takes a shining to him. That doesn't sit well with David, but it gets even more complicated when Zakk inserts himself into their relationship, promising to act as an intermediary when Brodie ends up on the wrong side of a beating. Dion later refers to Zakk as "chaotic neutral", which is probably appropriate, since he intentionally misleads Brodie about Medina and then meets up with her, explaining that Brodie's not interested. It's not the last time that Zakk conveniently removes critical information, but he also comes back to help at a crucial point. The son of a mechanic, Zakk really doesn't seem to care about anybody but himself, so he alternates between good and evil throughout the film. It may be a nerdy descriptor, but Dion's mostly right.

 Deathgasm is, not surprisingly, a very violent movie, one where swords, daggers, chainsaws, axes, Incredible Hulk gloves, twenty sided dice, and musical instruments are used to provide maximum gore as our unlikely heroes try to stop the mess they started. Its sense of humor is, to put it mildly, juvenile, but frankly I don't find that to be very surprising. Writer / Director Jason Lei Howden had been working on visual effects for The Hobbit films, and Deathgasm is very much in the spirit of early Peter Jackson. May I remind you that "I kick ass for the Lord" is still one of the most quoted lines from Dead Alive. With that in mind, it should hardly come as a surprise that Brodie and Zakk battle the possessed Albert and Mary in what amounts to a dildo fight. They are, after all, teenage metalheads, and on the off chance you've never met one, this is fairly representative of their sense of humor and level of maturity. Your mileage may vary as to whether you want to watch an entire movie loaded with dick jokes, rampant profanity, and crude humor, but I find it in keeping with the scrappy, low-brow comedy of Bad Taste or Meet the Feebles. In that respect, it's also similar to MegaMuerte, which has roughly the same plot up to a point, but that film pushes into more twisted directions, including necrophilia. Deathgasm has what is perhaps the only time I've heard someone say the name of the band Anal Cunt out loud in a movie. So, pick your poison?

 I'm not quite convinced that the subplot with the cult is necessary - it actually tends to distract from the main story. Aeon is in what amounts to two scenes before (SPOILER) he's murdered by Shanna, who hopes to become the vessel of The Blind One, and she (BIGGER SPOILER) is subsequently murdered by Zakk who, in true "chaotic neutral" fashion (EVEN BIGGER SPOILER) becomes the embodiment of Aelos. I mean, who didn't see that coming, though? The point is that you could excise the cult subplot, just have Brodie / Deathgasm play The Black Hymn, and have roughly the same story without cutting away from them for characters who barely figure into the film. I guess it does give you an extra beheading plus gratuitous nudity, which in retrospect there's less of than you think there would be in a movie called Deathgasm.

 Other than that, I had a great time watching Deathgasm, perhaps even more so than MegaMuerte. Its tongue-in-cheek, don't-give-a-shit attitude and inventive use of gore (seriously, why did it take this long to use car buffer to tear someone's face off?) make for an infectious sense of fun. As long as you don't mind low-brow humor, and to be honest, I don't when used as earnestly as it is in Deathgasm. Sure, it can be dumb, and clearly I've seen a movie with almost the exact same premise earlier this year, but Deathgasm is highly entertaining. It's one of several New Zealand horror comedies I've seen lately (Housebound, What We Do in the Shadows) that find just the right tonal balance. Also, it's quite gory, and a lot of it looked to be practical, which is sadly lacking in horror these days. If Peter Jackson isn't going to be New Zealand's goremeister anymore, I'm glad that a new generation are picking up the mantle and running wild with it.





* In one of many instances of characters breaking the fourth wall, Zakk literally grabs the camera to keep it from panning back and forth between him and Brodie and insists that his band name is what they're going with.
** Forgive any misspellings, I'm transcribing as closely as I can to the handwritten words on the sheet.

Shocktober Review: Blood and Black Lace

 Blood and Black Lace might not be my favorite of "Super" Mario Bava's films, but I can certainly acknowledge its place in Italian giallo films. If, on the off chance, you haven't heard of giallo or the long shadow it casts on American slasher films, it might be surprising to discover that they're less strictly horror films and more like police procedurals, punctuated with "murder set pieces". A masked killer will stalk someone (usually a lovely young woman) in the dark, scare them a bit, and then kill them, often with increasingly unique or cruel implements as the film goes on. What distinguishes it from slashers is the balance of screen time devoted to a local detective or member of the police, who is desperately trying to catch the killer before they kill again. In the case of Blood and Black Lace, the ending is also more conventional than modern horror audiences might expect, but still effective.

 The Christian Couture Fashion House of Rome has its share of secrets beyond its latest designs, and a masked killer is taking out models one by one, beginning with Isabella (Francesca Ungaro). After she leaves on a dark and stormy night, Isabella never makes it home, instead strangled to death near a tree. Police Inspector Silver (Thomas Reiner) begins his investigation, but neither Christian Couture house owner Contessa Cristina Como (Eva Bartok) nor her business partner Massimo "Max" Morlacchi (Cameron Mitchell) know anything that would help him. The other models, including her roommates Peggy (Mary Arden) and Nicole (Arianna Gorini), seem hesitant to say anything, and the discovery of Isabella's diary sends ripples throughout the house. What secrets was she keeping, and who was implicated? Who could the killer be? Max? Designer Cesar Lazzarini (Louis Pigot)? Aristocrat Ricardo Morellin (Franco Ressel)? Antique Shop owner Frank (Dante Di Paolo)? Or is it groundskeeper Marco (Massimo Righi)?

 If you're accustomed to slasher films, the procedural elements of Blood and Black Lace might come as a surprise - they significantly diminish the tension you might be used to. When the killer is about to strike, Bava ratchets up the tension considerably, and many of the murders are (for 1964) pretty gruesome. With kills that include and antique spiked mallet, a drowning disguised as a suicide, and one of the models getting up close and personal with a very hot wood stove, I don't think you're going to be disappointed in that department. That said, if you've seen Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Samouraï, the back and forth structure between cops and criminals will be familiar (and yes, Blood and Black Lace came out first, but I use Le Samouraï as a good example, particularly in reference to the "lineup" scene in the police station).

 Despite the grounded, procedural elements, much of Blood and Black Lace has a dreamlike, slightly surreal quality. As with much of the Mario Bava films I've seen, tone is key, and while almost everything is strictly grounded in reality, the camera movement and shot composition lend the film a sense of being unreal. When Bava transitioned from away black and white, he adopted to strong, lurid color scheme of deep reds that borders on expressionistic. While set in the real world, Blood and Black Lace has the heightened quality of a dream world, and the influence of his vivid colors on Dario Argento (especially in Suspiria) is evident. There's a floating, POV camera shot towards the end of the film that moves through the fashion house that reminded me strongly of Suspiria. The camera moves between (or sometimes knocks off) wire-frame mannequins, bathed in red for no apparent reason, as it moves towards someone in the darkness. While what follows is almost too conventional for many horror fans - the ending wouldn't be out of place in a film noir - Bava sets it up as though the supernatural were intruding on the story.

 While I won't delve into SPOILERS, it is worth mentioning that you can easily surmise who the killer is just by looking at their face in the mask. There's a split-second reveal of the face during the stove scene, in which the increased clarity of Blu-Ray can confirm your suspicions (you don't even need to pause it), but the mystery of who the killer is ends up being only half of the equation. There's a "twist" to speak of, one that was borrowed decades later by Wes Craven, one that's instrumental to disrupting the "procedural" portion of the giallo. While other directors would take up the giallo over time and sometimes improve on it, there's something to be said for Mario Bava, who created it with The Girl Who Knew Too Much and laid most of the groundwork / rules in Blood and Black Lace. I might prefer Black Sunday and Planet of the Vampires, but there's something to the way he balances tonal dissonance in Blood and Black Lace that's admirable.

Shocktober Review: Dead Snow 2

 It only seems fair to end Shocktober with something to look forward to - Tommy Wirkola's gonzo sequel Dead Snow 2. I've seen it subtitled "Red vs. Dead," but the title screen just said Dead Snow 2 (well, technically it was Død Snø 2), but when you get a chance to see it, you really ought to. If you read yesterday's retro review of Dead Snow, you'll know the Cap'n enjoyed the first film, but wasn't blown away by it. Dead Snow 2 is a completely different story, as Wirkola goes for broke in staging an all out war between his Nazi zombies, Russian zombies, a returning hero, a maybe not-so capable Zombie Defense Squad, and an even less capable local police force. It's more violent, more ridiculous, and a whole hell of a lot more fun without ever going off the rails.

 Wirkola picks up the story where Dead Snow left off - Martin (Vegar Hoel), the last survivor is about to drive away after giving zombie Nazi Colonel Herzog (Ørjan Gamst) the last piece of gold that reanimated his battalion, when another piece lands on the floorboard. Who's standing outside the car? Now, it's not totally unprecedented to continue a story directly, Dead Snow 2 gets points for turning the classic ending "twist" into a full-on horror action sequence as Martin tries desperately to drive away, Herzog and troops in pursuit. In the ensuing mayhem, both protagonist and antagonist end up losing their right arms, and when Martin wakes up in a hospital nearby, he's alarmed to discover that doctors have reconnected Herzog's arm to his body. He's also not too pleased to be the prime suspect in the murder of his friends (seen in footage from Dead Snow at the outset of the film).

 That's the least of Martin's problems, as it turns out, because Herzog and his undead minions don't just go back to their graves once the gold is returned. A chance encounter with a truck ignites memories of the mission they failed: to capture and destroy a small town in Norway. If Martin can stop them, he's going to need the held of the Zombie Defense Squad: a trio of American geeks (Martin Starr, Jocelyn DeBoer, and Ingrid Haas) who are anything but well equipped to handle Col. Herzog's newly acquired tank. He also picks up Glenn (Stig Frode Henriksen), employee of the WWII museum Herzog raids, and a zombie sidekick of his own (Kristoffer Joner). The latter comes as a result of Martin's new arm, which gives him a degree of super-strength and the ability to re-animate the dead. It's also something he has limited control over, as we learn during his hospital escape, which includes some impressive gore and a few accidental murders.

 But wait, there's more! Daniel (Starr) uses his research of Herzog's mission in Norway to deduce that there's also a unit of dead Russian soldiers somewhere in the mountains that Martin could raise from the dead to help, while Monica (DeBoer), Blake (Haas), and Glenn try to slow the march of the undead. Meanwhile, the local police force is on the hunt for Martin, so midway through Dead Snow 2 we're following no less than four different storylines that don't converge until nearly the end of the film. It's no small feat to keep so many balls in the air, let alone in a sequel with only two returning characters, but Wirkola somehow manages to keep Dead Snow 2 moving forward without ever feeling overstuffed. That's in addition to the fact that the film alternates between Norwegian, German, and English because of the inclusion of the Americans.

 Much of that is due to Wirkola's demented sense of humor and ability to acclimate to a larger budget. Dead Snow didn't necessarily feel hampered by its scale, but the sequel opens up in so many different ways that it's all the more admirable he manages to retain the anarchic sense of "anything goes" while not totally losing control of the story. The humor is still intact, and Dead Snow 2 is much funnier in its use of gore as a punch line (in this respect, I'd say it's fair to compare its approach as a sequel to Evil Dead 2). I thought that there was no possible way to use Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart" for comic effect again, but its placement in Dead Snow 2 is a great payoff of a setup you likely forgot from earlier in the film. To say any more would be to spoil the very end, which might have you laughing and gagging at the same time.

 Dead Snow 2 also stages the climactic battle, between Nazi zombies, Russian zombies, the ZDS, and Martin in a way that makes the chaos easy to follow, which is frankly uncommon these days. I'd like to highlight one moment where Wirkola distinguishes himself not only from frenetically edited horror films, but also from most current action films. Late in the film, when Martin is fighting Herzog, they end up inside of a house. Aside from using kitchen implements in a way that's reminiscent of Kill Bill by way of Evil Dead 2, Herzog also throws Martin through the ceiling. Rather than cut upstairs, or cut away to the battle outside, Wirkola holds on the scene, tilting the camera up slightly to show the ceiling and nearby stairwell, where Martin comes rolling down shortly thereafter. It's both an impressive stunt, but is also funnier as a gag because of his timing in an unbroken take. Wirkola relies on his actors (with well times sound effects) to sell the geography and timing of the stunt rather than dictate the pace with edits. It isn't the only example in Dead Snow 2, but it impressed me precisely because of how rare it is to see a shot like that in modern horror films.

 There are a few minor quibbles I have with Dead Snow 2, mostly from its mid-section: Wirkola's comic timing, with respect to using gore as punctuation, is often spot-on, but there's a lot of the Zombie Defense Squad that falls flat. Martin Starr (Party Down) is largely relegated to expository dialogue, and the decision to make Monica a Star Wars quoting "geek" doesn't really go anywhere. I think it's supposed to be a joke that she picks the wrong lines to reference, but it honestly wasn't very funny. I minded Wirkola's cheap shot zombie kills of children and the handicapped (mostly limited to a montage) less, and the continued abuse of Joner's sidekick zombie goes on for so long that it stops being funny and then becomes funny again towards the end of the film. While I'm not convinced the Americans were necessary, their presence isn't a detriment to Dead Snow 2. There's honestly so much to enjoy about the film that any complaints are minor. I would have been impressed that a movie this busy had worked at all, but not only does it, it's also constantly keeping you off-balance with unexpectedly smart twists. If the hinted Dead Snow 3 ever materializes, I'll check it out. In the meantime, fans of Dead Snow have plenty to look forward to, and there's enough of a recap that first timers can feel comfortable jumping in as well. Of the horror films the Cap'n saw during Shocktober (but didn't review*), this by far comes the highest recommended.



 * At some point, I will try to get you reviews for The ABCs of Death 2, Horns, V/H/S Viral, and See No Evil 2, but only one or two of them were any good.

 

Shocktober Revisited: Dead Snow

Tommy Wirkola's Dead Snow is a fairly entertaining Norwegian horror film with one very enticing gimmick: Nazi Zombies. That it doesn't quite live up to the expectations one might expect from that premise shouldn't scare genre fans away from the film; there's enough quality gore to overcome a slightly derivative script that, at times, relies heavily on Sam Raimi's early work to get from plot point to plot point. It's funny enough to distract you from a familiar plot and even more familiar story beats, and while the zombies aren't exactly zombies, they're certainly a fun twist in otherwise well trod territory.

Stop me when this sounds familiar: college students (in this case, all med-school) go to a secluded cabin on a mountain to spend the weekend. There's an even mix of girls and guys, with two couples and four singles of recognizable types - the missing girlfriend who everybody assumed would be there, the guy who always talks about movies, the girl that's kind of nerdy herself, and the squeamish guy with the self-reliant girlfriend.

Okay so far? Let's add the "Creepy Older Guy" who warns them about the history of this particular mountain - Nazis occupying Norway that stole the village valuables and were killed by the townspeople... or were they? - and then leaves. Where's the girl who owns the cabin? Is she okay? What's all this gold from 1942 doing in the cabin? People start dying? Could it be undead Nazis? Oh, you know it is! Let the evisceration commence!

I say that the Nazi Zombies aren't exactly zombies, in part because while yes, they are undead, they don't behave like traditional zombies. They behave like undead Nazis, ones that really like fist fights, using knives, and in one instance, gutting a girl to put a grenade inside her torso. The makeup is pretty nice, particularly on General Herzog, who just happens to be missing his lips. All of the Nazi zombies (who do bite people, but don't really seem interested in eating them) are menacing, if easily dispatched with late in the film.

Since I mentioned General Herzog, now's as fair a time as any to talk about how intertextuality-laden Dead Snow is. Not only do the characters discuss other horror films with a similar premise at the outset of their trip, but at least one of the films mentioned comes into play repeatedly during the film. There are two explicit references to Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn - one is part of a "if this were a horror movie" conversation and the other one is a direct visual reference to Ash cutting off his hand, used to set up an "Oh yeah, now what are you going to do?" joke involving a crotch-level Nazi zombie.

Erlend, the character constantly quoting films (including Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and The Terminator) is also wearing a Brain Dead shirt (better known in the States as Dead Alive). Fans of Machete are going to be saying "Dead Snow did it!" when they see a very similar gag involving guts from two years earlier. The references aren't overly distracting, but they do underscore how much of Dead Snow is familiar territory, particularly the end, which lacks the kind of punch I suspect it was supposed to have.

That being said, you're going to have a lot of fun moments, and a few surprises - the nerdy film fan is the only character to have sex with someone - and for horror fans, plenty of gore. I'm not really sure I've seen a film so obsessed with intestines as Dead Snow is, and the fact that the protagonists are medical students does actually come into play in a meaningful - if totally unrealistic - fashion. Also, the crow scene is pretty funny. Dead Snow isn't going to reinvent the zombie wheel, and the Nazi Zombie concept isn't as developed as one would hope, but it's still definitely worth renting or (as the Cap'n did) "Watch(ing) It Now."

Shocktober Revisited: The Werewolf vs. the Vampire Woman

 Review originally appeared in 2010

After two successive Horror Fests of promising to screen The Werewolf vs. the Vampire Woman and not delivering, I decided it was at least time to give you, the reader, some idea of what it was you were missing out on, and to promise you that it WILL play during the Greensboro Summerfest Massacre Part IV, because it deserves a full fest audience to be properly appreciated. In the meantime, please enjoy a taste of werewolf on vampire action. Kind of.

Fair warning: the Cap'n and the Cranpire deliberately chose to watch the edited, re-titled, dubbed version of Werewolf Shadow (La Noche de Walpurgis), in part because of the ludicrous American trailer that promised more than any movie could deliver, which (of course) was the case. To be fair, we did check out the actual film (also credited to director León Klimovsky), and aside from 9 additional minutes of footage and slightly better color timing (more on this later), I sincerely believe the difference would be negligible.

Waldemar Daninsky (Paul Naschy) is a reputed werewolf killed in a small village in the north of France. During his autopsy, the coroners remove the silver bullets from his heart, bringing Daninsky back to life, free to roam the night in search of new victims. Meanwhile, college student Elvira (Gaby Fuchs) and her friend Genevieve (Barbara Capell) are searching for the burial place of Countess Wandesa Dárvula de Nadasdy (Patty Shepard), a reputed witch and / or vampire from the 15th century. When their car runs out of gas near a country estate, Genevieve and Elvira meet Waldemar and his sister Elizabeth (Yelena Samarina), who suffered a mental breakdown after the death of their parents. Waldemar has also been seeking the tomb of de Nadasdy, because the silver crossed used to kill her can end his lycanthropy once and for all. But when Genevieve accidentally awakens the Countess and falls victim to her bloodlust, can Waldemar and Elvira stop the vampire from killing again before Walpurgis, when the Devil rises to claim the Earth?

As you might have noticed, that's quite a lot of plot for an 85 minute movie, especially one with so much down time before serious plot advancement. Unless the moon has some magical properties in the north of France, at least three months pass between when Waldemar first rises and when the title characters battle. As a non-werewolf, Waldemar chases off the Countess twice, but if you're expecting an epic showdown like the trailer promises, don't hold your breath.

From the moment that Genevieve cuts herself and accidentally drips blood into the Countess's corpse mouth to the point that Walpurgis apparently occurs, two months of story time passes. In fact, other than doing a cursory search of the graveyard where the Countess is hiding, Elvira and Waldemar do nothing to try to stop her until Walpurgis. It isn't until Elvira's boyfriend Inspector Marcel (Andrés Resino) arrives that anything happens involving the Countess at all in the second half of the film. Most of the time, vampire Genevieve is stalking around, until a non-wolf Waldemar kills her.

At this point, I'm going to drift away from the plot, which drags considerably in the second half of the film. There's some reasonably nice set-up involving Elvira and Genevieve realizing something amiss at the Daninsky estate, even if lapses in logic about why they can't leave or how isolated they are from the village compound to an almost laughable degree. The problem is less with story gaffes than it is with the day-for-night photography, a normally half-effective movie technique that fails miserably in The Werewolf vs. the Vampire Woman.

From the beginning of the film, it's almost impossible to tell whether it's supposed to be day or night time unless someone says so directly. Unfortunately, when it's clear the sun is shining an a coroner says "It's very dark out tonight," you're going to laugh. The producers of this American version didn't bother to tint the "night" scenes, so most of the time spent watching The Werewolf vs. the Vampire Woman is devoted to figuring out what time of day it's supposed to be. Usually you won't know until a) they cut to a shot of the moon, b) you see the vampires, or c) someone is holding a lamp / lantern or car lights are on. All or most of the film was made in broad daylight, which adds an unintentionally comic tone to the "horror."

(It is fair to note that Werewolf Shadow, which is a remastered version of the film - unlike the heavily scratched, frame jumping Werewolf vs. the Vampire Woman - addresses the day for night by tinting the scenes blue, but it still isn't terribly convincing.)

For entertainment value, I would recommend watching The Werewolf vs. the Vampire Woman with a crowd; despite the overly languid pace of the film in actually delivering the supernatural smackdown, the over-serious tone of the film is rendered into comedy gold because of the cost-cutting of the American version, including the dubbing of characters, even in cases where it seems clear they're speaking English (like Genevieve). Paul Naschy (who co-wrote the film) is trying to make Waldemar Daninsky a tortured, Larry Talbot-esque character, but the dubbing, coupled with a physical similarity to Marlon Brando, rob him of any pathos.

For a film that promises witchcraft, vampires, a werewolf, and the Devil, The Werewolf vs. the Vampire Woman is surprisingly tame. The violence is limited to light gore as a result of Waldemar scratching his victims or some blood dripping from Elvira's neck. The film cautiously hints at nudity, only to pull back before exposing any flesh (and if you're thinking "well, maybe in the Werewolf Shadow cut," I'm afraid not. Those 9 minutes are devoted to Marcel's search for Elvira in the village).

On top of all of this, I have to point out the English title cards, which are so clearly not part of the film that it hardly surprised me when the score cut out abruptly, replaced by what sounded like the sound of a projector running. The title cards appear over artificially frozen images from the film that were inserted over the actual titles. The effect is jarring, intrusive, and ultimately lends a cheap, exploitative tone to an otherwise marginal horror film, despite the claim on the DVD that Werewolf Shadow is "now recognized as a milestone film in international horror history." It's certainly a fun movie to have on, but in any incarnation, The Werewolf vs. the Vampire Woman works best in a party atmosphere.

Shocktober Revisited: Cronos

Review originally appeared in 2011.

When I reviewed Let the Right One In in 2009, I brought up four really great vampire movies (of which Let the Right One In would be a fifth): Martin, Near Dark, Nosferatu, and Shadow of the Vampire. It's time to add another film to that list; Guillermo del Toro's directorial debut, Cronos. Like the other films listed, Cronos is a non-traditional vampire tale, a story centered around immortality with a price, one that touches briefly on addiction and centers - as many of del Toro's finest films do - around a child.

The girl in question, Aurora Gris (Tamara Shanath), lives with her grandparents: Grandmother Mercedes (Margarita Isabel) and Grandfather Jesus (Federico Luppi). Jesus Gris owns an antiques shop, and he brings his inquisitive granddaughter along while the store is open. One day, he discovers a small, scarab-like mechanical device inside of a statue of an angel. The following day, Angel de la Guardia (Ron Perlman) arrives to buy the statue for his uncle (Claudio Brook). The device, it seems, was created by an alchemist (Mario Iván Martínez) in 1535, and was lost after his death in a bank collapse - in 1937.

Jesus is surprised that the device attaches itself to his skin, drawing blood, and immediately removes the Cronos device - until he notices that its brief contact to his skin removed years of aging from his life. He begins, to the chagrin of Aurora, to continue using the device, developing a taste for blood - needed to power the device - and becoming addicted to the inevitable transformation the scarab brings him. Unfortunately, De la Guardia is perfectly aware that the device should have been in the statue, knows what the Cronos device can do, and sends Angel to find Jesus at any cost.

At the risk of spoiling anything else, I'm going to stop there; viewers watching Cronos benefit best from the least amount of spoilers possible. Guillermo del Toro makes the best of his low budget and tells an intimate, disturbing fairy tale about losing a member of one's family without necessarily losing them (again, I'm trying to avoid spoilers) while making the best of his bilingual cast (Perlman speaks almost entirely in English, save for a few intentionally bad lines in Spanish). The effects are particularly impressive: del Toro gives us glimpses inside of the Cronos device, hinting at an insect-like creature that lives inside and perhaps(?) facilitates Jesus' transformation.

The film is going to appeal to Guillermo del Toro fans who gravitate towards The Devil's Backbone and Pan's Labyrinth, rather than the grand scale Blade II or Hellboy films. This is not to say both won't find something to enjoy in his first film; traces of del Toro's later films exist throughout Cronos, both thematically and in imagery he's drawn towards. It stands proudly alongside his later work, but also fits in nicely with the atypical vampire films listed in the first paragraph. It also shares a connective tissue with another film, one released a decade before, by an equally well regarded "cult" director.

(Semi-spoilers ahead) Criterion released Cronos on the same day they issued a Blu-Ray upgrade for Videodrome, and its hardly a coincidence: late in Cronos, there's a moment that mirrors Cronenberg's 1983 film where the protagonist reaches into his stomach, feeling past his old skin and discovering his "new flesh." The parallels, even though they may end differently (Cronos opts for closing imagery similar to Nosferatu's and one that would be used later in Shadow of the Vampire), almost certainly left an impression on the Criterion team, and their simultaneous release allows audiences to discover intertextuality where they would not think to look otherwise.

Blogorium Review: Frank

 As I have been led to believe, Frank (2014) is the prequel to Robot & Frank (2012), which doesn't make a lot of sense to the Cap'n, but we'll go with that. I haven't seen Robot & Frank, and maybe I should so that this review makes more sense, but based on the IMDB synopsis it seems like the "Frank" character that Michael Fassbender is playing grows older and becomes the "Frank" that Frank Langella plays. Or maybe he's the robot. I'm not sure. I never pictured Fassbender's Frank becoming a jewel thief (SPOILER if you haven't seen Robot & Frank, like me), but I could maybe see him becoming a robot. It actually makes more sense that way, but what do I know?

 Nah, I'm just pulling your chain; Frank (probably) has nothing to do with Robot & Frank, but if I had seen the latter film I'd give it the old college try to make tenuous connections. Frank minus Robot is about Jon Burroughs (Domhall Gleeson), who is just a normal guy that wants to be a musician. The only problem is that he's terrible at it. He writes lots of songs, but they're all strictly observational - the beginning of the film follows Jon home as he tries to come up with ideas, and mostly he sings things he's sees, like "lady with the red coat / what you doing with that bag / lady in the blue coat / do you know the lady in the red coat?". He lacks inspiration, and feels like his normal, suburban life in Ireland is to blame.

 By chance, he's sitting on a park bench when the keyboard player for Soronprfbs decides he's had enough and that he wants to drown in the frigid waters. This puts the band in a bit of a predicament, as they have a gig that night. As he's standing next to their manager, Don (Scoot McNairy), Jon casually mentions he plays the keyboard, and he's in. What he's in, as Jon (and we) will learn, is more than he could imagine. By this point in the film, we've already heard Soronprfbs on the radio, where an interview devolves into screaming profanity as members of the band attack each other, and that turns out to be pretty much the dynamic that Jon steps into.

 To call Soronprfbs "avant garde" would be a disservice to the term, but that's clearly what director Lenny Abrahamson and writers Jon Ronson and Peter Straughan are evoking by dropping the otherwise vanilla Jon into the mix. The drummer, Nana (Carla Azar) and guitarist, Baraque (François Civil) only speak French, and generally only speak to each other, unless Baraque is cursing at Carla (Maggie Gyllenhaal), the other synthesizer / Theremin player. Clara is brusque with pretty much everybody, but she takes a particular dislike to Jon, when she senses that he doesn't "fit" with the band's direction. She's also very protective of Frank (Fassbender), the band's singer / songwriter, who suffers from a severe mental condition that drives him to wear a paper mâché mask (based on Mark Sievey's character Frank Sidebottom) at all times, even in the shower. No one in the band has ever seen him without the head, and nobody will discuss it with Jon other than Don.

 After a disastrous gig that begins with the band noodling and Frank singing non-sequiturs and ends with Clara and Baraque screaming at each other and storming off stage, Jon assumes his adventure has come to a close and he returns to his desk job. But Frank calls, offering him another gig, and Jon hops back in the van. They end up somewhere in the Irish countryside, in a cabin in the woods, where unbeknownst to our protagonist, Don has rented out the place to record Soronprfbs's album. Since only Frank knows what it should sound like, that could take a while.

 Now, at this point in a movie about an everyman outsider who joins an abstract, stand-offish group / band / etc., we typically have a good idea of what's going to happen: the "weird" band and the "normal" hero are going to meet somewhere in the middle, both will find their groove and everything will turn out great at the big gig. Everybody learns something about themselves, the mean person turns out to really respect the protagonist or they find love, blah blah blah. Without spoiling anything, Frank doesn't go that way. It turns out that Jon, who begins communicating about the band in a clandestine manner via Twitter, Blogger, and YouTube, is a terrible fit for the band. His musical ideas are terrible, but he convinces Frank that the people following the band online love Soronprfbs (don't try to pronounce it - none of the members do). His sway over Frank only further alienates him with Clara, and when Jon takes the initiative and books the band at South by Southwest, his true intentions come out. And that doesn't work out so well, either.

 Were I you, I wouldn't go into Frank expecting a comedy, because while it is often funny (or at the very least, amusing), there's a dark undercurrent to the film. The original keyboardist isn't the only person involved in the band that gives up on living, and the contentious atmosphere never softens. While it's frequently an interesting movie to watch, Frank keeps you at a distance until the very end. The last scene brings about some sense of setting things right, but on its own terms, and in the meantime it's hard to find a character to sympathize with. Jon transitions from affable to duplicitous not long after they arrive at the cabin, and the other chief option, Frank, is a mystery until late into the film.

 This is not to say that Gleeson, Fassbender, and Gyllenhaal aren't all very good in their roles, but that the characters seem off-putting by design, and you have to really work to want any of them to succeed. I'm not sure how the average moviegoer is going to respond to (SPOILER-ISH) Clara being right all along and Jon being totally wrong about Frank's ability to process actual fans. The film is, at times, dead-set in going the opposite direction of what you expect, and tonally I found it very similar to Calvary. Ostensibly Frank and Calvary are comedies, but both spend more time examining human nature and its frailties and less on making sure the audience feels comfortable with what they're seeing. Which is not to say that this is a bad thing, because I very much enjoyed Calvary and I like a lot of Frank, particularly the pitch perfect way it closes.

 Frank should also probably get some credit for accurately portraying the way that social media is used, although that might date the film as the internet pushes forward. Like Jon Favreau's Chef - an entertaining, albeit totally predictable movie I might review down the line - Abrahamson, Ronson, and Straughan use Jon's knowledge of Twitter, Blogger, and YouTube to help turn Soroprfbs into a viral sensation in a way that reflects how it usually happens, which is pretty much what Chef does with Twitter and Vine. I appreciated the effort, particularly in a cinematic landscape where computers are often a lazy way to get exposition out.

 The songs, for the record (no pun intended, but what can you do?) range from pretty entertaining to "what?" The last song, in particular, is the catchiest, despite the fact that I misunderstood Fassbender's singing and thought the chorus was "I love you, wall" instead of "I love you all," which does change the closing scene a little bit. Without getting into why she's singing them, it's also quite amusing to hear Clara's renditions of "On Top of Old Smokey" and "I Want to Marry a Lighthouse Keeper." Jon's songs start out fitfully silly and devolve into wordless garbage by the end of the film, but I'm almost positive that was by design, so I won't criticize that too much.

 Finally, I can't leave out the truly impressive feat by Michael Fassbender, who manages to convey a great sense of empathy and enthusiasm in Frank without the benefit of facial expressions. He's behind the mask, which you can see in the poster above, and aside from a brief period when he begins describing his facial expressions to ease Jon's discomfort, Fassbender relies entirely on his body language and voice (in a strange, slightly ambiguous "American" accent) to bring the character across. If you weren't somehow already impressed by his acting before, Frank will push you over. That is, if you don't mind an almost relentlessly downbeat "comedy". It's tempting to call Frank a "black comedy," but I'm not certain that quite captures the film. Like its titular character, Frank is an odd bird. It's not for everybody, to be sure, but if you liked Little Miss Sunshine and thought the ending was too "upbeat," this might be your kind of movie. I have the feeling I'll revisit Frank at some point, if for no other reason than to figure out how a robot and jewel thievery get shoehorned into this universe...

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.

 ---

 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.

---

 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.

---

 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.

---

 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!

Shocktober Revisited: Slaughter of the Vampires

Previously on Cap'n Howdy's Blogorium:

I started but haven't finished watching Slaughter of the Vampires, which is a nice slice of Italian Cleavesploitation (no nudity, but lots of nubile young ladies in very tight bodices for no reason whatsoever) and I guess a vampire. I mean, there is one, but I'm not far enough in to see what his plan is, other than finding a new vampire bride (the old one was left behind and staked by angry villagers).

The film is dubbed but it's not such a bad thing. I don't honestly know how watchable it would be with subtitles, and horror is the universal language, y'know? Besides, I'm pretty sure that the vampire is a German gentleman and perhaps this was a multilingual shoot, like those Spaghetti Westerns.

For some reason, this movie was released stateside as Curse of the Blood Ghouls, which is admittedly a better title, but it doesn't set you up for any vampire slaughter. I like it when the movie promises you something and then kinda delivers on it in the first three minutes. Hopefully there's more slaughtering to come.

Here's the trailer, which looks much worse than the dvd picture does. Kudos to Dark Sky Films for cleaning this up, I suppose.

We now return to our regularly scheduled programming:

I'll give Slaughter of the Vampires this: it's a more appropriate title than Curse of the Blood Ghouls, but just barely. Technically speaking, three vampires are killed, so it earns the plural quotient, and at least one of them is stabbed pretty viciously, so I'll count that as "slaughter". Otherwise, there's not much about the trailer or the title of the film that would be considered "accurate".

Most of Slaughter of the Vampires is about talking. And waiting. And talking about waiting. There's some momentum at the beginning, when the Vampire (he has no actual name, just Vampire, but is played by Dieter Eppler) and his first vampire bride (not sure who) are running like crazy from angry villagers. After he escapes and she doesn't, Count... uh, Vampire rides like crazy in a carriage to a castle. It's not really clear how he knows about the castle or if he lived there, but he moves into the cellar.

The castle belongs to Wolfgang (Walter Brandi) and Louise (Graziella Granata) and assorted servants. The Count takes a liking to Louise and decides to make her his new vampire bride. Very. Slowly. So slowly that Wolfgang has lots of time to talk about it with the servants and a Doctor and then to travel out of town to visit Dr. Nietzsche (Luigi Batzella). They talk some more and eventually get around to hunting down Louise, Count Vampire, and Louise's inexplicably vamped out servant maiden (also don't know the name. IMDB is a little vague).

As I said before, the movie is 79 minutes long. During that time I fell asleep three or four times, woke up, and rewound the dvd only to discover I'd missed nothing. Typically, it was a shot of Wolfgang 0r Dr. Nietzsche waiting for something to happen, followed by a shot of the vampire or Louise with "dramatic" music, except that they were also waiting. There's a lot of waiting for a movie where almost nothing happens.

I will say two things kept my attention, and neither one of them were the abundant cleavesploitation of Louise (who spends 80% of the movie in a low cut nightgown):

1. Count Vampire's main theme is played on a Theremin, which has the exact opposite effect they were intending (rather than mysterious and creepy, it's pretty silly).

2. The dubbing is done the same way many Japanese films are dubbed, so you get lots of overexplained sentences in order to match the mouths of characters. For example, Wolfgang says "Here comes the Doctor who was a good friend of mine in school. He will help you out he is a good Doctor. He does not bother you, does he little girl, you are not afraid of Doctors."

For a movie with a gratuitous bath scene (I mean, there is absolutely no reason for the bath, unless you really need to argue re-introducing a character late in the film) which is less suggestive than Louise's nightgown, Slaughter of the Vampires is pretty lackluster. I should have known better than to rewind after nodding off, because I probably stretched the running time into actual 90 minute territory as a result, and this movie doesn't deserve it.

Shocktober Review Revisited: Much Ado About Martyrs

 (2013 update: So I've seen Martyrs two more times since I reviewed this, removed from the Hostels and Saws and in its context alongside High Tension, Them, and Inside, and if you're looking at the film through the spectrum of the French New Wave Extreme Horror, I can understand why the torture is there. It's not meant to shock in the same way that a Saw film is. It's more of a natural progression in the dehumanizing of our replacement protagonist leading up to that final shot... yeesh. That final shot...)

With no less than four people telling me I needed to see Martyrs, it was inevitable that the Cap'n would get on top of that. I've had a reasonably good run with horror from the other side of the pond lately (Let the Right One In, Them, Frontier(s), even High Tension), and many of you were talking Martyrs up big time. I understand why, although I'm not positive I can really go whole hog with you.

In the interest of not spoiling a movie I think other people will really enjoy, I'm going to tread verrrrry carefully with Martyrs. What you've been told the film is about (or, at least, what I'd heard) is not exactly the case. It's not a "twist", per se, but rather a limited amount of information about the plot. Martyrs is technically a film about revenge, but that's only part of what's going on.

My problem with the movie, chiefly, is that the "torture" aspect of the movie, something which is regrettably a spoiler, was a little "been there, done that" for me. I've seen both Hostel movies. I've seen Saw. I've seen Funny Games, and therefore my problem with the movie was a case of desensetizing. A crucial section of the film which needs to be disturbing and needs to be shocking was, to me, boring. I wanted the movie to get on with wherever it was going.

What I will agree with those of you who championed Martyrs is that I would have never guessed where the ending was headed. Honestly. Two things happened that I did not expect at all, and combined they elevated Martyrs into lofty territory. The ending sticks with you, and in the three days since I watched it, the last fifteen minutes or so will periodically reappear in my mind and I have to play it out again.

That, in and of itself, is worth seeing the film for. Figuring out exactly what the title means, beyond the point where you think they've spelled it out, and the way its meaning unfolds in those final moments, or even in the last shot, make Martyrs worth seeing.

For me, it wasn't that the film was trying too hard to push boundaries or going for "shock", but more that by the time it actually gets where its going, I had mentally checked out. I thought I knew what kind of movie I was watching, and to be honest with you, I've been there and done that. The stories either go the Funny Games direction (the hero dies) or the Hostel direction (the hero exacts bloody retribution).

Martyrs doesn't play by those rules, but if you're really attuned to story archetypes, the third act is going to bore you a little bit. Or it did me. The end makes up for it, and balances out the first, more transparent act. So yes, I can see why so many folks are recommending Martyrs, and why director Pascal Laugier implores you to come into the film "knowing as little as possible". Alas, my enthusiam was a bit tempered, but I still say check Martyrs out.

"T" is for Turkish Star Wars

 Normally, I try to do some research about the movie I'm watching. It helps to have some context going in or when trying to relay what's happening in the film, particularly if the film doesn't make much sense. For The ABCs of Movie Masochism, I've looked at it on a case by case basis, and often it helps to give you some idea why I chose the movies I did.

 But not when it comes to the 1982 "movie" Turkish Star Wars.

 The only information I sought out for this film was its actual title (Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam or The Man Who Saved the World), because I knew going in that I wouldn't be watching it with subtitles. I was just going to let the film wash over me, untranslated, and see if I could figure out the story beyond its copious (and unauthorized) use of footage from Star Wars - hence its more popular online title. I had done this before with Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Micmacs, and was mostly able to keep up, and that movie I actually cared about.

 After a long prologue that I couldn't really make sense of, other than the fact that it consisted almost exclusively of space footage from Star Wars - sometimes the same footage, but upside down and backward - the main plot finally kicks in. The "story," as best I can tell, involves two pilots attacking the Death Star who crash land on a strange desert planet. They wander around and then one of them whistles, which draws the attention of skeletons on horseback. Fortunately, they make short work of them (if excessive, considering that they didn't need to kill ALL of them just to steal some horses) and continue on their path, until robots take their horses and force them into gladiatorial combat with the planets' indigenous population.

 The evil Emperor / sorcerer / villain who was (is?) on the Death Star is now also on the planet and our heroes are trying to stop him from finding... something.  But first they meet an old man and a girl who has a young son. When the other people are killed by mummies and pink werewolves (or I guess just aliens, it doesn't really matter) they barely escape. There's a montage of the heroes training by karate-chopping rocks and kicking boulders until they explode, and the main hero (the one with the silver-y Eric Estrada hairdo) begins to feel a romantic attachment to the woman and her son. I guess, because the extent of their "romance" consists of the camera cutting back and forth between them, until he smirks and then she smiles. It's love, you see.

 Because I don't speak Turkish let's just assume that they went to the cantina from Star Wars to start a fight and get caught by the Emperor's robots, because otherwise I'm not sure how they knew he would magically appear to taunt them and make the world turn red. The guys are split up and the main hero talks tough with the Emperor (who wants a magical brain) while the other guy is seduced by a sorceress. Like every scene in Turkish Star Wars, it ends with them fighting monsters, but this time they lose and the main hero once again finds himself in the gladiatorial battle, but with a werewolf who has tinsel on its fingertips.

 Anyway, he uses his powers of off-camera trampoline jumping to defeat the wolf and once again escapes to the tomb of Jesus (and maybe Shiva, if the mural on the wall was what I thought it was) to retrieve what I'm just going to assume is the brain of Jesus and his lightning bolt sword. After he defeats two golden ninjas, he takes the sword and the brain and there's some more stolen footage from what looks like a religious epic I couldn't place (but is letterboxed where the rest of Turkish Star Wars isn't) and betrayed by his "friend" - actually a monster in disguise.

 He goes to save his friend who again betrays him and takes Jesus' brain and sword to the old man, but that's the Emperor in disguise who uses the force to throw him around. Our hero saves him and the Emperor disappears, leaving the brain and sword behind, so they go find the real old man, who is dying. Then there's an explosion and the sidekick dies and the hero melts the brain and sword and uses them to create golden gauntlets. He's the man with the golden fists, ready to do battle with all of the forces of evil, conveniently waiting outside in a ravine.

 With his gauntlets, golden boots, and trampoline skills, he chops monsters in half, rips their heads off, and generally makes short work of everybody, including the Emperor, who he CHOPS IN HALF. Yes, he chops him in half, and to demonstrate this, the camera shows half of his face and the rest of the screen is blocked by a piece of paper (or something to that effect). Our hero then leaves in the Millenium Falcon while the theme from Raiders of the Lost Ark plays.

In fact,  I really hope you like John Williams' music from Raiders of the Lost Ark, because you're going to hear it a lot during Turkish Star Wars. Whether it's the main theme, the love theme, or the music from the truck chase, the cues are re-purposed ad nausem, with only snippets of other movie scores appearing in between (I caught some from Ben-Hur, Planet of the Apes and Battlestar Galactica). Strangely, there's no music from Star Wars - I guess they felt it was pushing it enough to lift entire sequences from the film, sometimes for no apparent reason.

 While I am not terribly familiar with Turkish cinema, I have heard of its reputation for sometimes shamelessly ripping off other movies / characters without permission (for example, I have seen 3 Dev Adam, which pits Captain America and Santos the masked wrestler against Spider-Man), but Turkish Star Wars takes it to new levels. The beginning and ending of the film consist almost entirely of footage from Star Wars, often without changing it in any fashion. It's really hard to tell if the Death Star is attacking the planet they land on or if they just crashed on the Death Star because the footage is used without context in the film.

 My friends refused to watch this with me if I wouldn't watch it with subtitles, but I sincerely doubt that would have helped beyond the long, rambling prologue and maybe the speech the old man gives in a temple. It's not that Turkish Star Wars is hard to follow, per se, but so much of it is stolen from more iconic films (specifically the one in the title) that it doesn't even matter why things are happening. Nearly every sequence ends with the heroes fighting monsters, so it's not important how they got there or why. There's barely a plot and calling the characters "wafer thin" would be a gross understatement.

 In the end, Turkish Star Wars is a curiosity, one that is probably more entertaining when watched in snippets online, completely devoid of context. Trying to make sense out of the last ten minutes without watching the first 80 is vastly more entertaining than sitting through the whole film, subtitles or not, and I certainly wasn't dying to find out what was actually happening when it was over.

"P" is for Purple Noon

 Here's an helpful nugget for those of you who are unfamiliar with Purple Noon (Plein soleil): in addition to being able to sing the title like it's a Prince song, it's the first cinematic adaptation of a Tom Ripley novel. You might recognize said character from his other appearances on film, most notably in Anthony Minghella's The Talented Mr. Ripley, Wim Wender's The American Friend, or Liliana Cavani's* Ripley's Game.

 Instead of Matt Damon or Dennis Hopper or John Malkovich, the Tom Ripley in René Clément (Is Paris Burning?)'s adaptation is the dashing Alain Delon (Le Samouraï). Clément wrote and directed Purple Noon five years after the publication of Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr. Ripley, and until very recently I must admit that I didn't know that it existed. But I'm glad I do now, because I had the opportunity to watch it and it's pretty damn good.

 While I never did get around to watching Minghella's 1999 adaptation - think of it as a byproduct of a late 90's aversion to Matt Damon that I've long since gotten over - I did read Highsmith's novel many years ago, and remembered enough of it to notice the changes in Clément's film. For the most part, they're minor ones: a character dropped here or there, changing a few names and locations, but mostly the story is intact through the middle of the film.

 The biggest changes come at the beginning and the end, one of which I'm more comfortable addressing than the other. Normally the Cap'n could care less about spoiling movies for you, but as I imagine some of you might actually want to see Purple Noon - and enjoy it, too - now that you know its background, I'll skirt cautiously around how the ending differs from the novel (and, since I looked it up, the ending of the 1999 version). Just in case.

 Rather than start in the U.S., Purple Noon picks up with Tom Ripley (Delon) already in Rome with Philippe Greenleaf (Maurice Ronet) - not "Dickie" in this version - where they've been bumming around and picking up women by pretending to be blind. They also run into Freddy Miles (Billy Kearns), who is probably still supposed to be American, but as everyone is either speaking French or Italian in the film, we'll give that a pass. That wasn't the primary distraction with Kearns, as despite my best efforts, I couldn't help but see Freddy Miles as Patton Oswalt dressed up as Jack Nance for Halloween.

 Tom and Philippe eventually return to Mongibelo, where Greenleaf''s girlfriend, Marge (Marie Laforêt) - who IS French (and implies will be going back to Paris later in the film) - is, living in the carefree playboy's house. Ripley is still trying to bring Philippe back to San Francisco to collect $5,000 from Greenleaf's father, but a taste of the good life gives him an idea. On a boat ride to Taorima, Italy, Ripley takes advantage of a prank gone awry to drive a wedge between Marge and Philippe, and when they're finally alone on the boat, he kills Greenleaf and buries the body at sea. Ripley - a master con artist - assumes Philippe's identity, forges letters and impersonates his victim well enough to fool Marge into thinking that her boyfriend ran away without her. Eventually, Ripley's game runs into a few hiccups as he must contend with Philippe's friends and Italian police interested in a murder of desperation.

 It's been long enough since I read the book that there were still a few nice surprises, ones I can't remember whether they came from the novel or not. Philippe essentially seals his fate by exposing Ripley's plan on the boat, and once Marge demands to be left at a nearby port, he and Tom sit down and play out the logistics of murdering someone and stealing their identity, up to a fatal game of very high stakes poker. While the murder is easy, Ripley nearly takes himself out with the body, falling into the choppy waves and just barely climbing back onto the yacht (named, of course, Marge).

 Delon is certainly a more handsome Tom Ripley and looks less like he'd be trying to imitate Philippe (Ronet only looks slightly older and more tanned) than simply assume his personality. I don't necessarily buy that this Tom Ripley could easily physically slip into the role - even during a scene early on where Tom is wearing his clothes and imitating his voice and hairstyle - but he strikes a more sinister figure. He simply doesn't care about anybody and will drop everything if he thinks his cover is blown, save for one exception.


  This moves us towards the end of the film, so if you want to avoid SPOILERS, just go rent Purple Noon right now.  Clément does downplay the homoerotic undertones of the relationship between Tom and Dickie from the novel, to the point that Ripley instead fixates on stealing Marge away from her dead lover. Of course, she doesn't know Philippe is dead, but Tom takes full advantage of being her only "link" to the man she thinks is hiding from her, and slowly he ingratiates himself into her heart. The major changes near the end have more to do with Ripley choosing Philippe's last act before "suicide" to be to will his fortune to Marge, much to the consternation of Mr. Greenleaf.

 Ripley also decides to return to Mongibelo, despite having managed to clear himself of any serious suspicion from the police, solely for the purpose of wooing Marge. At first, it appears he's succeeded, but when Ripley's insistence on selling the boat of his murdered "friend" turns out to be carrying a surprise, the film takes a more conventional turn in its closing. I suppose it's fair - even for 1960, to let Tom Ripley get away rich, albeit paranoid, is too subversive for conventional cinema. As it is, Clément gets away with a lot as it is - instead of killing Freddy Miles with an ashtray, Ripley clubs him to death with a statue of the Buddha, which I can hardly imagine isn't meant to have some degree of irony attached. While there is a mystery, we suppose, it always seems so easy for Tom Ripley to stay one step ahead, and the more conventional ending serves up an ironic twist for our anti-hero. Justice is served, even if it might complicate the other Ripley stories to come.

 Ah well, Purple Noon is an engaging, at times suspenseful film with beautiful cinematography and some impressive sections in small quarters (in particular, Clément uses the tiny yacht to maximum effect and creates a sense of claustrophobia even out in open water). I was amazed at how quickly the story moved for nearly two hours, and found myself caught up again, despite recalling many of the major beats. Call Purple Noon a happy discovery - rarely am I so glad to have been ignorant of cinematic adaptations, but it did mean I got a pleasant surprise out of it.



 * As I mentioned in the review for The Night Porter, I didn't even realize that Cavani had directed another film about Tom Ripley when I selected Purple Noon for the list. Tenuous connections live on!

Retro Review: Battle Royale

 Everybody is talking about The Hunger Games, a movie that I can feel comfortable reporting comes out this Friday. I can't confirm that, but I have a hunch. And when I say "everybody," I mean one person I know and every entertainment program on television, nearly every store that sells books, music (it has a soundtrack), and any website that wants to piggyback on this manufactured "phenomenon."

 Look, I'm sure that The Hunger Games will do very well (because its target audience was told it would do very well while they're waiting for the next Twilight movie which, by the way, is also now part of a fake "feud" designed to sell teen magazines) in the way that John Carter did not, largely for the same reasons: one movie has been announced as the next "must see" movie and the other was deemed a "failure" with the likes of Ishtar and Heaven's Gate before anyone had seen either film. It's how these things go, and to be honest, I'm not really interested in seeing John Carter or The Hunger Games. They might both be great movies or they might blow chunks and I'm not going to know. I also haven't read The Hunger Games trilogy or any of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Mars novels.

 To be fair, I haven't read Koushun Takami's Battle Royale, which Kinji Fukasaku adapted into a feature in 2000. I'm not sure that it falls into the "Young Adult" category of fiction or not, but it's certainly a "dystopian" novel, which I was told (on NPR) is "all the rage" and the "new 'vampire'" for teenagers. Fair enough, because when I found out what The Hunger Games was about, the first question I had was "so it's Battle Royale?" The answer, I learned, was "kind of."

 Despite the last few paragraphs, this is not going to be a comparison of The Hunger Games and Battle Royale. Today is probably the first time that a mass audience in America even knew that Battle Royale was a film. The DVD and Blu-Ray sets released by Anchor Bay represent the first official release of Battle Royale or its unfortunate sequel in the United States. For the last twelve years, the film has been available, usually through imports or suspicious looking copies, and I'm going to guess as the internet developed, probably online somewhere.

 In 2000, Battle Royale was a film of mythic proportions. I was in college, and the film was unofficially "banned" in the U.S. because of the subject matter: a dystopian future where high school students were forced to fight to the death on an abandoned island. There could be one survivor, or everybody died. It was too close to the Columbine massacre, and no American studio wanted to touch Fukasaku's film for fear of the backlash that would follow. As a result, Battle Royale was immediately taboo; it was a film we were not allowed to see, that was being withheld from audiences in the states. That's how it felt to us, in a world where it wasn't a click away, where Amazon and imported DVDs and region free players weren't as accessible as they are now.

 The premise had my attention. The "forbidden" nature increased my desire to see the film. Eventually I purchased a VHS copy of a copy of a dupe of a DVD from overseas. That was probably early 2001, and then I could see what the brouhaha was all about.

 If Battle Royale had been a lousy movie, or had simply been just about some cheap thrills for the sake of titillating gorehounds, it wouldn't mean anything that it took twelve years to be able to buy it in a "Big Box" retail store. The good news was - and is - that Battle Royale is an effective, dark, thrilling, and yes, gory, examination of human nature in extreme situations. It's an inversion of The Most Dangerous Game, where everyone is the hunter AND the hunted.

 42 students from class 3-B in Japan, some time after a massive economic and cultural collapse, are headed out on a field trip. Normally they can't be bothered to go to class - they're openly hostile to teachers, show no respect for authority, and generally act like teenagers. But in this Japan, the government developed a system to keep this problem in check: The Battle Royale Act. After being gassed on the bus, the students wake up in an abandoned school with two strangers. They're wearing metal collars they can't remove, and before they can process what's happening, armed soldiers storm into the classroom, along with Mr. Kitano (Takeshi "Beat" Kitano), their old teacher.

 He explains to them they have been selected at random to participate in Battle Royale, belittles them for being insolent brats, and kills two of the students (one to demonstrate how the collar explodes by remote control and the other because she wouldn't stop talking). This is not a joke, despite the bubbly instructor on the video Kitano wants them to watch. The 40 remaining students (plus two "transfers") are given a bag with food, supplies, and one weapon (ranging anywhere from a machine gun to the lid of a pot), and sent out onto the abandoned island. If they don't kill each other off until one survivor remains in three days, they all die.

 That's a schlocky enough gimmick to keep most people engaged, but Battle Royale goes beyond simply satisfying our urge for carnage: the film becomes a microcosm of societal responses to traumatic situations. When forced to fight each other to the death, the students don't immediately go after each other in a free for all. Their schoolyard relationships are magnified: cliques band together with different strategies and old grudges and crushes are manipulated, sometimes to unexpected advantages. Not everyone wants to kill: a group of girls hole up in a lighthouse in the hope that they can wait it out, and the computer savvy, anarcho-leaning outsiders formulate a plan to disrupt the BR system and even construct a suicide bomb to drive into the school.

 Meanwhile, the transfer students arrived with very different agendas: one volunteered in the hope of killing as many people as possible (indicated on-screen by their student number and name, plus the remaining number of contestants). The other has a history with BR and a lingering question he needs answered, as well as a strategy to beat the system. All he has to do is avoid being killed and finding himself in the "danger zone," areas of the island that cause the collars to automatically explode.

 There are a few flashbacks scattered throughout Battle Royale, providing some depth to why some of the teenage boys and girls do what they do and who they target. It explains some of the jealousies and misunderstandings that lead to tragic results, and the atmosphere of mistrust also causes some of the students to act in ways they'll immediately regret. The film succeeds both in being violent escapism but also as a study of teenage behavior pushed to an extreme degree. The ending may be a little unbelievable, even when you factor in a surprise motivation for Kitano, a man whose own children hate him. If it stumbles a little at the end, I don't mind too much. That, and I do as much as I can to pretend Battle Royale II: Requiem doesn't exist. It's the sequel that continues the story, largely in the wrong ways, and that fails to add anything to the world hinted at in the first film.

 There is an interesting side note that comes from watching Battle Royale again: based on the opening of the film, BR is something covered breathlessly by this future Japanese media. Throngs of reporters and cameras crowd in on the truck carrying the winner of the previous Battle Royale, trying to get information about the survivor of this imposed massacre. What do they get? A smile. It's a potent and disturbing way to open the film, but the concept of media coverage never figures into Battle Royale again. There's no indication that the games are televised or that people are following along at home. Other than Mr. Kitano's daily briefings, there's virtually no communication between the people running the game and the "contestants," let alone the outside world.

 I had forgotten that incongruity, but watching the film again it's clear that the prologue is either abandoned or simply was not considered relevant to Fukasaku or his son (who adapted the screenplay). That element was developed further in the film Series 7: The Contenders, a satire of reality television released in 2001. Battle Royale is successful perhaps because it doesn't even attempt to comment on the rise of reality television or media coverage beyond that opening, but I had forgotten how minute of a factor it is in the actual movie. In the end, I don't think it matters all that much. Eleven years after seeing that washed out VHS copy, I was still enthralled watching Battle Royale on Blu-Ray*. It still holds up, and now hopefully everybody will see what they've been missing all this time.


 * I don't actually have the Anchor Bay release - the Blu-Ray I have is the Arrow Films UK release from 2010, which is region free. It has the first film in its theatrical and director's cut versions, plus a disc of extras. It's basically what was released in the U.S. recently, but without the sequel. I don't miss it.