Tag: horror movies

The Friday Night Horror Movie: Cure (1997)

cure movie poster

Unlike previous Friday nights, I’ve actually sat through tonight’s entire Horror Movie before writing this post. Theoretically, this means I can actually write a review of it now, instead of making vague promises to tell you what I think of it tomorrow (and then forgetting to actually do so). In reality, it is late, and I am tired, and my brain cannot think of anything to say about it.

Briefly, the plot involves a series of grisly murders being committed by seemingly ordinary people. There is a detective (Kôji Yakusho) trying to understand why this is happening, and an amnesiac (Masato Hagiwara) who may be hypnotizing them into doing it.

The plot is, at times, a bit silly and it is a whole lot enigmatic, but the director Kiyoshi Kurosawa fills it with atmosphere and mood. It is all about the vibe of the film more than the actual plot. I really quite loved it.

Hell High (1989)

hell high bluray

Yesterday I spoke of the joy of reviewing Blu-rays in that it enables me to discover interesting new movies I might have otherwise overlooked. The underside of this is that I sometimes I have sit through (and review) really terrible movies. Hell High was one of those. As you’ve probably figured out I’m a big fan of horror movies and the slasher subgenre of horror. Hell High is a late-period slasher that tries to have fun with the genre’s tropes, and pretty much fails miserably. If you want to know more (and I know you do) then you can read my review here.

Salem’s Lot (1979)

salems lot poster

I was slow coming ’round to Stephen King. Growing up I was more of a Dean Kontz man. I read the short story The Langoliers when I was in high school and loved it, but for some reason didn’t even both finishing the other short stories in the book much less read any other King. In college, I read Dolores Claiborne, and loved it, and then didn’t get around to reading any other King books until a few years later. And so it went for a long time. I’d read a King book, love it, and then not pick one up again for many months or years. And then four or five years ago I got a copy of the Mr. Mercedes audiobook from the library and really dug it, then picked up the sequel, Finder’s Keepers, and I was off to the races. I’ve been reading him steadily ever since.

I read ‘Salem’s Lot about 12 years ago and absolutely loved it. I’m a sucker for vampire stories and King tells a really good one. It remains one of my favorite novels of his. Tobe Hooper directed a two-part TV miniseries back in 1979 and I decided to rewatch it this week. It is surprisingly good.

The story concerns Ben Mears (David Soul) a writer (the first of many times the protagonist in a King story would have that occupation) who grew up in the small town of Salem’s Lot, but moved away as a boy. He comes back to write about a spooky old house up on a hill that has a sordid history and is rumored to be haunted. He plans on renting it but as it turns out the house has just been purchased by the mysterious Richard Straker (James Mason, completely enjoying himself), and his absent partner Kurt Barlow.

Turns out Barlow is an ancient vampire and Straker is his familiar. But the movie takes its time getting to that part. First Ben has to meet Susan (Bonnie Bedelia), the romantic interest, plus other assortments of characters. It isn’t until the second part of the movie, more than 90 minutes into its three-hour runtime that we actually see the vampire. Mysterious things do happen, people get sick, a kid dies, a dog is murdered, etc., but Hooper keeps the pace slow and the eeriness high.

There is quite a lot of padding, as one would expect from a TV movie made in 1979. And the production values fit within that genre as well. But Hooper gives some good jump scares and several truly spooky scenes. There’s one in which a vampire kid floats into another kid’s room which is an all-timer. The look of the main vampire is very Nosferatu-esque and pretty darn terrific.

It is a film that, if you consider the budget and its limitations, comes across as surprisingly great, and well worth watching.

The Friday Night Horror Movie: Two Evil Eyes (1990)

image host

When my daughter was much younger, and we were living in a little apartment we used to have what we called sleepover nights. Regularly, on a Friday night, my wife and I would drag our mattress into the living room and we’d make up the couch into a little bed for the girl. We’d make some popcorn and stay up late watching movies. Then we’d all sleep together in the living room. It was always a very fun time.

Then we bought a two-story house. The bedrooms were all upstairs so it was impossible to drag a mattress downstairs to the living room. Luckily, we have a television in our bedroom so we’d make a palette for the daughter on the floor and continued our sleepovers there.

Eventually, my daughter decided my wife and I snored too loud and she stopped sleeping in our room. But we’d still stay up late on Friday nights watching movies. One Friday night I realized our local college TV station was playing Tom Baker-era Doctor Who stories and I started watching them each week. My wife likes classic Doctor Who as well so she’d join me. My daughter loves Nu-Who, but she’s never quite got the appeal of the classic series. Still, she’d bring in her toys and play while we watched the TV show.

Eventually, this turned into us just watching the new series so my daughter could enjoy it with us. At some point, I started going downstairs after the show was over and my wife and daughter would stay in our bedroom watching YouTube videos.

I’d usually turn on a movie downstairs, usually falling asleep on the couch. Eventually, random movies turned into horror movies. Friday has become my favorite night of the week as we order a pizza, watch Doctor Who and then I watch a horror movie late into the evening.

I thought it might be fun to make a regular post of my Friday Night Horror Movies, so here we are.

The thing is, I haven’t actually watched the movie yet, and this will be true of every Friday night posting. Like I said I usually fall asleep on the couch watching the movie and so I won’t be able to actually talk about what I’ve watched until Saturday. But it seems silly to have a post called The Friday Night Horror Movie when I’m writing it on a Saturday morning.

What I’d like to do is start the post on Friday Nights and then maybe sometime on Saturday edit in a review.

This week’s movie is Two Evil Eyes, which is actually two movies in one. Originally planned as an anthology movie with multiple directors it turned into two one-hour films with Dario Argento and George A. Romero taking a stab at adapting an Edgar Allan Poe story. I’ll let you know what I think of it tomorrow.

Ok, it is Sunday now, so obviously I forgot to tell you what I thought “tomorrow.”

And now I’ve seen like five movies since watching this one so my memory is a little blurry. Basically, I liked this movie pretty well. I’m not well read in Poe’s books. I’ve read one or two stories and of course “The Raven” but that’s about it. I have seen several different cinematic adaptations of The Black Cat, two of which were adapted by Argento’s Italian compatriots Sergio Martino and Lucio Fulci. So that story is quite familiar to me even if I haven’t read the book.

The Romero story, The Facts in the Case of M. Valdem, is completely unfamiliar to me. It involves a woman who married an old, rich bastard in order to get his money. But he’s taking too long to die so she and an ex-boyfriend hatch a plan to hypnotize him, get him to sign over all his wealth to her, and then murder him. Everything goes to plan except after he’s dead he keeps on living.

Or something. It isn’t very clear whether he turns into a zombie or a ghost or something else. It has Romero’s typical social commentary (rich people are both horrible and weird), some nice gore, and little else.

Argento’s Black Cat adaptation doesn’t do anything new with the material. A crime scene photographer (played with gusto by Harvey Keitel) kills his girlfriend, ties her corpse to some coat hangers then builds a wall around her. A black cat helps get him captured by the police.

It has some of Argento’s typical style (there is a POV shot of the cat and some great extreme close-ups) and lots of blood-soaked violence. The opening scene is basically the aftermath of Poe’s story The Pit and the Pendulum.

All in all neither film is particularly great, but if you are a fan of either director there is enough here to make it worth your time.

Cinderella (2006)

cinderella poster

For as far back as I can remember I have loved horror movies. Growing up in the 80s I can remember begging my mother to let me see the slasher films of Freddie Kreuger, Jason, and Michael Myers. Mostly she said no, but I still managed to catch them on late-night cable TV. Later the voyeuristic, sick pleasures of real death films like Faces of Death became something of an underground scene at my school. In the decades since that time, I have continued in my love for horror and gore.

The slasher film seemed to go out of style sometime in the early 90s but came back in vogue a few years later with Scream and its winking, ironic sensibilities. Now we’ve got Asian horror and its significant lack of naked breasts but with plenty of extreme violence. This brings us to Cinderella.

I’m not exactly sure why this film is called Cinderella as there is nary a Prince Charming, a mouse, nor a pumpkin carriage to be found, but there is enough dark moodiness to have Cinderella and her stepsisters screaming for mercy.

The story revolves around Hyun-soo (Shin Se-Kyung) and her mother, Yoon-hee (Do Ji-Won), a plastic surgeon. Dear old Dr. Mom performs facelifts for all of Hyun-soo’s friends who are obsessed with ul-jjang (the ideal beauty), but before long things start going horribly wrong. The face-lifted friends begin having weird visions of their faces being clawed off, which leads them to do some pretty nasty stuff to themselves.

Hyun-soo also begins having visions that her face is a horrible wreck, and she hears voices claiming her own face is someone else’s.

The film is loaded with mood. Shadows abound, and unknown dark faces linger just out of focus in the background. Voices whisper strange and haunting things throughout. As an audience, we’re never quite sure what is going on at any time, but we can be pretty sure it’s eerie.

There are a few Asian horror movie clichés, and to be sure you see more than a few long black-haired girls creeping along. In the end, it feels more like a Romantic era melodrama than a horror film, but for what it lacks in originality and gore it makes up for in mood and social commentary.

Yeah, that’s right, I said social commentary. The film has a great deal to say about our perception of beauty and the extremes we will go through to achieve them. Hyun-soo and her friends, who have all undergone some form of cosmetic surgery, are young students. They haven’t really formed concrete personalities but are more than willing to change their appearance surgically to gain some warped sense of beauty.

In one chilling scene, two girls begin slicing their faces open with sculpting knives all the while whispering “I’ll make you pretty.” This mantra is repeated throughout the film. All anyone seems to care about is his or her physical beauty, and they are willing to do just about anything to achieve it. Take a quick look at our own magazines and television commercials it’s not hard to see how such a warped perception could easily be believed.

Unfortunately in its attempts to be a horror film, a melodrama, and a social commentary, the film falls a little short in all categories. It is stretched just a little too thin to be completely satisfying as any of them, yet it provides enough of each to make it well worth watching.

Slaughter Night (SL8N8) (2006)

slaughter night postert

The concept of adding critical blurbs to a movie poster, or DVD case is fascinating to me. PR people are able to take heated, loathing, and scathing reviews, pluck out one or two words (out of context), and make the worst movie sound like the greatest thing to ever hit the cinemas.

It was with this thought in my mind that I came to Slaughter Night, a movie so glorious that the only blurb they could find for its DVD cover is “A Whole Lot of Gore.” That’s it. Nothing about how amazing the director is, or how the story is new, fresh, or superb.

Gore. A whole lot of gore. I knew I was in for a treat then.

Hoping that maybe it was mainstream cinema that was finding this little Dutch slasher film a touch too nasty, I went to IMBD in search of fan-boy reviews. The summaries there were a little better. No one was raving about it, but the opinion was that the slashing was good and the story above par.

I should have listened to the cover.

Slaughter Night starts out with a bang. We’re treated to a flashback where some unseen psycho-killer has several kids trapped in an old house. Outside we see what must be police officers sneaking up to the house to save the day. But the killer continues on and before the kids can be rescued he slices off their heads and puts them on pikes. Save but one. Not exactly something to watch with Mom, but a pretty exciting way to start a horror flick.

Flash forward and we find Kristel (Victoria Koblenko)arguing with her father about dropping out of school to travel the world. Father figures she’s a smart kid and ought to stick it out, but before we can conclude the argument we’re treated to a pretty harrowing accident that made me think this was one of those new, terrible car commercials.

Kristel and her gang travel to Belgium to pick up a few of her father’s things. Seems he was working on a book that involved a local mining operation. He was especially interested in Andries Martiens (Robert Eleveld), the killer from the beginning of the flick. You see back in olden times, psycho-killers were given the opportunity to free themselves by taking on insanely dangerous missions underground. They were to detect explosive gasses in the mines, ignite them, and if they survived the explosion they were free to go. Apparently, Martiens was given such a deal, and it ended poorly. Dead underground, he now supposedly haunts the abandoned mines. At least this is what the mine tour guides like to say to scare the tourists with.

Of course, being a horror movie, the ghost is real, and he’s mad as hell.

Of course, our heroes take a tour underground.

Of course, bad things happen.

Slaughter Night is pretty by the books in terms of plot. From the opening murder, we know that baddie is going to be back. Once the cave comes into view, we know our characters are going down, and most of them will be whacked. In the end, we know the killer will be killed. That’s not even a spoiler for this type of film. In slasher films, the plot is usually irrelevant anyway. It’s the style that counts.

While Slaughter Night tries to give us plenty of style, it mostly falls flat. During the scary scenes, the director uses hand-held cameras that shake and move all over the place. This type of shaky cam seems to be in vogue these days with nearly everyone using it to create “mood.” Sometimes it’s effective as in films like Saving Private Ryan or United 93. Here it just distracts. It is especially annoying because the camera shakes violently during the death scenes, obscuring most of the gore. And what’s the point of watching a slasher flick if you can’t see all the slashing?

The lighting is also so murky you can hardly see the characters. Yes, it is in a cave so it should be dark. Yes, darkness can often be used to great effect in a horror film. But instead of adding tension and excitement to the film, it only caused me to be confused as to what was going on.

It’s not all bad. There are a couple of interesting murders (one involving partial decapitation by a shovel that’s pretty cool) and there are one or two scenes that made me jump and squirm.

I was happy to see the Dutch venturing into slasher territory. I’d even be excited to see another one, even if this one failed to ignite my fan-boy sensibilities. Gore-hounds and horror fanatics will find some interesting violence in this film, anybody else should stick with the Descent for their scary movie-in-a-cave fix.

Cinema Macabre Issue – Friday The 13th, Part 3

friday the 13th part 3

Some of the movie reviewers over on Blogcritics have created a little monthly horror filmic feature. It’s basically us talking about our favorite scary movies. This month’s feature includes devil worship, psycho killers, and lesbian vampires! What more could you want?

I’ll only include my bit here, but please head over to Blogcritics (sorry the Blogcritics link no longer works) and read the rest, it will be worth it, I promise.

What is it about the 3-D effect that keeps it resurfacing every decade or so? Why do we want our films to come screaming right into our seats? I’ve only seen one full-on 3-D flick in an actual theatre, and that was Jaws 3, not this third installment in the Jason franchise.

While we’re at it, why do film producers think they’re being even more clever by making the third film in a series in 3-D? That ran out of style somewhere around Plan 9 From Outer Space, Part 3: The Revenge of Patrolman Kelton. I never saw Friday the 13th, Part III in the theatres or in 3-D. In fact, I never saw any of that series in the theatre, only on the long departed, and dearly missed late-night television series, USA Up All Night (whatever happened to Rhonda Shear anyway?).

To a prepubescent boy, even in a highly edited version, Jason kicked lots of sexy teen arse. This one includes lots of good 3-D scares like Jason shooting a spear gun right at the screen, but the creative kills and bountiful bosoms kept me coming back. As a kid, I always looked forward to Friday the 13th on the calendar because I knew Rhonda would be showing a marathon of the films. I stayed up way too late on many a lonely Friday night watching that masked murdered wreak havoc.

They are all short on plot, convention, acting chops, and anything else a critic might try to find, but it had everything a geeky little kid from Oklahoma wanted in his late-night viewing.

Shutter (2004)

shutter movie poster

A young couple races down a dark, deserted stretch of road. Out of nowhere, someone appears on the road and the young couple tears into her. Shook up, the couple heatedly discuss what to do, with a corpse on the road, and quickly decide to leave it lying there.

Sound familiar? The Shutter starts with an I Know What You Did Last Summer twist, and continues through its 95 minutes stealing from, er paying homage to, all sorts of horror films. There’s a creepy, long, black-haired Asian girl slinking out of regular household objects a la Ringu, and strange effects keep happening to photographs as in Ju-On (The Grudge). In some ways, it is very much a pastiche of other horror films.

Don’t let that discourage you from seeing this film, for though it doesn’t come out all that original, it still manages to be effectively horrifying. The tension builds quite nicely, and there were more than a few moments where I was squirming in my seat.

Post running over the poor girl, the couple – Tun (Ananda Everingham) and Jane (Natthaweeranuch Thongmee) – begin experiencing some strange, even supernatural, events. A young girl begins haunting their dreams and even appearing in the shadows, the bathroom sink, and their photographs. Tun is a photographer by trade, and he begins finding strange white streaks in his most recent photographs, followed by shadowy glimpses of a girl. Could it be the girl they ran over?

They follow the photographs to people who collect pictures of the dead, of ghosts, and discover a few old mysteries along the way. As they attempt to find out why they are being haunted, and losing a few friends via suicide, they discover more about this mystery girl and each other.

As an audience, we are treated to a handful of really effective films that amp up the tension and give us more than a little fright.

There are a few scenes in which the camera rolls over a series of “real” photographs borrowed from actual true believers outside the confines of the film. I had seen some of these pictures on ghost websites, and though I am completely skeptical, those scenes creeped the crap out of me.

The score is amazingly well done, being filled with clatters and screams and freaky noises even in the non “scary” scenes adding a surreal mood for the entire film.

On a purely critical level, there are several things to dislike. Many of its effects are taken directly from other films, and there are a few giant holes in the plot upon which to frown. But ultimately, it is very effective at what it attempts to do. That is to create a creepy hour and a half in which to scare the bejeesus out of its audience.

Pulse (2006)

pulse

Why?

Dear god, why did I waste 90 minutes of my precious life on this film? Why did the filmmakers waste so much of their time making it?

The story of how I came to watch Pulse yesterday afternoon is an interesting one. When it came out on DVD a few weeks ago I thought it sounded interesting. Or rather, when I learned that it was a remake of a Japanese horror film, I became interested in that.

I immediately went to Blockbuster.com and added the film to my queue. Well, I added the Japanese version, the American remake, plus another film named Pulse because I couldn’t quite figure out which version was the remake. Blockbuster’s website is amazingly slow, at least on my computer, and at the time it wasn’t worth the effort to try to figure out which was the proper one.

I put on the Japanese one first, figuring that if it was any good I’d determine which version was the remake and watch it. Of course, this being Blockbuster, their screwy queue system never works properly and I generally get my picks out of order. So, even though the Japanese import was number one in the queue, an American film titled Pulse, which was several movies down in the queue came first (and I should note the films above it are all listed as “available.”)

Putting the film in I assumed it was the American remake, but later found out later that it was in fact a British film titled Octane. Why the Americans have renamed it Pulse is beyond me. Is Pulse a better title than Octane? Do Americans not understand what “octane” means? The fact that it was changed means there was some board meeting discussing this very thing. Insanity reigns.

Anyway, the film was mostly lousy but contained a few interesting moments and was highlighted by a pretty good performance by Madeline Stowe. Then I soon discovered other movies that looked interesting, put them all way before the correct versions of Pulse in my queue, and promptly forgot about my desire to see the films.

Two days ago a friend and I went to see a movie (Night at the Museum – much funnier than I expected it to be for those of you keeping count) and afterward, he invited me over for some pizza. I had a Blockbuster return in my car so I decided to swing by there first. The only great thing about Blockbuster’s online rental program is that you can now return their mail-in movies to the local store where they will not only tell the computer to send another movie out but will let you exchange it for an in-store movie.

Being that my friend was expecting me, I quickly skimmed the new release aisle for something I hadn’t seen. Hmmm, what’s this? A new horror flick called Pulse? Sure, that sounds good. Now as insulting as it sounds, I really didn’t remember all the stuff that had happened previously in the above paragraphs and had no idea what Pulse was.

Took it home watched it and then remembered that this was the remake.

My kingdom for a better memory.

Oh! That I should have remembered and got something else. What a stinking goat turd.

Pulse has an interesting concept – the dead have found a way back into our world by slipping in through a previously unused and unknown frequency unleashed by some crazy virus-happy hackers. But the execution of this idea is astoundingly bad.

The dead find a way back to the real world, and what do they do? Drain the life out of the living, that’s what. That might make sense if this somehow made the dead more alive, but it doesn’t seem to have any effect. They just like making us living people want to kill ourselves. It’s fun, I guess.

The movie doesn’t concentrate on things like plot, or meaning, but rather spends its time trying to give the audience cheap scares. Honestly, I don’t mind a cheap scare movie, I can dig being jolted time and time again, but here they transcribe the scares minutes before they happen. Every. Single. Time. Oh, there’s a scary musical queue. Oh, the lights are flicking. Oh, suddenly our character is alone and in a strange place. Do you think something is going to jump out at them?

“Terrible” is the word.

Did somebody say plot holes? Did I hear the word continuity? You can almost hear the film saying in a Spanish accent, “we don’t need no stinking’ continuity.” You see the dead, they come through the internet onto your computer screen and then into your soul. Except when the plot needs them to come through other portable media like cell phones and PDA devices.

Then that’s okay too. Because those things have wireless connections right? Then well, okay, sometimes they can come through the computer even when it’s unplugged. But maybe they made their way into the computer before the power outage. That makes some kind of sense, until a character is in the basement doing her wash, then we need the bad guys to come out of the dryer. I guess it was a souped-up internet-ready dryer.

That kind of junk happens throughout. They make some arbitrary rules and then break them because they need another scare. But again, it isn’t scary because you know it’s coming from about three blocks away.

The only redeeming quality about the film was the inclusion of Samm Levine (who played Neil on the excellent, but quickly canceled series Freaks and Geeks) and even he has a small, nondescript part.

I spit on this movie. I fart in its general direction. I damn the 90 minutes I wasted watching it.

Frankenstein Meets The Wolfman (1943)

frankenstein meets the wolfman poster

I’d like to say that I grew up going to the Midnight Movies and staying up to watch the old Universal horror movies on television. I’d like to say that, but I can’t because, well, because it simply isn’t true. I grew up watching movies from my generation, the 80’s, and that means the Goonies, Gremlins, Ghoulies, and others that don’t start with the letter “G.’ It has only been recently that I have dipped into the classics of horror and began watching them.

There has been a recent spat of high-quality DVD releases of the mainstays of the franchise – Dracula, Frankenstein, and the Wolfman – and I’ve filled my till with the magic, the brilliance that is those films. So, it was with pleasure that I recently found a VHS copy of Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman.

To say this is a great movie would be missing the point and make me think you were delusional. It’s far from anything anyone ought to call great, but it’s still a pretty fun bit of horror history.

The title is a little misleading – well not technically so since Frankenstein does in fact meet the Wolfman – but a picture like this makes one think they will either be locked in mortal combat for the entirety of the picture or team up to destroy some other force, like Dracula for instance.

More to the point it is something of a character study for the Wolfman as he is awakened from his grave and has to come to terms with his moonlight alter-ego. It is late in the film when he manages to come across Frankenstein’s castle and a frozen monster inside. The monster is awakened and wreaks havoc before coming to a not all too engrossing close.

The film has a good atmosphere and the sets are marvelous, but it never gets fully off the ground. There just doesn’t seem to be enough plot to keep the story moving, as it often plunges into a dulldrom.

Definitely worth checking out for classic horror fans, but not the first place to stop.