31 Days Of Horror: Day 4: Onibaba

This is part of the Final Girl's Film Club from the immortal (we hope) Stacie Ponder.



The first thing you will notice about Onibaba, is that Onibaba is hella classy.

Seriously, it’s like class up the wazoo. Classier then Axe Body Spray, Red Bull, and Ron Burgundy’s well wishes combined.

I’ll stop now, I promise. Maybe. The point is that Onibaba is one arty ass film which derives it’s terror from psychological torment and hypnotic elliptical beauty in both cinematography and design. This is directly opposed to most other films that will be featured on 31 Days Of Horrror, which derive their terror from a giant mountain man ramming some sort of bladed tool through an unsuspecting citizen.

The movie follows a old woman and her daughter in law. Her son to go fight in a war, and she and her daughter in law must fend for themselves. Which they do by trapping and killing stray samurai in a nearby very large metaphor.

This merry little arrangement is soured when the missing son’s friend show’s up, announces the kid is dead and then shacks up with his wife. The mother afraid that they leave her she might sink even lower, begs them to stay, and when that looks like it might not work, she starts preying on her daughter’s superstition with the help of a Demon Mask that she took from a young samurai she killed.

As you might suspect, things are about to get all kinds of allegorical up in this bitch. Oh and face melting too. Face Melting is definitely about to get up in this bitch ass well.. Allegorical face melting. With the class. Seriously, this makes The Innocents look like Black Sheep or Saw III in terms of reserved grandeur.

Every frame looks like it should be hanging on Morticia’s and Gomez’s wall. This is like The Barry Lyndon of Horror films. The great thing about Onibaba is that the self evident artistry in it’s making never once overwhelm the pulpy brilliance of its premise. It’s like if Kenji Mizoguchi directed an episode of Tales From The Crypt. (Wait isn't that Ugetsu?... I'm going to cinephile hell aren't I?")

Of course as by the rules of this particular brand of moralistic genre fare, those who live very large metaphor must eventually die by the very large metaphor. But the way it gets to that point are not all easy to predict. It’s a film that’s aiming not to scare, but to terrify. And that kind of film is much rarer, its something the seasoned film fan isn’t always ready for, and it puts even the most jaded watcher somewhat off kilter. It’s not just the animal reaction most horror film’s go for, Onibaba want’s to get a level of intellectual revulsion as well as physical revulsion. And it succeeds.

At the end of the day, Onibaba may not be a film I’m always in a big hurry to rewatch, but it is the perfect thing for the discerning genre fan who wants something a little different.

Spider Baby

Its that time again when Final Girl Stacie Ponder calls all her minions and admires to pay tribute to a film of her choosing. That's right its Film Club Time! After being unable to find a copy of Uzumaki to participate last month there was no way, I was missing out on Spider Baby too. The problem with this is that I have to review Spider Baby, a film that as you will see I've got some strong feelings about which means I'll probably be as much as a party killer as a Tarantula on a slice of wedding cake. Still if you want to read a great alternate take on the film I recomend Erich Kuersten's who writes about the film I wish I'd see when I watch Spider Baby.



Calling a movie “unique” “one of kind” “like nothing you’ve ever seen before” or worst of all “You have to see it to believe it” is often a lazy critical contrivance. Code for, “This movie is weird and I’m not really sure how to describe it.” Odds are given the vast amounts of films that have been made that there is probably something somewhat like the film that’s you’re describing that’s been made before.

Spider Baby is one of the exceptions to the rule. Let me tell you, this movie is the genuine article. Nothing like it has been made before or since. It’s a genuine mutant of a film so beyond the pale of narrative convention, taste, and just basic common decency that I am confident that nothing this genuinely odd will ever come down the pike again. The tagline boasts it’s the maddest story ever told and I believe it. Spiderbaby is simply put one of the strangest motherfucking movies ever made.

The film’s cult has endured for a number of reasons. It’s the first film of Jack Hill, arguably the greatest director to never break out of the AIP farm team into the big leagues. Hill has enough innate talent and visual instinct to keep the movie from being dismissed. It stars Sid Haig and Lon Chaney Jr. two names that hold plenty of weight in film freak circles. And its influence on modern directors like Rob Zombie who have been unshy about name checking the film, has kept contempary audiences interested as well. But mostly it’s the film’s notoriety and relative scaricity that keeps it alive, like a modern day Freaks it has the reputation of, and once again to forgive the hack phrase, “Something that has to be seen to be believed.”

The easiest way to describe, Spider Baby is that its like a horror film that was written, filmed, edited and then watched with a raging case of the DTs. There’s something about it that just feels wrong. Like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, it appears to be less something made then found.

Spiderbaby tells the story of an unlucky family who have a rare genetic disorder that makes them mentally regress as they get older. Some greedy distant relatives come to try to claim some inheritance or something and shit predictably hits the fan.

Things get off to a strange start with a theme song and illustrated opening credits that, don’t worry, have absolutely no bearing on the film. With lyrics that sound like the song writer had the plot described to him by the producer while both of them where very drunk and then written in a white knuckle panic and delivered to the singer (Chaney) in a similar state of inebriation. The bar of incompetence has already been set by, and a band perversely unable to keep tempo.

Then the film itself opens like a Stephen Fetchitt skit gone horribly awry(er). A black mail man, bug eyed, shuffling and stopping just short of murmuring to himself about “Dabt ole Dark House.” (The fact that this film was directed by Hill, AKA the Sternberg to Pam Grier’s Dietrich, is bitterly ironic). The broad tasteless comedy soon runs into broad tasteless violence, when the postman caught in the least convincing trap I have ever seen is killed by the titular Spiderbaby. Nothing else captures just how jaw droppingly awkward Spiderbaby is, then this attack. Which juxtaposes Spider Baby brutally hacking at her victim with a knife, with shots of the victim’s legs comically helplessly bicycling in the air as like he’s fucking Winnie The Pooh lodged in Rabbit’s hole. If it has not occurred to you by now the endless parallel cutting between those two shots will sent the thought “What the fuck were these people thinking?” rocketing to your head.

Here’s empirical proof of everything I just described in the last paragraph. Tell me I’m exaggerating.



Soon Lon Chaney comes and gently chastises the girl for her brutal murder. He’s the guardian of these children and he is really awful at his job. If there is one thing that keeps me from enjoying Spider Baby as a harmless kitschy oddity from the drive in era, no better or worse then Vampire Hookers, its Chaney’s performance. It goes beyond, merely grotesquely funny like some of John Carradine’s later booze soaked performance, and crosses the border into genuinely pitiful. Chaney’s booze swollen features are like a Greek mask and add undeserving pathos to the movie. He looks like he’s in genuine agony in every frame of the film. You can’t even laugh, its too real pathetic and sad. You just want to get the poor guy into an AA meeting.



This is all before, Sid Haig shows up in a diaper.

Spiderbaby isn’t a movie that’s watched its endured. As a result its place among cultists as a secret handshake is in some regards, earned. Say what you will about Spiderbaby but no normals are going to make it through. Its for the true believers only. But lets not kid ourselves. There’s nothing here more worthwhile then a particularly seedy, sad, geek show. All the subversive edge in the world can't help but make the chicken blood dribbling out of the corner of its mouth more then a little tawdry.

The Wicker Man

It's that time of month again! Film Club at your and mine's favorite Final Girl!

Before I start this review perhaps it’s time to come clean that I consider myself to be at least a semi devout Christian. Please don’t run, I promise that I don’t try to keep Gay people from getting married. In fact my own band of liberal Catholicism has just as little in common with the constables strict fire and brimstone, as it does with Somerset’s Paganism.

I mention this because one of the easiest ways to get in my good graces is for a movie to take its theology seriously. And that, even above a nekkid Bret Ecklund, the creepy singular vibe, eerie design, killer ending and the fact that it turns into the most bizarre musical of all time, is what really makes The Wicker Man one of my favorites. Even though its ambiguous whether The Wicker Man comes down on the pro or con side of that particular argument, it is a serious consideration of the pros and cons of the Christian Doctrine versus the Pagan one.

For those three of you not familiar with the movies concept, The Wicker Man follows the late great Edward Woodward as a devoutly Christian Constable sent to investigate the disappearance of children on a remote British isle which is ruled by the flamboyant Lord Summerisle, played by Christopher Lee who has never had quite so much fun before.

As many have noted Summerisle comes off almost as the hero in the piece. He’s likable and witty, while Woodward is such an uptight douche that even his fellow Christians and Cops think he should lighten up a bit. Lee has naked Orgies and singalongs! Woodward likes to pray and scowl! Summerisle is witty and urbane, Woodward simple minded and provincial. Its not tough to decide which you’d rather have around. Hell I’d probably end up inviting Summerisle to my Christmas Party over Woodward.

So the revisionist take on The Wicker Man is that its Summerisle whose really the hero, the free and funky Pagan giving the stodgy ole Christian his just deserts. And while I can certainly understand why you’d read it like that, I cannot agree.

Say what you will about Woodward, but he’s not a hypocrite and he’s not wrong. Say what you will about Christianity’s track record of not respecting other cultures (Hint its not a very good one), but I have to say their ruling on the whole not Burning little girls alive (You know when they weren’t the ones doing it) strikes me as the right one. The whole point of Religion is to hold yourself to some higher standard of behavior. To not just do whatever the fuck you want. Where Christianity (and all religions) go wrong is when they’re used to justify abhorrent behavior. Everytime someone blows up an abortion clinic for Jesus, or covers up some child molesting, or flies a plane into the World Trade Center or tearfully explains to Diane Sawyer that he as Governor had no idea that girl was under eighteen but he knows the lord has forgiven him; religion has gone terribly wrong. Woodward isn’t one of those people. Summerisle is.

Lest debate about the Nature of God isn’t what you come to a horror movie for, have no fear The Wicker Man remains an eerie fucking movie (One of the weirdest film phenomeon of the new century has been the rise of the counter cult for The Wicker Man remake. I was working at a video store at the time and almost broke down crying, “No you don’t understand it’s a good movie too!) but also one that leaves you something to chew on, long after the smokes extinguished and the credits roll.

THE RETURN OF 31 DAYS OF HORROR: #20 City Of The Living Dead (AKA Gates Of Hell)

This is my entry in Hugo Stiglitz Makes Movies Italian Horror Blogothon. It's awesome. Go there.

EDIT And now its part of Final Girl's Film Club too! Call it laziness if you want I prefer the term synergy.


Lucio Fulci has always been the goofus to Argento and Bava’s gallant. It’s a matter of personal taste of course, one of those Beatles Vs. Rolling Stones things, but I’ve always been drawn to Bava’s darkly gothic fables, and Argento’s surreal dreamscapes more then Fulci’s beyond the pale splatter. Fulci’s films when compared to Bava’s or even Argento’s remind me of that one episode of South Park where Cartman met Bart Simpson. “What’s that kid? You sawed the head off a stautue? Wow. This guy cooked a kids parents then fed them to him." Have you ever seen Four From The Apocalypse? That weird guy from Bonnie And Clyde ended up feeding a bunch of cowboys a dead guy’s ass. AND HE WASN’T EVEN TRYING TO BE MEAN! It's not a put on. That level of perversion just seems to come just as naturally to Fulci as Michael J. Pollard’s ass serving instincts come to him. He’s not being malicious it’s just what he does. So why write about one of his films rather then one of their’s?

Well I don’t want to give the impression that I don’t thoroughly enjoy some of Fulci’s films. Zombie is always fun, The Beyond is a classic and deservedly so, and I have a particular affection for The House By The Cemetary, as it kind of plays like The Shining if both Kubrick and King had gone batshit insane.

Still neither can hold a candle to the mind melting lethal dose of crazy that is City Of The Living Dead. How crazy is City Of The Living Dead you ask? So crazy that it starts off with a priest hanging himself and that’s the least offensive thing you see in the movie. The Priest hangs himself which somehow causes the zombies to rise (Like many Fulci movies narrative clarity not so much). Teleporting, superstrong Zombies, which in my opinion is somewhat gilding the lily, cause that’s just how this movie rolls.

Meanwhile (a word I’ll be using a lot in this review) A Coven of witches psychically witnesses the event in New York causing one of their number to freak out and end up buried alive (long story). Then there’s a screaming ball of fire. The movie briefly turns into blacksploitation. Some guy’s sex with a blowup doll is interrupted by a rotting corpse. Then some guys in “Maine” drink in a bar that is obviously your Dad’s rec room while mirrors explode and the walls crack. Then the Zombie Ghost Priest makes a couple on lover’s lane vomit up their intestines. Also a woman casually admits her incestuous desire, and there’s a grave digger who looks uncannily like Vince Vaughn.

And that’s just the first twenty minutes.

Yay Fulci!

Guys this is a weird fucking movie. Let me say that again. This is a really. Really. Weird fucking movie.

The thing about Fulci is he’s not a hack. Anyone can throw a bunch of crazy shit at the wall to distract you from the fact that they don’t know a thing about making movies. Hell you just have to look at Slaughter High to prove that. Fulci knows how to put a sequence together. The scene where Mary wakes up in her grave is as clautrophobic and terrible buried alive scene as I can remember. His visuals are tremendous (check the blood pouring into the milk). And even scenes featuring such as over the top as The Zombie Ghost Priest (From here on out referred to as the ZGP) forcing folks on lover lane to vomit up sheep intestines, has a real sense of dread and unease.

The film does calm down enough to be said to have a plot involving a hard boiled reporter and said buried alive witch attempting to close the portal of hell that ZGP has somehow opened before Halloween. Though it does keep going off on these bizarre diversions such as when an enraged guy murders his daughter’s boyfriend with a power drill. Still the way Fulci weaves these batshit insane vignettes with the main narrative of the film makes me mourn the fact that he never made a Stephen King Movie.

City Of The Living Dead shares a lot in common with The Beyond, Fulci’s most famous flick. But I prefer it to it’s more famous big brother. And not least of all because the whole vomiting of the sheep guts scene is one of the most batshit crazy things I’ve ever witnessed in a horror film.

Like most Fulci flicks City Of The Living Dead is loud, gory and if you understand what happened at the end you deserve a cookie and probably also a doctorate. But it is a whole hell of a lot of fun.

The Devil's Rain

The Devil’s Rain is one of those movies which you think, you can comprehend before you see it. “Sure,” you oh foolish reader say, “I get it, William Shatner, Tom Skerritt, Ida Frickin Lupino, John Travolta, easy scientologist jokes involving his weakness for joining kooky religions, Ernest Borgnine as Old Scratch hisself. I can handle kitschy movies after all I saw Troll 2!”



Gentle reader you have no idea what awaits you when you pop The Devil’s Rain into your unsuspecting DVD player. It’s not a movie it’s a Lovecraftian Beast imprisoned on home video. Once you see it you can’t unsee it. Anton LeVay may have been an adviser on this movie but I have a sneaking suspicion that it was Abdul Alhazred that directed this thing. The movie might only take 80 minutes, but in that time it’ll sear itself into your psyche.

The movie starts with a montage from Bosch and a heavy score. This will be the most subtle thing in it. Afterwards the movie starts in proper with Shatner already carving up thick slices of ham, as he argues with his mother on a dark and stormy night, about people who we do not know. Then suddenly, out of the rain, THE DEVIL’S RAIN!!! Shatner’s now eyeless father emerges harasses Shatner and then muddles into a pile of goop after mumbling “HAIL SATAN!!” in Latin. Both Shatner and Lupino take this exceedingly well considering the circumstances, with Lupino taking it mainly as an opportunity to say “Told you so!” and Shatner not even seeming to notice that his father has seemingly had his eyes gouged out.



Anyway it turns out that all the hubbub is over a Satanic book (see kid’s reading will get you nowhere, in fact stop reading this, wait stop I’m kidding please comeback I’m so lonely) Shatner gets in some great pauses ("My Father………………………….Would Agree with me.") and then runs off to the desert to do battle with The Father Of All Lies, pausing only briefly to register that Satan has fucked up his uncle and kidnapped his Mother, once again aside from a prime Shatner “CORVIS GOD DAMN YOU!!!” he takes it all exceedingly instride.



Anyway it’s been twenty minutes and not one Borgnine sighting. This bringing the Borgnine ratio of awesomeness dangerously low. But fear not friends, He show’s up in the desert and does such ghastly supernatural acts like, making water appear from a well!……..

Well I guess I wasn’t really that impressed either. Borgnine wants the evil book, Shatner wants to not give Borgnine the evil book. They reach an impasse. Watching Borgnine and Shatner try to out act eachother is truly something to see it looks a little something like this.



So Shatner challenges Lucifer to a good ole fashioned faith off, forgetting despite his supposedly religious leanings, that theologically speaking that’s exactly what you’re NOT supposed to do if you encounter The Devil (No seriously, I don't mean to get all church lady here but Matthew 4:7) . After the predictable happens, Satan takes out Shatner with the ole Cross into a rattlesnake routine.

After that we cut abruptly to Tom Skerritt and his psychic wife. Turns out that Skerritt’s the brother of Shatner and he’s next on the menu. A seemingly stoned Skerrit ends up back out to the family spread, to argue with the most overactingest over actor in the movie (and really lets think about what that means) playing a Sheriff whose all a hooting an a hollering over how Skerritt’s an idiot to think just because his families house is wreck, and the uncle is a babbling loon now, that there’s anything to worry about.

The same non reactions occur for awhile, this seems to be the first horror film that was shot with everyone on Quaaludes (except for Borgnine whose definitely doing some Crystal Meth).

Next thing we know a shirtless sweating Shatner is chained to a table, while Borgnine rants at him and then watches as Shatner makes out with his mother and is then crucified upside down. At that point the movie promptly becomes the greatest thing ever.

Skerritt shows up a bit too late with psychic wife, whose impressive powers don’t warn her to the fact that The Devil will soon torch their car. That’s right, The Devil, using his same awesome “Water From the Well” powers just straight up pulls a Detroit. And Just when you think this has got to be the least impressive version of The Lord Of The Flies put on film… Out comes EYELESS JOHN TRAVOLTA!!!!



HOLY FUCKING SHIT EYELESS JOHN TRAVOLTA!!! Just as you’re recovering from that shock of awesome it cuts to Pilgrim Ernest Borgnine who starts speaking with a bunch of Thee’s and Thou’s! Words cannot describe the pleasure I get from Ernest Borgnine dressed as a pilgrim speaking like he’s in the Satanic version of Shakespeare in the park. The flashback reveals what the whole Feud between Borgnine and Shatner’s peeps is about. But you barely register it because. PILGRIM ERNEST BORGNINE AND EYELESS JOHN TRAVOLTA!!!

Anyway Shatner, who I keep thinking is dead by the way, shows up again, this time with extra Pentagram carved into the chest action. And all the Satanist show up to watch him sacrificed. Er. Again. Then Ernest Borgnine turns into a goat and burns William Shatner’s soul with a voodoo doll.

Then Ernest Borgnine Turns Into A Goat and burns William Shatner’s soul with a voodoo doll.



THEN ERNEST BORGNINE TURNS INTO A GOAT!!! AND BURNS WILLIAM SHATNER’S SOUL WITH A VOODOO DOLL!!!




THEN ERNEST BORGNINE TURNS INTO A GOAT!!! AND BURN’S WILLIAM SHATNER’S SOUL WITH A VOODOO DOLL!!!



Then people melt, and the movie ends, and you ascend to a higher level of consciousness. So you’ve got that going for you. All in all The Devil's Rain fucking kicks your fucking ass in a way that Christan Bale only threatened to do.