gore

Mandy (2018)

/ billy peppers / Leave a comment
directed by panos cosmatos
piccadilly pictures/spectrevision/umedia/xyz films/legion m/sqn capital/wallimage

Judging by the consensus opinion of this recycled action/revenge picture, people apparently were delighted that someone decided to combine the filmmaking styles of Rob Zombie and Quentin Tarantino, and to augment that daring celluloid fusion with Nicolas Cage in full-on latter-day Bill Murray mode, mainly staring blankly into the camera and conserving his energy as much as possible. Hmm, that sounds really negative … Sorry, I don’t mean to diminish completely the achievements of this occasionally entertaining waste of your precious dwindling time on this dying planet. It’s just that I didn’t think anything about this flick was especially original, or even terribly interesting. The religious cult cliché is uninspired enough, but once the focus shifts to Cage’s pursuit of his quarry, it literally is nothing you haven’t seen many times before. Overblown, overcooked, overhyped, and underwhelming.

This fabulous line runs later in the credits:

Supported by the Tax Shelter of the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT OF BELGIUM
and the Tax Shelter investors

why did i watch this movie?

Boy howdy, it sure got some good ink, didn’t it.

should you watch this movie?
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
highlight and low point

It’s fun to look at, I guess, what with the liberal use of p*S*y*C*h*E*d*∃*l*Ι*c visual FX and intervals of animation and hallucinatory FREAKOUTS and so forth. I mean, like, whoo, trippy, man. Oh, and Cage does have one mostly laudable scene. Seriously, though, it’s just too imitative to appreciate and doesn’t have much of a tale to tell. I would’ve thought more people might’ve noticed, but that’s my problem, I suppose.

rating from outer space: D

Candyman (1992)

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directed by bernard rose
propaganda films/polygram filmed entertainment

I was metaphorically looking at my watch during the second half of this formulaic slasher flick, reproaching myself for its selection, then once it was over I decided to read some opinions of it and – wow, you must be joking, internet. Personally, I found this picture to be wildly unacceptable, and not just because it implausibly concerns a murderous supernatural ex-slave bogeyman haunting Chicago’s projects. Sure, that’s improbable, too, but nothing else about this feature is any more reasonable. The ridiculously contrived (and likely inadmissible) police and legal procedures, the intrepid graduate students’ daring thesis research, the architectural lessons, the unthinking racism, the trite dialogue – this one’s got it all and then some! By which I might mean a Philip Glass score that we hear the same snippet of way too often. Oh, and vacuous voiceovers that aim for grandiosity only to land on ostentation. Plus, also, too, it’s not very frightening.

why did i watch this movie?

I’ll admit, I’m beginning to suspect there’s a reason I haven’t seen some of these ’90s offerings.

should you watch this movie?

You’d be better off watching any of the 440-plus episodes of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. You know, I’ve read one of Clive Barker’s “Books of Blood” collections. Yeah, one.

highlight and low point

Certainly, when Virginia Madsen busts out of the institution where she’s been detained for a month with the help of her paranormal hook-handed buddy, I completely lost any semblance of respect for this absurdity. But it just kept going, exhausting my patience. The ending at least made me laugh, partially because it was so predictable, but also because they dragged it out so much. Did I like anything about this movie, I’m wondering.

Nothing’s coming to mind, sorry.

rating from outer space: D+

Don’t Go in the Woods aka Don’t Go in the Woods … Alone! (1981)

/ billy peppers / 1 Comment
directed by james bryan
jbf

This picture is almost breathtakingly incompetent. It features possibly the most ersatz blood I have ever seen, its soundtrack is a wildly inappropriate symphony of treated electronic squawks and bleeps – and it is also a vivid reminder of a time when independent horror features could carve out their own niche at the nation’s “nabes” and drive-ins. As such, despite its excessive documentary-style nature shots, unnecessary scenes, continuity problems, clearly overdubbed dialogue, utterly superfluous moments, endless stream of unidentified cast members, and overly linear “plot,” this flick demands a place at the cult-classic table with the likes of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Midnight movie weekends should definitely feature people screaming nonsensical audience-participation crap at this epic.


why did i watch this movie?

I don’t know about you, but I’m almost always up for a film with a title warning “DON’T GO IN” this, “DON’T GO NEAR” that, and so forth.

should you watch this movie?

If you had a venue where you could screen this as part of some event or other, or project it as a sideline feature or during an interlude or something, it would probably go over pretty well. Otherwise?

No.

highlight and low point

The best part of this adventure, hands down, is the incredible scenery of the beautiful location in which they filmed, which may be Wasatch-Cache National Forest.

This isn’t even one of the good shots

Whatever it is, I wanna go there, even if it’s inhabited by a deranged mountain man or any survivors of related massacres. Honestly, though, I also enjoyed the completely unpretentious portrayals of the members of the sheriff’s department. Managing to stand out even in a completely haphazard production, the bewildering parade of random characters is sui generis.

rating from outer space: D+

Nightshift (2018)

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written & directed by stephen hall
greenflash pictures/blue shadows films/grump films

Maybe a little over halfway through the 75 or so minutes of this production, it veers into a psychologically tormenting sequence that elevates what already had been an interesting picture into a compelling one. The effect isn’t really sustained, but nonetheless this is one film that understands the dynamics of parceling out its particulars. Often, the moments in between events carry the most weight in this tale of weird happenings in an Irish hotel. At times more than a little reminiscent of 1408, for at least one example, what works best here is that nothing ever seems too surreal to accept. Not exactly unpredictable, this presentation of a truly terrible first shift at a new job still manages to defy the norm to some degree, although that mostly may be a matter of style rather than substance. Whatever the case, the end result is another effective exhibition from Ireland.

why did i watch this movie?

The description didn’t exactly dazzle me, but something about it made the flick seem worth a look. Maybe it was the Irish thing; as noted, I generally seem to enjoy output from those shores.

should you watch this movie?

While acknowledging there’s only so much one can do with the whole place-where-something-terrible-happened angle, this one at least tweaks it a bit.

highlight and low point

I cannot stress enough that I was greatly impressed by how much this flick does with its scenes where nothing actually winds up happening. The aura and suspense generated in those scenes is masterful. Also, during the mind- and time-bending sequence, a few instances work wonders for the picture’s chill factor. As for the downside, surprise isn’t notably in abundance here, despite the fact that it avoids becoming overly formulaic.

rating from outer space: B

Martyrs (2008)

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written and directed by pascal laugier
eskwad/wild bunch/tcb film/canal+/cinÉcinÉma

After this film finally ended, I started writing a polemic on what I condemned as its senseless brutality, its transgressive excesses flaunted purely for their own sake, its purposeless exhibition of sickening abuse, its obscenity.

Morning found me still pondering what I’d seen, contemplating the motive behind the disturbing displays, so I read a lot about it, including an enlightening interview with the director. Along the way, I realized a positive critical appraisal of “New French Extremity” films, several of which I’d enjoyed, had suckered me into seeing a picture I’d scrupulously avoided for a decade,

Martyrs is a vile movie, full of sadistic horrors and irredeemable suffering and graphically unsettling trauma and grievous bodily harm inflicted upon a guileless young woman. The first half is only intermittently assaultive – nothing too out of the ordinary – but as the second half began, I had a sinking feeling, which proved prescient. It definitely goes too far, and it’s hard to find justification for what occurs. What reason could there be for grotesquely prolonged images of torture of an innocent, you might wonder.

The Laugier interview helped. Some things are indelible, though.

why did i watch this movie?

Mea culpa. I tend to favor productions that feature people doing horrible things to others. This selection has me questioning myself.

should you watch this movie?

Look, this picture’s culminating moment is a woman being flayed alive … but by that point the savagery inflicted upon her has been so objectionable it may barely register. You have been warned.

highlight and low point

It’s provocative, I’ll give it that. As to my charge of “obscenity,” French film commissars originally concurred, rating it 18+, though it was lowered to 16+ after intervention from a filmmakers society, a journalists’ union and the Minister of Culture.

rating from outer space: B

Antisocial (2013)

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directed by cody calahan
breakthrough entertainment/black fawn films

So what you have here is a film wherein a handful of millenials have to barricade themselves in a residence as refuge from the ultraviolence burgeoning outside, and as it’s picking up steam, I’m losing interest rapidly. I mean, I’m wondering what’s with this The Purge–meets–28 Days Later–meets–Pulse–meets–every–zombie–flick–ever business, you dig. As the story finally develops, though, it redeems itself to some degree, becoming more insidious – and, actually, a lot more ironically funny – than it seemed it was going to be. Still not exactly the most original concept or execution, but credit must be given to the portrayal of social media manipulation and the ever-growing battle for constant connectivity. (The portrayal of the presumably heroic lead female role could have used a little work, though.) Ooh, hey, look! A sequel that sounds really dismal!

why did i watch this movie?

It was New Year’s Eve, and this movie is set on New Year’s Eve.

should you watch this movie?

Not a whole lot of horror pics have “New Year’s Eve” as a setting or a theme.

highlight and low point

The tensions and relationships between the five twentysomethings hoping to survive whatever the hell it is that’s going on are portrayed rather well, and the gradually encroaching understanding of what exactly is happening, and how, is skillfully handled. Once again, however, here in the world of the horror movie, we have a paucity of original ideas, even with the wicked insinuations of the latter stages of the “viral infection.” Oh, and the black guy dies first. Followed by the party girl.

rating from outer space: C+

Concepts and business entities portrayed in this motion picture are fictional. Any resemblance to actual concepts or business entities is purely coincidental.

Zhǒng guǐ aka Seeding of a Ghost aka 种鬼 (1983)

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directed by Yang chuan
shaw brothers

I think this flick must have been intended to be a horror-comedy, but as it’s a Hong Kong production I couldn’t honestly say. If Shaw Brothers didn’t intend for it to be humorous, then something was definitely lost in the translation, whether linguistic or cultural. Granted, one wouldn’t presume that a film with a rape as its central action was meant to be funny, but certainly some elements of even that particular scene don’t seem to be played completely straight. Plus, I mean, a mouldering reanimated corpse copulates with a wraith while levitating during part of the black magic ritual that adds the “revenge” component to this business, and the company that brought the DVD to the U.S. market bills it as the “mind-melting Asian answer to The Evil Dead.” The picture also features a kung fu fight scene, an exploding pregnancy, and some kind of evil spawn that looks something like Audrey from Little Shop of Horrors, only as a crawling, tentacled Lovecraftian nightmare. So you tell me.


why did i watch this movie?

I was reading somewhere about how over-the-top Hong Kong cinema can be, and then elsewhere saw similar references to a variety of its horror films. This was one of them.

should you watch this movie?

The next time you’re in the mood for something outrageously ridiculous, Ghost will fit the bill nicely.

highlight and low point

Almost every character reacts with incredulity to something or another at some point or another in the course of this movie, which neatly aligns with the viewing experience. I suppose any number of questionable sequences or developments could be assessed unfavorably, but let’s be realistic here: this is exploitation-level trash, the foreign equivalent of a Troma venture.

rating from outer space: c+

 

Death Dorm aka The Dorm That Dripped Blood aka Pranks (1982)

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directed by jeffrey obrow and stephen carpenter
jeff obrow productions

Sloppy and unfocused, this run-of-the-mill affair struggled to hold my attention. The debut offering from Obrow and Carpenter, made a few years before their much more accomplished The Power, it reminded me why I find The Evil Dead so interesting as a filmmaker’s initial effort – its conceptualization. Here, all we have is a rather standard story about a small group of people being picked off one by one, with the usual false clues and misplaced suspicions. Many hallmarks of an essentially amateur production are also present, such as ragged editing and poorly paced and redundant scenes. I’m not saying I could do better; for a prospective script written by film students and shot on-campus during break, it’s more than good enough. Impressively, the ending contains an unexpected wrinkle.

why did i watch this movie?

As is often the case, as I was writing my review of The Power, I decided I should probably give this one a look.

should you watch this movie?

Aside from a cast of actors you’ll largely never see again, there’s nothing too interesting here aside from the opportunity to muse about the instincts of those who produce horror features. So very often the writers opt for set pieces and pat themes that conform to genre conventions. I suppose if you’re trying to sell investors and backers on your first attempt, this approach is reasonable, but it often just seems to be business as usual in this arena.

highlight and low point

Though it’s fairly easy at times to observe that these people had never made a movie before, they did a pretty convincing job with at least one of the death scenes.

Rating from outer space: c−

boy, that looks official

 

Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984)

/ billy peppers / Leave a comment
directed by charles e. sellier, jr.
slayride, inc.

Okay, cancel your bets and shelve your arguments, because this is officially the greatest Christmas movie ever made. Notorious for its long career of being protested, reviled, censored and blackballed, this picture hardly deserved the denigration. So what if it portrays a murderous Santa who shoots dad and cuts mom’s throat after ripping her blouse open on the side of the road, in full view of one of her kids, after having already killed a store clerk, and why get all hot and bothered that one of those orphaned kids who witnessed the highway carnage grows up to be so traumatized by the very idea of old Saint Nick that he embarks on a Christmas Eve killing spree highlighted by impaling a topless Linnea Quigley on a stag’s head in her living room before gifting her little sister a boxcutter and leaving her with the mess? Man, people are sensitive sometimes. Ironically enough, the parental complaints lodged against the film upon its original release were that their little moppets would be traumatized by such a depiction of K. Kringle … which is, not to put too fine a point on it, exactly what the movie depicts.

why did i watch this movie?

Why did I wait so long? I remember admiring the box for this classic back in the good old days at the neighborhood video rental (which was actually the storefront of the TV repair shop).

should you watch this movie?

highlight and low point

Well, I guess Lilyan Chauvin’s portrayal of the orphanage’s humorless Mother Superior is a bit much, but why niggle. Robert Brian Wilson’s turn as confused, deranged Billy – kudos to the writers for their sagacious choice of names – is nearly perfect. The flick’s nerve, daring, gall, chutzpah – whichever you prefer – confers it its panache.

rating from outer space: a−

Re-Animator (1985)

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directed by stuart gordon
empire pictures

“H.P. Lovecraft’s Re-Animator,” the title card proudly boasts, and yes, it IS set at Miskatonic University, so it’s got that covered. Now, have I READ Mr. Lovecraft’s story of the same name? I do not think I have, despite the many times I’ve dipped into his oeuvre to while away some bleak hours enmeshed in his obfuscatory, eldritch and often oddly vague universe. This is a highly professional production, and the assured direction feels like kind of a blessing given what are often the limitations of these genre offerings. Absurdist at times, possibly to leaven the effects of its abundant grotesquerie, this picture nonetheless manages to disquiet, with Jeffrey Combs deserving much of the credit for his effective portrayal of an appropriately deranged Lovecraftian scientist. Although often rampantly silly, this is also undoubtedly a film that understands that horror doesn’t necessarily need to be laden with shocks and starts. It’s definitely not for the squeamish, though, as medical practicum and biological experimentation share screen time with copious bloodletting.

why did i watch this movie?

It’s no. six on Johnny Ramone’s top-10 list, and kind of a must-see in the annals of comedic humor.

should you watch this movie?

While I’m not sure I’d call it “timeless,” this flick still achieves everything it tries – and serves as perhaps the model for its particular brand of deranged horror-comedy, with some of its notes echoed a few short years later by Evil Dead 2, for one.

highlight and low point

The FX are pretty spectacular in this picture, really, especially given how outré some of the concepts are. (I’m thinking of the whole “head in a lab tray” sequence here.) Also, it’s impressive that no matter how ridiculous things get, no one ever really acknowledges that fact.

note misspelled label behind dead cat

rating from outer space: a