31 Days Of Horror: Day 5: Vampires

I’d written off Vampires without seeing it. It’s no secret that post They Live Carpenter is spotty, if you want to be polite about it (Cigarette Burns, and hopefully The Ward, excluded). Vampire’s promised to be no exception.

Well, I’m glad I did see it. Vampire’s isn’t great, but it’s not the full born travesty that Ghosts On Mars and Children Of The Damned is either. It’s fun enough. If I had to compare it to one film in Carpenter’s oeuvre, it’d be Prince Of Darkness. It’s a film that tries for some interesting stuff, but has a lot more to offer in potential then in practice. A film that is perhaps half of what it should be. But at least it has a kick ass John Carpenter score to its credit.

James Woods stars as the leader of a crew of Fearless Vampire Killers, hired by the Vatican who ends up on the business end of a very pissed off Original vampire. These being pre Twilight Vampire’s, they enjoy ripping the throats out of people and drinking their still steaming blood, rather then sparkling and serving as abstinence metaphors. In short order Wood’s finds himself on the receiving end of a Vampiric Beat down stick, with an unreliable ally in his Vatican Bosses, and what little remains on his of his old team quickly turning equally unreliable.

In true Carpenter fashion only his righteous badassedness can save him.

The film begins promisingly enough, with a team of vampire hunters methodically taking apart a nest of vamps, in a tense well put together set piece. It’s followed immediately by a full on retaliatory massacre by the head vamp, which features some tremendous pre CGI gore effects.

That’s when the movie just kind of stops.

We get about a half hour of skullduggery and hugger mugger. Followed by Mythology and subplots that are just powerfully uncompelling. Things do pick up a bit at the end. Including a pretty decent set piece in which our remaining vampire hunters attempt to lure the pack out of their stronghold.

James Woods brings the full brunt of his skeevy charm to the role of Jack Crow, vampire hunter extraordinaire. But he’s dragged down by his partner, played by one of the lesser Baldwins, who’s what we refer to as a drag on the ticket. And Sheryl Lee who spends the majority of her time looking utterly befuddled. Together, they participate in one of the least engaging perfunctory romances in recent memory. They stop the film dead whenever they appear onscreen. Which is with unfortunate regularity. Things aren't helped by a villain who is closer to the Big Daddy Martian Zombie end of the spectrum then Lo Pan.

Unfortunately they’re responsible for most of the film’s boring ass middle section. And while things do pick up for a good final set piece, the final part of the finale is one of the most egregious anticlimaxes this side of Desperado.

On the whole Vampires isn’t a disaster, just kind of a disappointment. Don’t get me wrong it definitely has its moments. But it’s even more frustrating because of the flashes of brilliance it shows.

Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo...

My Buddies over at On The Stick are Hosting a Twilight Zone Marathon. There's been alot of great stuff so far, and it's just getting warmed up.

Today I happened to guest post with The Monster Are Due On Maple Street. And I'll be in for at another, as well as a super seekret project. To be unveiled soonish.

Until then, head on over to On The Stick for a bit of the old magic. A world of light nor shadow. Of Sound And Mind.

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.

31 Days Of Horror: Day 3: They Live

This review is my first (but trust me not last) entry to JD's of Radiator Heaven's John Carpenter Blogothon. It's started off great and it's just going to get better.

They Live is not subtle. Neither is a Molotov cocktail through the window. But it’s mighty effective.

They Live is a satire that doesn’t want you to miss a single point it’s making. And that’s OK, as far as I’m concerned. I mean sure the coded messages Piper finds under the world's advertising, sending base messages of Obedience and consumption for consumptions sake, may be blunt. But can you say they're not true to life?

In the giddy world of making believe, the American economy is in a freefall, as the middle class is destroyed by corporate maneuvering; while the media is used to keep them pacified and powerful forces misdirect populist anger. I know it’s far fetched right?

Don’t worry though, it’s not David Koch, it’s a race of aliens, who are helping dismantle the government with the help of Earth’s parasitical elite. Phew.

You know I’m going to stop pointing to parallels now, before the aneurysm kicks in.

It’s all fairly in tune with what Carpenter’s always done. There’s a damn good thesis to be written about the use of the disenfranchised as a subject of horror. It focuses on another of Carpenter’s solidly blue collar action heroes. This time a hard working man out of work™. Whose living at a hobo camp when he notices a sharp increase in the rise of both Jack Booted Thuggery and strange Television commercials. Sensing a correlation between the two he sneaks into the basement of a local church where he finds…

C’mon seriously. Do I really need to tell you? More so then any of his films aside from Halloween, They Live has crossed over. It’s one of those movies everyone knows, even those who haven’t seen it. And while that isn’t solely because of the film alone (Shepard Fairey owes John Carpenter a fucking Coke that’s all I’m saying) that doesn’t change the fact that They Live is a film that relentlessly, primally works.

Into the chaos strides Rowdy Roddy Piper, AKA “I’m not Kurt Russell, though clearly I was intended to be.” Piper actually does turn in a pretty solid performance. He delivers the immortal “Kick Ass and Chew Bubblegum” line with conviction and certainly knows how to deliver a pile driver. He’s just not Kurt Russell. Still he is partnered with Keith David, who can generate enough charisma for ten men.

Carpenter would never get away with making They Live, the way it is now. And I’m not even talking about the subversive content. It keeps it’s hero in the dark for over a half an hour, more then a third of its runtime. No way any film today would be allowed to bury their hook so deep. Especially not one so insanely catchy as the one that power’s They Live.

The film does have it’s flaws, it carries the pacing goes slack at times, with a distinct whiff of filler, even in the famous “Put the glasses on!” scene, glorious expenditure of testosterone that it is. And though I can’t call something a flaw that I love so dearly, it has always struck me as odd that Carpenter seemed to consciously try to end They Live on the least classy note possible. The last shot of They Live is like one of those crazy ideas you would always hear Sam Fuller wistfully talk about that a horrified studio would never let him make (look up his plans for the opening of Underwold USA sometime). It gets the idea across in the most horrifically direct way possible.

And it’s that sheer heat of the movie carries it through. Sure we come for the kicking ass and the chewing bubblegum, Roddy Rowdy Piper laying some Space Skeleton’s low. But it’s impossible to watch a scene like the one set in the stockholder’s meeting, in which a smiling upper class blithely sells out the future of their species for their own personal gain, without tapping into the well of populist anger that flows through the film at all times. And makes it impossible to forget once seen.

31 Days Of Horror: Day 2: Burnt Offerings

I love haunted house films in theory, but more often then not, not in practice. Conceptually speaking, out of all the standard “Movie Monsters” the haunted house is the most potent. Our home is supposed to be the one place we’re safe. The one place we can take our armor off and truly be ourselves. “A Man’s home is his castle.” And the idea that that refuge could be malignant. Waiting patiently to hurt us badly in the places we’re most vulnerable, is a powerful one.

Unfortunately for every truly effective take on this idea, for every The Haunting, The Shining, and Poltergeist; there are ten movies which feature well heeled actors looking vaguely bored until someone in a sheet walks by.

So lets give Burnt Offerings some points for ambition. Though it’s not entirely successful it does have some ideas about what it wants to do.

The story is standard boilerplate, Reed and his family rent a country manner far beyond their ways and means, for only nine hundred dollars for the entire season. Little do they know the collateral will be their souls!!! (Shuddup it’s late). The result is one of those crazy ass, “Wait Wut?” casts that periodically popped up in the seventies. I mean Oliver Reed (“Oh thank God. He’s always Drunk and surly!”), Betty Davis, Burgess Meredith, and Karen “Cockeyed” Black all in the same movie? Jesus there must have been some days on that set. It rivals The Sentinel in quantity if not stamina.

Oliver Reed and Davis seem pointedly amused by one another. Davis gives a fine performance. At such late a date one must admire both the dignity that Davis composed herself with in the majority of her scenes, and the lack of vanity it must have took to let herself look so God awful in others. Seriously there are scenes in this where she looks like the crypt keepers mother. I’m talking decrepit. Unfortunately, Reed and Black have not an eighth of their chemistry. Understandable, as Black is one of the most phenomenally least charismatic actresses to ever have an underserved run of good luck.

The problem is that Burnt Offerings traffics very little in the way of boo scares. The horror is derived, supposedly from watching Reed’s and Black’s relationship fracture. Only we don’t give a damn about that relationship, and neither for that matter do Reed or Black. While Reed and Black seem so or less indifferent to each other that the fracturing of their bond feels like a forgone conclusion, not a tragedy.

In the meantime Burnt Offerings none too successfully walks the fine line between deliberately paced and slow. Alternating scenes of the couple half heartedly arguing with a few genuinely disturbings scenes. Most courtesy of a creepy ass grinning Chauffer, but also including a particularly disturbing scene, in which Reed almost drowns his son in the pool, without seeming to realize what he’s doing. His horseplay crossing from jolly to malevolent without the boundary between the two ever really being clear.

Things heat up in time for a climax whose unrelenting grimness after a relatively staid preceding two hours is more likely to invoke an arched eyebrow then terror.

At the end of the day, Burnt Offerings is a noble, but unsuccessful effort. I give it points for trying, and I’m glad I watched it. But I won’t be in any hurry to see it again.

EDIT: As I am want to do after finishing my review I perused the interwebs to see what other reviews said of the film in question.

That's how I came across this little gem from Ebert.

"Burnt Offerings" is a mystery, all right. What's mysterious is that the filmmakers were able to sell such a weary collection of ancient cliches for cold hard cash. That's why they're rich and the rest of us are poor.

I love it when he gets catty.

31 Days Of Horror: Day 1: The Blair Witch Project

I had a tough time picking an opener for the third 31 Days Of Horror. Ideally I like to start things out with a personal favorite. Not simply a classic of the genre, but a film that embodies what horror means to me. Originally I was going to open with I Walked With A Zombie, but then was given the opportunity to screen it, meaning that I’ll instead be writing it up on the 30th. Then, I was going to move on to write up the original Halloween, but as JD’s John Carpenter Blogothon is going to make the first week of 31 Days Of Horror plenty Carpentercentric enough as it is.

But then I thought about it and realized that the key word in it was personal. It’s the key word for a lot of horror, just witness Andre Dumas’s genius “Willies” experiment. I knew just what film I had to cover.

Now that the hype and backlash cycle have finally worn down, it seems most people can agree that the The Blair Witch Project, is a pretty fucking scary film. But it becomes even scarier when I recognize the fact that I lived through the dynamic that powers the film several times.

The world of independent film is a world based on favors. So every so often you find yourself and a few friends of friends banded together for a day of shooting, the reasons for which you agreed to this becoming increasingly unclear as the day goes on. Things begin often earlier in the morning then your accustomed to; with a sense of friendly bonhomie. Things end, more often then not, twelve hours later, with you more or less wishing everyone you’ve spent the day with would just go ahead and die already. A day of missed shots, cramped cars, heavy equipment, shoddy directions, difficult personalities, cheap food, caffeine, and cigarettes, will put a strain on even the healthiest of relationships, let alone virtual strangers. And for the most part film crews don’t have to deal with a psychotic something in the woods that’s distorting reality, making them walk in circles, and periodically killing/ and or fucking with them mercilessly. And the way that the central cast devolves from good natured, even elated fucking about, to complete and utter contempt and hatred, is one I can’t help but watch with a shiver of recognition.

It goes without saying, that said psychotic witch in The Blair Witch is the thing that makes The Blair Witch a horror film and not say, a comedy of manners ala In The Soup. But that in it’s way almost exactly the point, remove the witch and it could be. All horror films, all good ones anyway, base themselves in the fears and anxieties of day to day life. It’s maybe not so specific as The Blair Witch, but it’s not hard to see how fears of suffocation from all points of the triangle in the nuclear family feed into The Shining. Or how the literalizing of class warfare powers The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and The Hills Have Eyes. Or the shifting in social mores gives The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby their kick.

My point is, that great horror movies don’t work because of Tits, gore, and a liberal helping of beer. As great as all of those things are...

No great horror movies work for the same reason all great cinema works. Because we see something of ourselves projected on the screen.

The cast of The Blair Witch Project make it very easy to do that. Vulnerable and paniced, they look and act like people who have been trapped out in the spooky ass woods for a several more days then they would like to be. It’s helpful that that was what they actually were.

But it would be a mistake to write off The Blair Witch Project, as just an improv act, the way the film’s first detractor’s did. Now that the “found footage” aesthetic has kicked off in earnest ten years later, it’s a lot easier to see just how much method there is behind Myrick and Sanchez’s madness. The movie is relentlessly paced, scouted, and designed. Scenes as relentlessly effective as the final trip inside the house, and the stumbling upon of the wooden figures, and makeshift cemetery don’t happen by accident. They happen because the filmmakers understood how to create a situation, and then maximize it with the tools they had. Something like Cloverfield, Paranormal Activity and even moreso with a later film like The Last Exorcism, clearly approaches things from the technique first. It’s an approach that says, “I can chop my budget and shooting schedule in half making this movie this way. What’s a clever way for me to get away with that.” (One thing that The Blair Witch Project does that those other films don't is solve that eternal "Why don't they drop the camera?" question, by making it a matter of psychology rather then "Well if we didn't then we wouldn't have a movie?)

Meanwhile something like The Blair Witch Project, or The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, not found footage technically sure but definitely the genus’s spiritual father, seem like to borrow the phrase, “Snuff Films shot in hell.” The style is derived from the content, not the other way around.

And unlike so many of the found footage "documentaries" this seems like it could actually be one. From simple things, like the way that the urban legend, has splintered The Blair Witch into seemingly three different entities (The crying child trying to cover her mother’s mouth as she attempts to relay her share of the mythos to the camera a perfect touch) to the way it grabs at that primal animal fear of being alone in the woods with no way out.

Blair Witch isn’t a movie that does all the work for you. It requires a fertile, and willing, imagination to strike sparks off of. More then that, it requires what all great horror requires of their viewers. A tremendous sense of empathy. Perhaps no horror film since Hitchcock so nakedly demands us to put ourselves in the place of the protagonists.

We horror fans are often accused of being desensitized. I think just the opposite is true. It wouldn’t scare us. If we couldn’t feel it.

31 Days Of Horror: So It Begins...

I do so love October in the blogosphere.

There's all kind of good stuff out there. Be sure to check out my buddies at On The Stick, whose Twilight Zone Marathon will start today, and Countdown To Halloween, a registry for all blogs who hold some real love for October in their hearts.

Meanwhile, while we wait for the first entry in 31 Days Of Horror, a little mood music: