Archive for the Disturbing Cinema Category

THE COMEDY (2012)

Posted in 2012, Bad Situations, Cult Movies, Dark Comedies, Disturbing Cinema, Independent Cinema, Satire, Something Different, Strange Cinema with tags , , , , , , , on December 28, 2012 by knifefighter

THE COMEDY (2012)
Movie Review by L.L. Soares

TheComedy

As THE COMEDY opens, a guy named Swanson (Tim Heidecker) is having a drunken party with his friends, which evolves into nudity and outrageous behavior. This occurs during the opening credits. It’s a good introduction to this man and his world of debauchery and idiocy.

When we next see Swanson, he is verbally harassing his father’s male nurse (Seth Koen), whose lack of reaction reveals that he’s endured this many times before. Swanson’s father is in a coma in his bed at home, and Swanson is clearly conflicted about his father’s condition. This conflict lasts a few minutes. Then he goes out for a day of mayhem.

This involves such weirdness as walking by a group of landscapers working on someone’s yard and suddenly chipping in to help. When the house’s owners come outside, he takes advantage of the fact that the workers can’t speak English, and pretends to be their supervisor and asks if his men can take a dip in the pool, creating a really awkward moment until the owners agree. At this point, Swanson just goes along his merry way, having accomplished a moment of anarchy. Later, he ends up in a bar where he is the only white customer, saying offensive things that could lead to a beatdown. Later still, he and his friends harass a cab driver for not having a working radio, and partake in some sophomoric behavior inside a church.

Swanson and his buddies (Eric Wareheim and James Murphy) create mayhem in a church.
Swanson and his buddies (Eric Wareheim and James Murphy) create mayhem in a church.

Just about everything Swanson does is meant to offend and piss off someone. To put it in a nutshell, Swanson’s behavior shows that he is a complete asshole, and the title of the movie has an ironic ring to it, because while some parts of this movie are funny, just as many parts are uncomfortable and even unpleasant. This is not really a comedy, after all.

Swanson lives on a boat, and spends most of his time drinking (and often puking overboard). He does whatever strikes him at a given moment, like suddenly entering a restaurant and applying for a job as a dishwasher (even though he’s about 40). It’s clear that he is well off and doesn’t need to work, yet he does these things on a lark, knowing that if he grows bored, he can always just walk away.

Somehow, despite his arrested development, Swanson is able to get girls. He “seduces” one woman at a party with banter about how feudalism could have worked if given more of a chance, and that Hitler may have had some good ideas “if you take away the killing part.” Another woman, who he meets at his dishwasher job (the first time they meet, he tells her he’s a registered sex offender), ends up back at his boat and he watches with mild curiosity as she unexpectedly has an epileptic fit.

Tim Heidecker plays an unlikable bastard who lives on a boat in THE COMEDY.

Tim Heidecker plays an unlikable bastard who lives on a boat in THE COMEDY.

He also, surprisingly, has lots of friends, all of whom seem as idiotic as he is. These include Eric Wareheim (Heidecker’s cohort on the late night Adult Swim series TIM AND ERIC, AWESOME SHOW, GREAT JOB!), stand-up comic Neil Hamburger and musician James Murphy (of LCD Soundsystem fame).

So it’s not like Swanson is an isolated loner with no friends or girlfriends. He’s found lots of like-minded people to hang out with. And yet, he appears to have complete disdain for people in general and the world around him. He has no desire to work a real job (and clearly doesn’t have to) and has no desire to take on any kind of responsibility.

By the end of the movie, chances are good that you will want to punch Swanson in the face. And you’ll wonder why someone doesn’t punch his lights out every day of his life.

And yet, for some inexplicable reason, I found myself liking this movie.

I’ve always enjoyed comedians who sought to make their audiences squirm more than laugh, and THE COMEDY is this kind of comedy. It’s not laugh-out-loud kind of stuff (although there were a couple of times when I did laugh); it’s more like, “how much can Swanson get away with before someone decks him” kind of humor. Director Rick Alverson does a great job of making this work. Without a skilled director at the helm, this movie could easily have deteriorated into the story of a really annoying guy, which would just be a waste of time. There are scenes when you actually wonder whether or not everyone onscreen is “in” on the joke (like that scene in the barroom, where you can feel the tension building up, the more Swanson talks). And despite his complete obnoxiousness, there are moments when you feel something for Swanson as a human being, even if most of the time that feeling is repulsion.

Tim Heidecker is amazing (and fearless) in the lead role here, and he seems to be the perfect choice for this kind of thing. His Cartoon Network/Adult Swim series with Eric Wareheim is known for its bizarre, off-the-wall style that is often more weird than funny. But if you haven’t seen that show—or aren’t aware of it—then you’ll have an even better reaction to THE COMEDY.

 Tim Heidecker plays one of the most unlikable lead characters in a movie in years in THE COMEDY. Yet, somehow, it works.

Tim Heidecker plays one of the most unlikable lead characters in a movie in years in THE COMEDY. Yet, somehow, it works.

You may like this movie; chances are more likely that you will completely hate it. But it will get a reaction out of you. And director Alverson has stated that that was his main mission in making THE COMEDY, to get a reaction out of moviegoers who are usually lulled to sleep by brainless blockbusters. If you “get” what’s going on here and enjoy your humor especially dark, you might see this as a work of bizarre brilliance. If you don’t “get” it, you may want to jump through the screen and kick Swanson’s butt. But be forewarned, you will have a reaction. That is guaranteed.

So Alverson’s mission is a clear success.

I hesitate to rate this one.  I enjoyed it in a perverse way—but then again, I’ve always had an affinity for unlikable characters —but I bet most of the people reading this review would hate it.  So instead of a rating, let’s just say, if this sounds like something you’d want to see, see it. If not, then you will probably avoid it anyway.

© Copyright 2012 by L.L. Soares

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THE COLLECTION (2012)

Posted in 2012, Cinema Knife Fights, Disturbing Cinema, Elaborate Murders, Extreme Movies, Gore!, Killers, LL Soares Reviews, Madness, Medical Experiments!, Mutilation, Psychos, Sequels, Torture with tags , , , , , , , , , on December 10, 2012 by knifefighter

CINEMA KNIFE FIGHT Presents:
THE COLLECTION (2012)
Review by L.L. Soares

The Collection (2012) Movie Poster

(THE SCENE: an abandoned hotel full of cobwebs. L.L. SOARES is climbing the stairs using a flashlight)

LS: I’m starting to think MICHAEL ARRUDA isn’t here at all. I’m sure this is all a prank.

(His cell phone rings, playing Bernard Herrmann’s music from the shower scene of PSYCHO)

LS: Hello?

MA: LL, is that you? I’ve been waiting for an hour now.

LS: What are you talking about? I’m here now, at the Argento Hotel, just like you told me. I can’t find you anywhere.

MA: Oops, I meant the Argento Steak House. My bad.

LS: That explains a lot.

MA: Well, while I have you on the phone, how was that new movie, THE COLLECTION?

LS: I was just going to start the review. I guess I have to do this one solo.

(SWITCH to Michael Arruda in a restaurant. A waiter brings a delicious meal to his table)

MA (making noises with his mouth): Oh no, I’m having phone problems. LL are you there? I can’t hear you?

LS: Yes, I’m still here.

MA (makes more noises): Oh no, you’re breaking up. I’m going to lose you. (MA shuts off his phone)

LS: Dammit! I hate bad connections. And it always happens when I’m in spooky places like this.

So where was I? Oh yes, I was going to review the new movie THE COLLECTION. I guess I’ve got nothing better to do.

(LS sits down on a comfy chair in the hallway of the old hotel. He brings the flashlight up to his face, turning it on, making himself look spooky)

LS: Gather round the fire, kiddies, and I’ll tell you the spooky story of THE COLLECTION. First off, it’s the sequel to the 2009 movie THE COLLECTOR, which was also directed by Marcus Dunstan.  He also co-wrote the screenplays for SAW IV (2007), SAW V (2008) , SAW VI (2009) and SAW 3D: THE FINAL CHAPTER (2010) as well as FEAST (2005) and its sequels, with his writing partner, Patrick Melton. This is a busy guy.

Anyway, in case you didn’t see the first one, it was a about a thief named Arkin (Josh Stewart) who breaks into a house to steal some money and valuables, and instead finds a house of horrors. Someone else has gotten there first, and has turned it into a booby-trapped filled torture chamber, and the family (who was supposed to be on vacation) suffers horribly at the hands of a masked murderer known only as The Collector. They call him that because, whenever he attacks someplace, he kills everyone except one person, who he kidnaps for his “collection.”

The first movie ended on a suspenseful note, as Arkin was captured by the Collector, and then the end credits rolled.

The new movie, THE COLLECTION, continues where the last one left off. Sort of. This time around, we find out that the Collector has been up to lots of mischief since the last time we saw him. Not only is he making random home invasions, now the number of people he’s killed is off the charts, and the police have no clue how to stop him. The city is in a panic. So what does teenager Elena  (Emma Fitzpatrick) do? She goes to a rave of course, in an abandoned building that no adults know about. When she finds out that her boyfriend is cheating on her, she runs away from the dance floor to an empty room, with a trunk in the middle of it.  She’s crying when suddenly the trunk moves and starts to make noise! There’s someone inside it. As we know from the previous movie, this is the Collector’s calling card, and if you open a trunk, it puts all kinds of horrible things in motion. So of course, she opens it, letting out Arkin (Josh Stewart again), our hero from the first movie. Only this time he is bloody from having been tortured for weeks.

His being set free sets all kinds of weird traps and pullies in motion, and a giant wheat shredding blade descends on the partiers, chopping them all to mulch. Another group of people, including Elena’s friend, Missy (Johanna Braddy) get locked up in a cage where the ceiling is crushing down on them.

Somehow Arkin escapes, and Elena gets nabbed by the Collector before he can save her. She is the only survivor of the massacre, and, as we know, the Collector always takes one victim away from the crime scene alive.

(LS gets up from the chair, just as a huge metal spike drops down from the ceiling and stabs where he was just sitting)

LS: Arkin wakes up in the hospital, where he is interrogated by a guy named Lucello (Lee Tergesen), who appears to be a cop, but isn’t. He works for Elena’s rich father (Christopher McDonald) and will stop at nothing to find Elena and bring her back to her father. Even if that means forcing Arkin to retrace his steps to find where Elena is being held (he has marks carved in his arm to determine where he was taken to last time).

Lucello and his team of Black Ops agents then invade the Hotel Argento (get the funny homage to horror director Dario Argento?) where the Collector rules over victims driven insane by their horrible treatment and who have been turned into crazed zombie-like creatures. Oh, and there are tons of booby traps and mazes and bear traps and time bombs. Let’s just say that Lucello has no idea what he’s in for, and poor Arkin is forced to go along for the ride, even though he’s endured these particular horrors before.

There are also lots of “collections” throughout the hotel. From the usual butterflies and insects in frames, to giant tanks full of bizarre sculptures made from human body parts.

There are bizarre sculptures made from human body parts throughout the hotel, like this one.

There are bizarre sculptures made from human body parts throughout the hotel, like this one.

(LS continues walking down the hallway. Hatchets are hurled at him and keep missing him.)

LS: THE COLLECTION is in limited release and its official release date was December 1st, except that week it was only playing in obscure movie theaters out in the ‘burbs, so I couldn’t see it. This weekend, it got a slightly wider release and made its way into the city. Because I enjoyed the first movie, I was looking forward to seeing this one, so I made sure to check it out before it disappeared.

Let me state something for the record. I like “torture porn.” That might be the first time you have ever seen a critic say this out loud in public, but the truth is, when the genre is done right, it can be pretty compelling. I think the first two HOSTEL movies, for example, are terrific. I was less-than-enthusiastic about all the SAW movies, because I had a problem with the Jigsaw character.

You see, our old friend Jigsaw had this agenda where his elaborate murder scenarios were meant to give the  bad people who survived them a second chance. He was  trying to change their lives. He was trying to redeem them, by making them thankful to be alive. This was all a bit hard to swallow, and I’m sure you found this all to be as much bullshit as I did. Also, Jigsaw didn’t like to get his hands dirty and watched the violence from a control room. His “victims” had to make decisions about which door to open, or which lever to pull, while he watched from safety.

The Collector isn’t afraid to get his hands dirty. He is more than happy to resort to hand-to-hand combat when his more elaborate methods don’t finish everyone off. He’s a skilled fighter, knows his way around a knife fight, and is lethal as hell. And there’s no pontificating about changing people’s lives. The Collector simply thirsts for blood and uses his weird,  elaborate killing methods to quench that thirst. Plus, he wears a cool, black Mexican wrestler’s mask to keep his identity a secret. Let’s just say that the Collector would kick Jigsaw’s ass in a fight.

THE COLLECTION is gory as hell. It pushes its R-rating to the limit. And it’s very suspenseful. You never know what is going to happen next, and who will die. Which is just the way a good horror movie should  be. Sure, not all of it makes sense, and you really start to wonder how anyone can set up as many crazy booby traps as this guy does throughout  the hotel—it just doesn’t seem possible—and then you realize, “hell, it’s just a movie.” And there are lots of blockbuster action movies that make even less sense.

And the cast is top-rate for this kind of thing. Josh Stewart, who was so good in the first movie, does an equally good job here, reprising his role as petty thief  and “Collector expert” Arkin. Emma Fitzpatrick is tough and unflinching as Elena (she reminded me a bit of Natalie Portman). Lee Tergeson (who you might remember as Beecher from the HBO series OZ) is solid here as Lucello, and his team of mercenaries includes Andre Royo, who was so great as the homeless guy Bubbles on another excellent HBO series, THE WIRE (it seems like more great actors have come out of OZ and THE WIRE than any other TV shows put together). Believe me, the actors involved are above-average for this kind of thing.

And the ending is actually pretty satisfying this time around. So make sure you stay in your seat until those end credits roll, because there’s a kick-ass epilogue to the story.

(LS stops in front of a doorway, and a pie hurtles at him, hitting him in the face)

Beware! The Collector wants to add you to his COLLECTION.

Beware! The Collector just might want to add you to his COLLECTION.

LS (wipes cream off his face and licks): Mmmm, banana cream!

Sure there’s horrible violence. Sure, people get tortured. There’s blood and body parts galore. But it works. There’s this incredibly sadistic bastard trying to kill as many people as possible, and a group of people trying their best to stop him. If it’s “torture porn,” and it certainly fits the bill,  then it’s one of the better examples of the genre. Unfortunately, the genre itself is in decline, no doubt thanks to all of those SAW movies that amounted to a great big example of overkill. They milked that cash cow as long as they could. So there’s a good chance THE COLLECTION might be the end of this particular franchise.

I am not expecting THE COLLECTION to be a big hit. In fact, I’m sure it won’t do very well at all, especially since it’s in such limited release. But I’m telling you, if you’re not squeamish about this kind of stuff, you might just enjoy the hell out of it. I know I did.

I give THE COLLECTION ~ four bloody knives.

(LS dials his cell phone, and Michael Arruda picks up on the other end, enjoying his steak dinner)

MA: Hello?

LS: I know you gave me the wrong info on purpose. I hope you’re enjoying your dinner.

MA: Er…I am.

LS: And I hope you enjoyed the ground up glass in the mashed potatoes.

MA (touches his mouth and coughs up blood): NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

LS: What? I can’t hear you. We have a bad connection.

(FADE TO BLACK)

© Copyright 2012 by L.L. Soares

LL Soares gives THE COLLECTION ~ four knives!

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SINISTER (2012)

Posted in 2012, Cinema Knife Fights, Disturbing Cinema, Evil Kids!, Evil Spirits, Haunted Houses, Religious Cults with tags , , , , , , on October 15, 2012 by knifefighter

CINEMA KNIFE FIGHT: SINISTER (2012)
By Michael Arruda and L.L. Soares

(THE SCENE: A dark attic. L.L. SOARES has found a box of old home movies and a projector and is playing the movies against one of the walls. MICHAEL ARRUDA pops up to see what’s going on)

MA: Hey, what are you watching up here?

LS: Old home movies of the Arruda family. Here’s your first visit to Disneyworld. You sure were an ugly kid.

MA: You must have the wrong Arruda family.  I never went to Disneyworld as a kid.

LS:  You poor deprived soul.

MA:  Not at all.  We went to lots of fun places when I was a kid.

(CUT to a young MA at the Municipal Dump.)

YOUNG MA:  Can I throw the next garbage bag into the chute?  Please? This is so much fun!  Thanks for taking me to the dump!

(CUT back to MA & LS in attic.)

LS (looking nostalgic):  Ah, my old stomping grounds—. Did I ever tell you about my first pet? A junkyard rat by the name of Herbie…

MA: Not now. Hey, instead of watching these old home movies, why don’t you start this week’s review?

LS: Sure, anything’s better than watching this boring Disneyland footage. Oh god, now it’s showing pirates on water skis. This is mind numbing.

This week’s movie is called SINISTER, brought to us by some of the same producers who gave us 2010’s INSIDIOUS. This time around, the director is Scott Derickson who gave us THE EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE (2005) and the 2008 remake of THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL.

MA:  Oooh, two not-so-great flicks, although EMILY ROSE was okay in a mildly entertaining sort of way.

LS:  Well, compared to those two, SINISTER is a big step up.

In SINISTER, Ethan Hawke (who has been in everything from DEAD POETS SOCIETY, 1989, to GATTACA, 1997, to 2009’s DAYBREAKERS) plays Ellison Oswalt, a true crime writer who had a bestselling book 10 years earlier called “Kentucky Blood,” but who hasn’t been able to recapture the success of that book since. He needs to find just the right story to put him on top again, and he thinks he finds it in a small town where a family was killed in their back yard. He rents the house of the murdered family and moves his wife and kids there, intent on researching the crime and putting out another hot book. But he finds a lot more than he expected.

After they move in, he finds a mysterious box of home movies on Super 8 reels and an old projector in the attic. It all looks harmless enough, until he brings the box down to his office and starts watching the films. They have innocuous sounding names like “Pool Party” and “BBQ” with corresponding dates. He puts one in the projector and sees a family playing together, until suddenly the scene changes and the family members are standing in the backyard with bags over their heads and nooses around their necks. Suddenly, a tree branch breaks, causing them all to be lifted off the ground by the nooses, where they struggle until they hang limp and dead.

Ellison is shocked by this. This is a film of the actual murder of the family that lived in this house before him. Which leads him to view the other reels of film. Each one is kind of a mini-snuff film, as he sees more murders flash before his eyes. Clearly these are all the work of one killer, and suddenly the names on the film cans take on a nightmarish quality. The “pool party” is a film of a family being drowned. The “BBQ” is a film of a family being burned alive. The more Ellison delves into these films, the more they start to really affect him. He starts drinking more, and becomes moody and anxious. And he’s only been working on this project for a week!

His family is feeling the strain of it all as well. His wife Tracy (Juliet Rylance) has dealt with his mood swings before when he works on a book, and she isn’t a big fan of the process, since it has clearly has endangered their marriage in the past. Their 12-year-old son, Trevor (Michael Hall D’Addario) has severe night terrors, and as the family’s stay in the house continues, his nightmares get worse and worse. There’s also their younger child, Ashley (Clare Foley), who seems more thoughtful and mature than her brother, but she acts out in other ways, including painting creepy pictures all over the walls of her room.

Meanwhile, the local law officers have a mixed reaction to Ellison coming to their town. With his notorious reputation for delving into what police have done wrong in their investigations, the town sheriff (Fred Dalton Thompson, who you might remember as just plain Fred Thompson from TV shows like LAW & ORDER and more recently THE GOOD WIFE, as well as a brief political career) isn’t very welcoming. Meanwhile, the Deputy (James Ransone) becomes Ellison’s accomplice in tracking down information, since the man is clearly star-struck with Ellison’s celebrity status as a bestselling author.

And just what are the strange symbols seen at some of the murder scenes? And what is that strange clown-faced figure we see strange glimpses of?

SINISTER actually does a really good job of creating atmosphere.

MA:  Yes, it does.

LS:  The movies that Ellison watches are actually pretty disturbing (SINISTER actually begins with footage from one of these movies, without explanation, before we get into the actual storyline, and it’s very effective). Since these are technically snuff films, we feel as repulsed at them as Ellison clearly is. And yet, he can’t stop watching them, can’t stop trying to decipher the clues and determine just what is going on here.

MA:  Disturbing is the word that I think best describes the entire movie.  It succeeds in making its audience feel uncomfortable.  However, I wish it had spent a little more time being in-your-face scary.

LS:  I thought the script and the direction were above-average here.

MA:  I liked the script slightly better than the direction.  Again, SINISTER was written and directed by Scott Derrickson, and in some ways the pacing of this movie reminded me of his earlier effort, THE EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE.  I found the pacing very deliberate, not so much slow, as patient.  The film moves along like a drama rather than a horror flick.

This pacing worked better during the first half of the movie when things were creepy, but later, when I expected the scares to really intensify and things to really heat up, they don’t, as the pacing remains just as deliberate as it was early on.

I would agree that the story is above average—for the most part, anyway—I enjoyed the main story in this one, of Oswalt’s research, of the discovery of the grisly home movies, and the effects it has on Oswalt and his family. But I thought it became predictable towards the end.  I saw the ending coming a mile away, and so I wasn’t surprised in the least.

LS:  The ending isn’t mind-blowingly original, but I thought it worked.

And the cast is quite good, especially Hawke in the lead, and Clare Foley as his daughter Ashley.

MA:  I really enjoyed Ethan Hawke, but the rest of the cast did very little for me, although I agree with you that Clare Foley is also good as his daughter Ashley.

I really bought into Hawke’s performance as the tormented writer Ellison Oswalt.  He really seems creeped out and bothered by the home movies, and he grows more and more uncomfortable as he delves deeper into his research of the crimes.

I also felt bad for the guy.  He’s a writer in desperate need of a new hit—it’s been 10 years since his bestseller—and he’s counting on a new hit to support his family, and I kept thinking, “Get another source of income, man!  You’re nuts relying only on your book!”

(ELLISON OSWALT pops up into the attic.)

OSWALT:  What do you want me to do?  Teach?  Write boring science textbooks?

MA:  Hey, you gotta pay the bills.

OSWALT:  But I wrote a bestseller once!  I can do it again! I know I can!

LS:  Quit your whining and get back to writing, already!

OSWALT:  Right.  (Exits)

MA:  You just said that to get rid of him.

LS:  Hey, we’ve got a movie to review here!  We can’t waste time listening to some guy whine about not being able to write another bestseller!

MA:  I feel bad for him.

LS: I don’t. Where’s my bestseller? At least he had one!

MA: That being said, I didn’t find Oswalt to be the most likeable main character.  He’s kind of a jerk to his wife, as he doesn’t tell her the truth about the new house they’ve moved into.

LS: I don’t think all characters – even lead ones – need to be likable. Not all people are likable. Oswalt is damaged goods, in part because of what he’s chosen to do for a living, and it’s understandable that things would take a toll on him. I think this makes him more interesting. And he lies to his wife because, if he doesn’t, he’ll have to put up with her whining.

MA: Yeah, I guess so. Juliet Rylance’s performance as Tracy Oswalt is fine, but I did find her character to be a little annoying.  She keeps telling her husband that she supports him and his decision to write his book, but she whines and complains about it every second she gets. Some support!

You mentioned Fred Dalton Thompson.  I used to enjoy him on LAW AND ORDER.  I thought his role here as the Sheriff was miniscule.  Why bother?

(THOMPSON pops up into attic.)

THOMPSON:  I needed the money, that’s why. It’s been awhile since I was a senator from Tennessee, and I’m a character actor, not a big star like Ethan Hawke.

MA: Okay, that makes sense.  Didn’t you run for president once?

THOMPSON: Yes, in 2008.

LS: How the mighty have fallen.

THOMPSON:  Yeah, yeah. Hey, if you guys ever need me to play a police officer or a judge in one of your jokes, I have lots of experience.

LS:  We’ll think about it and get back to you.  We’re kind of reviewing a movie right now.

THOMPSON:  Here’s my card.  (Hands them a card and exits).

MA: Well that was kind of sad. Back to SINISTER.

And James Ransone as the Deputy ran hot and cold.  While he’s likable at times, there were other times when he seemed just plain odd, and I was actually wondering if perhaps there would be something more to this character, some strange quirk in his background, but the script doesn’t go in that direction.  The Deputy remains just an oddball supporting character with little to do but look up facts for Ellison.

LS: I couldn’t tell if the Deputy was supposed to be just a comic relief character, or if he would have more importance as the movie went on. I’m actually disappointed they didn’t do more with him.

MA:  Same here.

LS:  By the time we get into ancient pagan deities that ate children, things have grown quite uncomfortable. The soundtrack here, by Christopher Young, is also quite effective. I found that his use of music, as well as various strange noises, increased the intensity and the tension of what was happening onscreen. Sometimes, it’s just a series of strange sounds, reminding me of the early industrial music of bands like Throbbing Gristle, which works very well at keeping us on the edges of our seats.

MA:  Yeah, you’re right about the soundtrack.  Some of those background sounds were really weird and they really did add to the mood.

LS:  SINISTER does exactly what a good horror movie is supposed to do. It keeps you feeling uncomfortable throughout, and the ending isn’t a cheat. Could this movie have been even more disturbing? Sure it could have. But it does a fine job of walking the tightrope between being truly extreme and maintaining just enough weirdness and scares to keep a mainstream audience off balance.

I liked this movie a lot more than I expected to, and I think it’s one of the better horror films we’ve seen this year. I give it three and a half knives out of five. If it had been a little more intense, I would have given it a better rating. But as is, that’s not too shabby.

What about you, Michael?

MA:  While I agree with you that the movie does succeed in making its audience feel uncomfortable, one thing it doesn’t do is flat out scare its audience, and for me, that was a letdown.

SINISTER works more along the lines of a disturbing thriller than a scream-out-loud shocker, and it was nowhere near as scary as I hoped it would be.  I thought INSIDIOUS was scarier.

I liked the demon Bughuul a lot, but he wasn’t in this movie enough in my book.  He’s really creepy and I wanted to see him do more in this movie, but unfortunately he’s relegated to being a background image, seen in the old Super 8 movies and on occasion lurking about Ellison’s home.  Despite his importance to the plot, he doesn’t exactly make a huge splash in this one.

LS: I agree with you on that count. Bughuul is a fascinating figure, and I wanted to know more about him, but the movie doesn’t give us much aside from some mythology provided by Professor Jonas (Vincent D’Onofrio), an expert on ancient religions and cults. But I wanted to see Bughuul fleshed out more. I wanted to understand his motivations better.

MA: My son pointed out, and I agreed, that Bughuul resembled Michael Jackson at times, which creeped us out even more, considering that Bughuul consumes children’s souls.

(LS laughs)

(Suddenly, MICHAEL JACKSON pops into attic.)

MICHAEL JACKSON:  I’m a lover, not a child-soul-eater! (sings) WooooooooHoooooo

(EXITS)

LS:  I’m glad he didn’t stick around.  I would have had to kill him.

MA:  But, he’s already dead.

MICHAEL JACKSON’s Voice:  But my legacy lives on!

LS: Not in Cinema Knife Fight Land, it doesn’t!  Get the hell out of here!

MA: I think he’s already gone.

LS: Good! One spooky Michael is enough for me.

MA (laughs): Anyway, I also really liked the Super 8 footage.  It was creepy and disturbing, but on its own, it’s not enough to carry this movie.  I wanted something more, and SINISTER didn’t really have that something.

For two thirds of this movie, I was really into it, but the final third didn’t go for the throat, and this was a letdown.  The movie also wasn’t helped by its preview which gave away a lot of the plot.  Very little of what I saw in SINISTER came as a surprise.

To me, the best part of SINISTER—besides the Super 8 mm footage— is the story of how this all effects Oswalt, how he becomes consumed and ultimately frightened of the story he’s investigating.   This was good, but I wanted more.  The film barely touches upon how it affects his kids.  We see it in a few scenes, where his daughter paints images and his son has “night terrors,” but these things are barely touched upon.  For example, what is his son really afraid of?  His father’s work, the fact that his dad writes about true horrific crimes?  The ghosts in the house?  Bughuul?  I wanted to know what was scaring this kid.

And the film could have benefitted by stronger supporting characters.  Ethan Hawke, while good, really isn’t able to carry this movie on his own.  I wanted more screen time for the Sheriff, who seemed like the type of guy who’d want to keep a close eye on Oswalt, and the Deputy, who ultimately comes off like a small town cop cliché.

I also wanted to know more about Bughuul.  For example, in the movie, he waits for a certain event to occur before he takes action, which is why the crimes are spread out over decades.  Why does he wait?  I have some pretty good guesses of my own, but the film doesn’t cover this.

Ultimately, SINISTER is an okay horror movie that tells a disturbing tale, but it seems to be missing some much need jolts as it marches on towards its predictable conclusion.  I give it two and a half knives.

(The face of an evil clown appears on the movie screen, as the hum of the projector continues to fill the attic. Suddenly, the clown moves forward, filling the screen with its face. MA and LS scream as the lights go out.)

(Everything goes dark)

MA’s Voice: Predictable. Very predictable.

—END—

© Copyright 2012 by Michael Arruda and L.L. Soares

Michael Arruda gives SINISTER ~ two and a half knives!

LL Soares gives SINISTER ~three and a half knives.

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Suburban Grindhouse Memories – Double Feature of MOTHER’S DAY (1980) and NIGHTMARE (1981)

Posted in 1980s Horror, 2012, Bad Situations, Disturbing Cinema, Gore!, Grindhouse Goodies, Indie Horror, Intense Movies, Killers, Murder!, Nick Cato Reviews, Nightmares, Slasher Movies, Suburban Grindhouse Memories, VIOLENCE! with tags , , , , , on August 31, 2012 by knifefighter

SUBURBAN GRINDHOUSE MEMORIES:
“If You Survive the Day, Will You Survive the Night?”
By Nick Cato

Sometime in 1983 (despite racking my brain, I can’t recall if it was March or October), a double feature hit the NY/NJ area that turned out to be one of the most brutal experiences I’ve ever had in a movie theater. Someone had decided to re-release 1980’s MOTHER’S DAY and 1981’s NIGHTMARE (a.k.a. NIGHTMARES IN A DAMAGED BRAIN) on the same bill, and this young gorehound couldn’t have been happier as I had missed each one upon their initial release. I couldn’t find the actual newspaper ad, so I attempted to recreate one (see above), only a tag line placed above the twin posters said “If You Survive the Day, Will You Survive the Night?” And by the time the second feature ended, I saw that a few people almost didn’t!

MOTHER’S DAY ran a wicked late night TV ad campaign when released in 1980; horror fans thirsted at its promises of Drano and electric knife attacks (YouTube it if you don’t believe me) and in my case, my parents had said “Who the hell do they make these movies for?” I silently said “ME!!!” Needless to say, I was psyched when I entered the (now defunct) Fox Twin Cinema and the first feature began to unreel.

If you haven’t seen it, MOTHER’S DAY is not exactly a pleasant film, despite its few instances of dark humor and the three entertaining antagonists (two murdering/rapist sons and their slightly unbalanced mother).  The plot is pure exploitation: Three girlfriends go for a weekend get-away camping trip and become victims to the crazed clan. After the two sons (named Ike and Addley) kidnap the girls by making their sleeping bags escape-proof , they dump them in the back yard of their isolated two-story home and proceed to rape them under the moonlight…as their spooky-looking, elderly Mother cheers them on and takes pictures. The audience, which was made up of mostly high school-aged patrons, remained silent throughout this uncomfortable sequence. To this day I list this as one of the top ten most disturbing scenes of all time, mainly due to the mother’s gleeful facial expressions during such a horrific attack.

The film does build some fine tension; after being raped and severely beaten (one of the girls is even killed), the two survivors plan their revenge, and this is where MOTHER’S DAY becomes more than a standard rape/revenge film: it turns into a slasher/revenge hybrid and features the aforementioned scenes of Drano being poured down one brother’s throat, a TV being smashed over another brother’s head, a plugged-in electric carving knife put to good use, plus an antenna shoved into one brother’s throat, and more mayhem than you can shake an amputated arm at. AND…just when our ladies think they’re safe (SPOILER ALERT!), a mutated sibling of the brothers named Queenie hops over some hedges to extract her own revenge in a genuine shock ending.

Brothers Ike and Addley are ready for total mayhem in MOTHER’S DAY (1980).

There’s a lot of goofs in this one (even during the infamous opening decapitation scene, where blood splashes across a woman’s face even before her boyfriend’s head is hacked into!), but its flaws still don’t hurt its overall intensity factor. MOTHER’S DAY is one of the most brutal R-rated horror films I’ve ever seen, evidenced by the audiences’ complete silence throughout the film.

Next up was 1981’s NIGHTMARE (known more commonly as NIGHTMARES IN A DAMAGED BRAIN), a film I remembered seeing TV commercials for, but never paying it much mind. By the time it was over, I had become a head-over-heels fan, and have written extensively about it over the years on top of showing it to countless people on both VHS and DVD. And the odd thing is, NIGHTMARE is a standard, by-the-numbers, “psycho released too early from a mental institution” film, complete with bad acting and a couple of tedious stretches. But for some reason, it WORKS in ways few other slasher films do.

George Tatum is released from an institution after being placed on experimental medication (which is barely explained in the film). He travels from somewhere north of New York down to Florida to murder his family, wasting innocent bystanders along the way. Unlike most films of its kind, NIGHTMARE’s graphic gore sequences are actually scary and hard to watch, especially the infamous double-homicide finale where George flashes back to the time when, as a child, he murdered his dad and his mistress with an axe…a scene that’s shown in quick hints throughout the film, making it nearly impossible to handle once it’s finally shown in full. It was the first time I actually SWEATED watching a horror film, and afterwards, I saw about six people standing outside the theatre, leaning against the wall, actually collecting themselves over the insane images they had just seen. How many FRIDAY THE 13th or HALLOWEEN sequels ever did that to someone?

You better hope George Tatum isn’t calling YOU! From 1981′s NIGHTMARE!

This grueling double feature was unique from all of my other grindhouse experiences due to the fact both films kept the crowd in submission: both were serious doses of hardcore horror that—at the time—no one was expecting, other than those who had seen them a couple years earlier. My friends and I agreed we felt like someone had punched us in the face for the past three hours, and with a very few exceptions, we had not gone through a single or double feature quite this barbaric since.

Both of these films hold up well today, although they may not be as intense to hardcore horror fans in light of some of the ultra-graphic splatter films that have come after them. But it’s not just the gore FX that made MOTHER’S DAY and NIGHTMARE so gruesome and horrific: each film was a rebellious work of no-holds-barred anarchy that’s seldom seen in the theater today, in any genre. They’re films today’s multiplex crowds just won’t get to behold.

(MOTHER’S DAY will be released on blu-ray in a deluxe edition in September, 2012, and NIGHTMARE finally came to DVD the summer of 2011 and quickly sold out. Today it can be found on the second hand market for as high as $99.00).

© Copyright 2012 by Nick Cato

Mama just loves her boys! From MOTHER’S DAY (1980)

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Quick Cuts: Favorite Movies by DAVID CRONENBERG

Posted in 2012, 70s Horror, 80s Horror, Body Horror, Classic Films, Cult Movies, David Cronenberg, Disease!, Disturbing Cinema, ESP, Evil Kids!, Hit Men, Indie Horror, Parasites!, Telekinesis with tags , , , , , , , , on August 24, 2012 by knifefighter

QUICK CUTS Presents: THE MOVIES OF DAVID CRONENBERG
Featuring: Michael Arruda, L.L. Soares, Nick Cato, Paul McMahon, Mark Onspaugh, and Jenny Orosel

Director David Cronenberg has been giving us nightmares for over 40 years.

MICHAEL ARRUDA:  With the release of David Cronenberg’s latest movie, COSMOPOLIS (2012), we’ve decided to take a look at our favorite Cronenberg movies.

*****

L.L. SOARES: David Cronenberg is such an iconic director, and has made so many great films to choose from. But, without a doubt, my all-time favorite Cronenberg film is CRASH (1990), which happens to be based on one of my all-time favorite novels (of the same name) by J.G. Ballard. With an amazing cast that includes James Spader, Holly Hunter, Deborah Kara Unger, Rosanna Arquette, and Elias Koteas as charismatic anti-hero Vaughan, it’s the story of a man (Spader as “Jim Ballard”) who experiences a traumatic car accident and then discovers a strange cult-like group of people that fetishizes (and just about worships) car crashes. Cronenberg captures the cold, antiseptic feel of Ballard’s very bleak novel, and the movie was pretty controversial (like a lot of Cronenberg films) when it first came out.

(Not to be confused with the Paul Haggis film “Crash:” from 2001)

Cronenberg has made so many great movies. But my other favorites include:

DEAD RINGERS (1988) —With Jeremy Irons in one of his best performances ever as twin gynecologists who share a relationship with one woman (Genevieve Bujold), who can’t tell them apart. Then things start to get violent.

VIDEODROME (1983)—With James Woods as a man who finds a very disturbing cable TV channel that changes his life in scary ways. Including the famous scene where Woods has a VCR slot in his stomach. Also starring Blondie lead singer Deborah Harry.

THE BROOD (1979) —the first Cronenberg film I ever saw, and still a favorite, with little monster kids created from the rage of Samantha Eggar. With Oliver Reed.

NAKED LUNCH (1991) —The underground classic novel by William S. Burroughs was considered unfilmable, but that didn’t stop Cronenberg from bringing it to the big screen. He makes it coherent by mixing a lot of Burroughs’ wild imagery with biographical incidents from the writer’s life.

*****

JENNY OROSEL: I have a soft spot in my heart for CRASH (1990), seeing as I got my driver’s license in a CRASH t-shirt (I got my license late—I’m not that young). The humor was lost on my tester.

NAKED LUNCH (1991) blew me away because I had no idea how anyone could turn that book into a movie, and I think he pulled it off the only way possible.

*****

 

NICK CATO:  SHIVERS (a.k.a. THEY CAME FROM WITHIN) (1975) is my personal favorite Cronenberg film. It’s a genuinely scary tale of a parasite that turns the residents of a luxury condo into possessed sexual predators. It’s not his best technical achievement, but it gets the goosebumps going better than most standard horror films.

While I’d like to list VIDEODROME as my second favorite, that honor goes to CRASH (1996). Only Cronenberg can take such a bizarre subject (people turned on by car crashes) and make it a film that holds up amazingly well to repeat viewings. It’s unlike any film before or since.

*****

MICHAEL ARRUDA:  Without doubt, my favorite David Cronenberg movie is THE FLY (1986), which is one of my favorite horror movies from the 1980s, one of my favorites of all time, and certainly one of my favorite remakes.  I love the performances by Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis, the gruesome special effects, and how this film captured how it would really be to have your DNA mixed with the DNA of a fly, a concoction that would occur at the molecular level.  Cronenberg is masterful at the helm here.

—Be afraid.  Be very afraid.

I’m also a fan of VIDEODROME (1983) and THE DEAD ZONE (1983).

*****

 PAUL MCMAHON:  It feels traitorous to choose only a single Cronenberg film as my favorite, so I’ll pick two.

First, A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE (2005). Its brilliance starts with the emotionless opening sequence of random cruelty that mirrors our fears. The film moves you through the realization of a specific act of violence and explores the way that one event changes the people involved. Violence shoves its way into your life and grows roots. No matter how you try to hide from the memory of such a traumatic event, it never goes away and never lets you forget. Cronenberg’s movie dramatizes this brilliantly, and is very uncomfortable to watch.

Second, and I’m just realizing this is another brilliant representation of trauma —THE BROOD (1979). This time the violence comes from divorce and the ensuing custody battle over a young daughter. THE BROOD features a progressive psychotherapist who has developed a way to make his patients’ internal and invisible pain manifest physically, where it can be seen and acknowledged. Cronenberg himself was struggling through just such a divorce while he directed this movie, and his pain bleeds through the screen. Like the patients of Dr. Raglan, David Cronenberg crafted a physical representation of his inner turmoil. He has said that it’s the one film of his that he cannot bear to watch again.

*****

MARK ONSPAUGH:  SCANNERS (1981) —So audacious and amazing! I remembered hearing something about this movie and my wife and I were at a theater where they showed a red band trailer. I whispered, “I think this is the movie where people’s heads blow up,” knowing she’d want to look away —she didn’t hear me —man, did she shriek when that happened! For months after it came out, a friend and I kept repeating Michael Ironside’s line, “I’m gonna suck your brain DRY!”

THE FLY (1986) —It was Cronenberg who layered in the romance into Charles Pogue’s script, elevating this movie from mere creature feature to a masterpiece of horrific tragedy. I don’t think Jeff Goldblum or Geena Davis have ever been better.

So many to choose from, including EASTERN PROMISES (2007), HISTORY OF VIOLENCE (2005) and SPIDER (2002). If you want to take what amounts to a class in cinema, watch SPIDER with the director’s commentary – I don’t want to spoil it for those who didn’t see it, but there is a major change in the movie I didn’t even detect, at first – brilliant.

*****

MICHAEL ARRUDA:  And that about sums up David Cronenberg.  Thanks, everyone!

L.L. SOARES:  And thank you, readers, for joining us today!

—-END—

© Copyright 2012 by Michael Arruda, L.L. Soares, Nick Cato, Paul McMahon, Mark Onspaugh, and Jenny Orosel

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KILLER JOE (2012)

Posted in 2012, Controverisal Films, Crime Films, Disturbing Cinema, Hit Men, Killers, LL Soares Reviews, VIOLENCE! with tags , , , , , , , , on August 20, 2012 by knifefighter

KILLER JOE (2012)
Movie Review by L.L. Soares

William Friedkin is the director who gave us such classics as THE FRENCH CONNECTION (1971) and THE EXORCIST (1973), and his most recent movie, KILLER JOE (2012), is proof that the man is alive and well, and still turning out top-notch work.  For some reason, the movie is only in limited release in a few cities. On second thought, there is a reason: the movie received an NC-17 rating from the MPAA, and Friedkin refused to cut it to get an R, which makes it harder to market. I’m assuming that has something to do with it. Did Friedkin make the right choice? I’d say so.

Based on a play by writer (and sometimes actor) Tracy Letts—who also collaborated with Friedkin on his last movie, BUG (2006)—KILLER JOE is a tale of seedy characters living desperate lives, and the lengths they will go to dig themselves out, even when it’s clear they’re just digging themselves deeper down.

The movie opens by introducing us to the Smith family. Chris (Emile Hirsch) is a gambling-addicted low-life who owes a lot of money to a loan shark. After having a fight with his mother, Chris goes to see his dad, Ansel (Thomas Haden Church)-who lives in a trailer and doesn’t seem very bright, about a possible solution to his problems.  Chris’s mom is Ansel’s ex-wife, and he’s now married to his second wife, Sharla (Gina Gershon). Right away, the family members are bickering and hitting each other, and you know they don’t have much of a shot at getting up from the bottom. But Chris thinks he has the answers to their problems: what about killing his mother for her insurance money? Ansel listens, because he’s too dumb not to be seduced by the idea.

Oh yeah, there’s also Dottie (Juno Temple), Ansel’s daughter and Chris’s sister, who seems a little slow and who lives with her daddy and Sharla.

In order to get away with the murder, Chris suggests they hire someone outside the family to do it. This is where Killer Joe comes in. Joe Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) is a Dallas police detective who also has a “side business” as a hit man. For twenty-five grand, he’ll get rid of Chris’s drunken mother (who we only see briefly in the movie). But there’s a problem. Chris and Ansel can’t pay him his money up front, as Joe demands. They won’t have the money until after the deed is done and they get the insurance money, since they know the mom’s policy makes Dottie the beneficiary.  So they have no way to pay Joe beforehand. He is about to walk out the door when he decides to make them a deal. He’ll take a retainer until he gets paid, and that retainer is Chris’s underage sister. They hesitate, then agree to it, and set up a special “private” dinner between Joe and Dottie, so they can get to know each other….

From here, it’s a matter of whether Joe goes through with the murder, and what happens to Dottie. There are also a few double-crosses along the way.

You can tell that KILLER JOE is based on a stage play at times, since there’s a lot of dialogue here , and some of the scenes seem a little stagey. However, this does not detract from the film version, mainly because the story is well-written and the acting is so damn good.

Hirsch is suitably scruffy and pathetic  (yet also sympathetic at times) as Chris, a guy who gets himself deeper and deeper in debt, but who wants to redeem himself in the end, even if his idea of redemption doesn’t exactly make a lot of sense. Church is also well-cast as Ansel, who willingly agrees to awful things, partly because he just doesn’t seem to have any kind of moral compass, but also because he might just be a little slower than some folks. Gershon is pretty amazing as Sharla; a trashy trailer queen who answers the door without pants on and thinks she has all the men in her life wrapped around her little finger. Gershon has shown fearlessness in her roles before, and KILLER JOE just ups the ante. This is a woman who will go to great lengths when she needs to in a performance. And it’s for that reason that I think she’s very underrated as an actress. And then we get to the main characters here.

Juno Temple does a great job as Dottie. While Dottie is supposed to be fairly young, it’s clear that Temple is over 18 (for the obvious reasons), but she’s good at emanating a naïve innocence that hovers between youthful exhuberance and brain damage (her father is Ansel, after all, but we also find out that when she was little, her mother tried to smother her death, and thought she had, which may have deprived her brain of precious oxygen for a spell). You care about Dottie, and you can understand why some of the characters feel the need to protect her, even while they’re selling her like property. For her part, Dottie is also willful and may be a little smarter than her family thinks she is, since she’s capable of selfish acts when given the tiny bit of power to act them out. Her character has been compared to Carroll Baker in the film version of Tennessee Williams’ BABY DOLL (1956), and the comparison is apt. Strangely enough, we most recently saw Temple as Catwoman’s sidekick in THE DARK KNIGHT RISES.

But the real reason to see KILLER JOE is Matthew McConaughey, who is simply awe-inspiring here as Joe Cooper. Intense, always in control, and downright scary, Killer Joe is a character who exudes cool, even as he does the vilest things. It’s fascinating to see McConaughey here, playing against type as a vicious murderer in contrast to his roles in countless light romantic comedies. There is nothing light about Joe. He’s a stone-cold killer, and even his “romantic” side is focused on a slightly slow, underage girl who doesn’t know any better. Needless to say, there are times when he makes your skin crawl.

Matthew McConaughey turns in an Oscar-caliber performance here as the very unpleasant character, “Killer Joe” Cooper.

In every scene McConaughey is in, he’s the camera’s main focus. He owns this movie and it’s such an excellent showcase for his acting chops that I think he really deserves an Oscar nomination for this role, even though he will probably be overlooked because Joe is so unpleasant, and this movie is so damn dark and disturbing.

McConaughey’s role here reminded me a little of Lou Ford, the protagonist of  THE KILLER INSIDE ME, the classic novel by crime fiction god Jim Thompson (twice filmed, first in 1976 with Stacy Keach and 2010 with Casey Affleck), but McConaughey makes Joe all his own. I’d really like to see him in more roles like this, because he was fascinating to watch. Kind of like a coiled, venomous snake, walking around on two legs.

As for that NC-17 rating, I didn’t see a lot here that should have denied it an R, but there are two scenes the MPAA might have been squeamish about. One involves the outcome of Joe and Dottie’s first “date” in that trailer. The other involves Joe, Sharla, and a fried chicken leg, that is bound to upset some viewers.

Despite the subject matter, and the fact that there really isn’t one character here who deserves the redemption they crave, KILLER JOE is a solid, emotionally-powerful piece of work. Friedkin shows he’s still at the top of his game, and everyone involved here does an exceptional job. Obviously, a movie this dark is not for everyone, and there are people who probably shouldn’t see KILLER JOE. But if you think you can handle it, it’s worth wading in the slime for 103 minutes. Hell, there are even a few moments of (dark) humor to keep it from being overly oppressive.

In a summer that gave us superhero extravaganzas like THE AVENGERS and sci-fi mammoths like PROMETHEUS, I found KILLER JOE to be both more emotionally effective, and more satisfying as a cinema experience.

I give it four and a half knives.

© Copyright 2012 by L.L. Soares

LL Soares gives William Friedkin’s KILLER JOE ~ four and a half knives.

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The Geisha of Gore Reviews: COLD FISH (2010)

Posted in 2012, Asian Horror, Colleen Wanglund Reviews, Crime Films, Disturbing Cinema, Geisha of Gore Reviews, Serial Killer flicks, VIOLENCE! with tags , , , , , on April 4, 2012 by knifefighter

COLD FISH (2010)
Movie Review by Colleen Wanglund, The Geisha of Gore

Director Sion Sono’s serial killer film COLD FISH (2010) is the third film to be released by Nikkatsu’s Sushi Typhoon off-shoot. Co-written by Sono and Yoshiki Takahashi, the film is based on a true story from the 1980s. Takahashi is a graphic artist responsible for most of the very cool poster artwork for some of Japan’s most wildly notorious horror films, including TOKYO GORE POLICE (2008) and ROBOGEISHA (2009), as well as being the principal artist for Sushi Typhoon’s releases. Sono is a writer, actor, composer and cinematographer, as well as the director of such deliberately-paced films as SUICIDE CLUB (2001) and NORIKO’S DINNER TABLE (2005).

COLD FISH opens with the introduction of the Shamoto family—Nobuyuki (Mitsuru Fukikoshi), owner of a tropical fish shop; his second wife Taeko (Megumi Kagurazaka); and his teenage daughter Mitsuko (Hikari Kajiwara). We can see immediately that Mitsuko has no respect for her father and hates her step-mother. We also see that Shamoto is a timid man and his marriage is in trouble, as Taeko will not have sex with him while Mitsuko is around.

Nobuyuki and Taeko receive a phone call and run out to a local department store in the pouring rain. Mitsuko has been caught shoplifting and the manager demands to know what Shamoto intends to do about it, when Yukio Murata (played by the very prolific Denden) comes into the room and seemingly to the rescue. Murata also owns a tropical fish store and distracts the manager with talk of fish breeding. He then talks the store manager into letting Mitsuko go home with her parents without calling the police. After leaving the store, Murata talks the Shamoto’s into coming to his store. While there, they meet Murata’s wife Aiko (Asuka Kurosawa) and it is decided (by Murata) that Mitsuko will work at the fish store and live on the property in a dorm where all of the employees live. All of the employees are attractive young women dressed in camo-colored shorts and white tank tops (Hooters, anyone?).

Murata and his wife seem like a dream come true. They take troubled girls and give them jobs and some stability to help straighten them out. Shamoto tries to talk to Mitsuko, which proves to be a waste of time, and Taeko has a private meeting with Murata. Later that same day, Shamoto is brought into Murata’s office where there is a meeting going on about breeding fish worth millions of yen. Murata exploits Shamoto’s weakness, steering him into a deal he really knows nothing about. It is here that we see Murata’s true nature, as he kills one of the men because he hesitates to give over money and close the deal. Murata, his wife Aiko and Shamoto take the body to Murata’s dead father’s house where they promptly destroy it and any other evidence, making the dead man invisible (as Murata puts it). To keep him quiet, Murata tells Shamoto that he can make Mitsuko and Taeko invisible as well. Shamoto is sufficiently cowed.

Over the next few days, Shamoto’s life spirals completely out of control. Murata informs him that the brothers of the man they killed and disposed of are looking for him. Shamoto must get his story straight so the brothers (who run an illegal chop shop) will go away. There are questions by the police and Shamoto is drawn in even deeper to Murata and Aiko’s twisted world. Shamoto now starts to take his frustrations out on his family. He practically drags Mitsuko home, making both her and Taeko sit down to dinner as a family. When Mitsuko disrespects him, Shamoto hits her so hard he knocks her unconscious. He then attacks Taeko, realizing that their marriage is over and she wants out. Shamoto’s downward spiral continues at the hands of Murata and he seems helpless to stop it.

Yoshiki Takahashi is a fan of, and writes extensively about, true crime, so his screenplay is based on a real serial murder case in which husband and wife dog breeders are estimated to have murdered forty people in the 1980s and 90s. Because of budget constraints, the script called for fish instead of dogs and producer Yoshinori Chiba approached Sion Sono to direct. Sono initially said no, but when asked by Takahashi to read over the script as a favor (they have been friends for years), Sono changed his mind. The script went back and forth between Takahashi and Sono until they had the story they wanted.

COLD FISH is crazy long—clocking in at around two and a half hours—but it is one hell of a ride and doesn’t feel that long. Critics of Sono accuse him of over-directing scenes but I don’t see it that way. Sono takes a story and pulls the viewer into the lives of his characters. They are real people struggling to cope with their current circumstances. He wants you to experience the roller coaster of emotions right along with the characters. And the characters themselves are very well-developed and portrayed with a staggering realism. Murata is a loudmouthed asshole who manipulates the people around him and rips off his customers after initially coming across as an energetic and caring person. Shamoto is a meek man who doesn’t know how to deal with his daughter’s hatred of her step-mother and just wants to have sex with his wife. Taeko, Aiko, and Mitsuko all have their issues and would benefit greatly from some psychological help….hell, Aiko should probably be committed.

There is plenty of gore in COLD FISH, with some very detailed shots of dismemberment. Murata and Aiko are very thorough in making someone “invisible.”  It is quite unsettling to see how methodical they are. One aspect that struck me as odd at first was watching Shamoto douse the bones in soy sauce before burning them. I found out that this is done to cover the smell of burning organic material—to put it nicely. The film builds slowly, but once it reaches its groove, COLD FISH moves at break-neck speed to its dizzying and unpredictable final scenes. Denden is especially good at moving things along with his frenetic portrayal of an exploitative madman. It is his performance that will be remembered most by those who see the film. What I most love about COLD FISH is the sheer helplessness of Shamoto….at times I empathize with the man, but at others I want to strangle him for allowing himself to be manipulated so easily.

A gruesome moment from COLD FISH.

Some accuse Sono of being a misogynist, but the men in COLD FISH are just as flawed and screwed up as the women. There is disgust for every character, as they are either selfish and manipulative or desperate, but like a horrifying car accident on the side of the road, you can’t look away. You want to see how low these people will go to find some satisfaction in their incomplete and messed up lives. Mitsuko is one step away from juvenile detention; Taeko seems to feel nothing until she is literally smacked around; and Aiko’s allegiance changes with the wind to whatever suits her own selfish needs. Murata is cruel and an obvious sociopath; while Shamoto’s attempt to finally deal with his disintegrating family is futile and purely out of frustration with his own shortcomings. Shamoto knows he’s being exploited but can’t muster up enough courage to stand up to Murata. He is the most pathetic character of all. And the film’s ending shocked me….I loved it!

I love Sion Sono’s films, but I must say that COLD FISH is easily his best to date. It is wholly entertaining, with a bleak and stunning outcome and a darkly funny edge. It is available on Netflix and was released on Blu-ray/DVD in North America by Bloody Disgusting. My biggest disappointment is that the Region 1 disc contains none of the extras included in the European and Asian releases, and I really wanted the extras, as they include an interview with Yoshiki Takahashi. Other than that, COLD FISH is highly recommended. I for one will definitely be watching it again.

© Copyright 2012 by Colleen Wanglund

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HOSTEL PART III (2011)

Posted in 2012, Bad Situations, Disturbing Cinema, DVD Review, Gore!, LL Soares Reviews, Murder!, Sequels, Torture with tags , , , , , , on March 16, 2012 by knifefighter

HOSTEL PART III
DVD Review by L.L. Soares

As a big fan of the first two HOSTEL movies (2005 and 2007) that Eli Roth directed, I was more than a little leery about watching the third film in the series, which Roth had no participation in. But I had to at least check it out.

This time around, the action doesn’t happen overseas, but rather in Vegas. Four guys are on a road trip to celebrate the bachelor party of Scott (Brian Hallisay), who is about to marry his sweetheart Amy (Kelly Thiebaud). The friends include obnoxious Mike (Skyler Stone), disabled buddy Justin (John Hensley, who most people will remember from the FX series NIP/TUCK and movies like 2007’s TEETH), and Carter (Kip Perdue), who used to have a thing for Amy, but now is determined to give his best bud a good time before the wedding.

Once in Vegas, they meet up with two sexy girls, Kendra and Nikki (Sarah Habel and Zulay Henao respectively), who are escorts there to show them a good time. Or are they? They seem a little suspicious from the get-go, but then again this is a movie that’s not above inserting a few red herrings.

Everyone is having a good time until Mike disappears with Nikki, after a slightly unsettling party in a spooky warehouse far from the Strip, and the other guys can’t reach him. Things can only go downhill from there, as everyone is eventually drawn into the web of the Elite Hunting Club.

HOSTEL PART III differs from the previous movies in that 1) it’s set in America and there’s not an actual hostel to be seen, except for one shot when the guys are walking down a street and a neon sign advertises one building as a “Hostel” (but are there really even any hostels in Vegas?) and 2) once the torture and killing begins, we learn that every single act of violence is being watched by a roomful of spectators who bet on the outcomes. Will it take three arrows to kill a guy, or seven? Stuff like that. At least in the previous movies, you could get a little privacy when you dismembered someone and didn’t have to put on a show for an audience every time!

There are also the bad guys, Travis (Chris Coy) who likes to dress up like a typical college kid to fool people, and his boss Flemming, an Eastern European gangster type who you’ll immediately recognize as Captain Kurt Brynildson (Thomas Kretschmann) from the new ABC series THE RIVER. That is, if you watch THE RIVER.

There are a few good scenes, especially the one involving the lady wearing a weird mask and shooting those arrows I mentioned before from a crossbow (she even has the room filled with smoke for added creepy affect), but nothing that comes close to the Eli Roth movies, which seemed to revel in their violence a lot more. Here, it’s more business as usual.

One of the few interesting visuals in HOSTEL PART III is a woman wearing a strange mask and wielding a crossbow. Otherwise, it’s pretty much business as usual.

Say what you want about Roth, but the guy has an artist’s touch when it comes to torture scenes, and I still say the first two movies (especially PART II) were more (very) dark comedies than horror movies. There’s no such ambition here. PART III is ably directed by Scott Spiegel, who, you may remember, was one of the kids who grew up making Super 8 movies with a young Sam Raimi back in the day, and has directed such movies as INTRUDER (1989) and FROM DUSK TILL DAWN 2: TEXAS BLOOD MONEY (1999).He’s also acted in a bunch of movies like SKINNED ALIVE (1990),and lots of Sam Raimi movies, from EVIL DEAD 2 (1987) to DRAG ME TO HELL (2009).

Here, Speigel makes a very standard variation on the Roth films, that doesn’t try very hard to be fresh or different. The Vegas setting really doesn’t add much (the more brutal scenes still take place in a deserted warehouse), and the murder set pieces are okay, but nothing to write home about (no Elizabeth Bathory wannabes like in PART II, or cameos by great foreign horror directors like Takashi Miike or Ruggero Deodato).  And no kids playing soccer with a human head this time, either!

It’s just a so-so ride, and the ending is sort of fun, but pretty implausible. Not that logic plays much of a role in movies like this.

Is HOSTEL PART III horrible? No, it’s just nothing special. Worth a rental, maybe. But if you haven’t seen the first two movies yet, maybe you should rent those instead. I still say Eli Roth has a killer sense of humor that is underappreciated.

© Copyright 2012 by L.L. Soares

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KILL LIST (2011)

Posted in 2012, Bad Situations, British Horror, Disturbing Cinema, Hit Men, Killers, LL Soares Reviews, Murder!, Surprises!, Twist Endings, VIOLENCE! with tags , , , , , , , on March 6, 2012 by knifefighter

KILL LIST (2011)
Movie Review by L.L. Soares

Sometimes you find a movie that you don’t know a lot about, and you go in fresh, and it completely blows you away.

This doesn’t happen very often. With this age of media oversaturation, it’s almost impossible not to see the trailer for a movie a hundred times before it opens—not to mention countless ads on television. But every once in a while a little independent film, usually showing in a limited-run at an arthouse theater, slips through the cracks. You hear the buzz about it, and without too much effort you can avoid finding out too much about the plot, and you can have a fresh experience. Like I said, this is rare. The last time I felt this way about a movie was back in 1999, when Takashi Miike’s AUDITION had a very limited theatrical run (the theater I saw it in had it for two days!). I’d heard it was supposed to be good, but I avoided any reviews of it, and was amazed and surprised by it.

Well, sitting through KILL LIST was a very similar experience. It is nothing like Miike’s film, but it has been getting some buzz in the independent horror movie scene, and I was able to avoid reading too much about it, which is good, because it’s one of those movies that throws a few curveballs at you in ways M. Night Shymalan only wishes he could do. (Note: KILL LIST was made in 2011, but some people are only seeing it in the U.S. now, thanks to limited theatrical runs and services like OnDemand cable.Personally, I’m glad I got a chance to see it on the big screen.)

When it started, I thought maybe this one wasn’t going to live up to its buzz. It seemed like just another drama about British working people enduring hard times. Jay (Neil Maskell) has been out of work for months and his wife, Shel (MyAnna Buring) is getting more resentful with each passing day. Enter Jay’s buddy Gal (Michael Smiley) who comes over for dinner with his new girlfriend, Fiona (Emma Fryer) for some wine and chat, but the party turns ugly when Jay and Shel start screaming at each other in the other room. Meanwhile, their young son Sam (Harry Simpson) is taking the brunt of it all.

But things change when Gal offers Jay a chance to get his old job back. The two of them are veterans of the Iraq War and here’s where the first big story twist happens. It turns out that the two of them started freelancing as hired killers after the war ended. Jay has been out of work for a bit because of some mysterious mistake he made in Kiev (we never find out exactly what it was, but it must have been a doosy). But Jay gets a second chance and Gal seems genuinely happy to work with him again, “The Two Musketeers are back together,” as Gal puts it. They accept a job from an enigmatic man (Struan Rodger, who in the credits is simply referred to as “The Client”), who hands them money and a list of three people to kill, including a priest and a librarian. However, to seal the deal, the Client feels the need to take out a knife and make a deep cut in Jay’s hand, then proceeds to do the same to himself. Gal freaks out and pulls out his gun, but Jay seems able to overlook it and move on, even though he’s bleeding all over the carpet. Maybe he’s just happy to be working again and doesn’t want to blow it.

The people Jay and Gal are sent to whack are particularly unsavory types whose crimes shock and offend Jay, and he begins to take the job a little too personally, going after their accomplices as well. Gal starts to worry Jay is going to screw up again, and begins to seriously question the new partnership. Meanwhile Swedish beauty Shel decides to take their son and move out of the house to stay in a cabin they have in the country, leaving Jay alone to stew in his own rage.

It’s the final person Jay and Gal go to snuff that takes the movie in a completely unexpected direction. And about this twist I won’t say anything more, except that it reminded me a lot of two horror “classics,” one from the 1970s and the other much more recent. Needless to say, the ending is suitably disturbing.

The script is top-notch and the acting is equally good. You believe these characters are genuine people, and you care about them. I thought the camaraderie between Jay and Gal was especially good; these guys really do seem like best friends. The budget is clearly small, but director Ben Wheatley turns out a remarkable product all the same. Oh yeah, and there’s plenty of the red stuff for fans of gore. This is a movie that doesn’t look away when the rough stuff is happening. One scene involving a hammer is especially gruesome.

My only issue is that I couldn’t understand everything the characters said. In a few scenes, their Yorkshire accents get a bit thick, and I kind of wish the movie had given us some subtitles (which reminds me of another good but sometimes hard to understand movie, Gary Oldman’s NIL BY MOUTH, 1997). Don’t let this scare you off, though. You’ll get sucked in just the same and it’s pretty clear what’s happening at all times. You just might not catch a phrase here and there.

I’ve seen a few Hollywood movies lately where at the end, the audience feels the need to applaud. Most of the time, this is totally unwarranted (most Hollywood movies these days just aren’t that good). Besides, the people involved in making the movie can’t hear you anyway. But at the end of KILL LIST I wanted to applaud anyway. It was that good.

I can’t praise this one enough. I give it four and a half knives.

© Copyright 2012 by L.L. Soares

L.L. Soares gives KILL LIST ~ four and a half knives!

 

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Bill’s Bizarre Bijou: THE BABY (1973)

Posted in 1970s Movies, 2012, 70s Horror, Bill's Bizarre Bijou, Controverisal Films, Disturbing Cinema, Family Secrets, William Carl Articles with tags , , , , , , on March 1, 2012 by knifefighter

Bill’s Bizarre Bijou

William D. Carl

This Week’s Feature Presentation:

THE BABY (1973)

Welcome to Bill’s Bizarre Bijou, where you’ll discover the strangest films ever made.  If there are alien women with too much eye-shadow and miniskirts, if papier-mâché monsters are involved, if your local drive-in insisted this be the last show in their dusk till dawn extravaganza, or if it’s just plain unclassifiable – then I’ve seen it and probably loved it.   Now, I’m here to share these little gems with you, so you too can stare in disbelief at your television with your mouth dangling open.  Trust me, with these flicks, you won’t believe your eyes.

Don’t you miss the Seventies?  Movies were made and distributed to theaters and drive-ins all over the country that were shocking, icky, monstrous, fun, and morally ambiguous, usually all in the same film.  You couldn’t make a movie like these today, let alone find a way to get them shown to people in real cinemas.  At least, not without being arrested.  And we’re only talking about the PG rated ones!  Such a film is 1973’s THE BABY, a psycho drama / black comedy / social issues film / horror / slasher / camp-fest.  Let’s face it; the damn thing’s not going to fit into one labeled box.  And that’s part of what makes me love it so much!

Anjanette Comer (THE LOVED ONE-1965, FIVE DESPERATE WOMEN-1971, DEAD OF NIGHT-1977) stars as Ann Gentry, a fresh-faced, enthusiastic welfare case worker who has begged to be put on the ‘Baby’ case.  When she goes to the run-down house to investigate for the state, she finds a young man simply called Baby who has, in his twenties, gone far beyond being mentally challenged,.  He can’t talk, can’t walk, can’t feed himself, and Ann believes he is being kept in this advanced stage of retardation by negative reinforcement doled out by his mother, Mrs. Wadsworth (the great Ruth Roman of STRANGERS ON A TRAIN-1951, THE WINDOW-1949, THE FAR COUNTRY-1954, and numerous television credits.)  Mrs. Wadsworth is an odd duck, all right.  Boozily flouncing around, she proudly informs Ann that the whole family lives on the welfare checks Baby earns for them.  If you think the mother is a nut-job, wait till you meet the two adult daughters.  Marianna Hill (Cleo Patrick on the 1966 BATMAN TV series, MESSIAH OF EVIL-1973, and BLOOD BEACH-1980) is Germaine, a statuesque gal with crazy piled up hair that makes her look as though she’s on her way to a midnight meeting of the local coven.  She also has Sapphic tendencies toward Ann and likes to sneak into Baby’s room to breast feed him at night.  Ewww!  The other daughter, Alba, is played by Suzanne Zenor, who had small roles in films as varied as PLAY IT AGAIN SAM-1972, THE WAY WE WERE-1973, and the Joan Rivers/Billy Crystal fiasco RABBIT TEST-1978.  She always has an odd facial expression, as though she smells something rotten in the room, and she likes to “discipline” Baby with a cattle prod.  Yes, there’s definitely something nasty going on in the Wadsworth domicile.

Marianna Hill as Germaine in THE BABY.

Ann is determined to get Baby out of the hands of these three clearly insane women.  First, she attempts to prove that Baby has normal musculature and tries to get him to walk.  She then attempts to get Mrs. Wadsworth to take Baby to a psychiatrist or a group home.  “It’s not like an asylum,” she chirps.  “It’s more like a spa.”  Mrs. Wadsworth stands firm, finally tiring of Ann’s snooping around.  So, she reports Ann to her boss, claiming some horrible action that gets Ann thrown off the case.   By now, our chipper little case worker is completely obsessed with Baby, to a point where you begin to wonder who the craziest person in the room is.  After all, Ann is living in a huge mansion with her manly mother-in-law and she claims that her husband has had a terrible accident.  Where’s the husband?  What happened to him?  And why does the mother-in-law look and dress like a prison matron?

Baby has a birthday bash in THE BABY (1973)

 

Mrs. Wadsworth invites Ann to Baby’s birthday party, so she can see for herself how the family interacts in a typical social environment.  Well, if this is typical, I was brought up all wrong!  Everyone is smoking doobies, everyone is disco dancing to wild wah-wah guitar music, everyone is collapsing onto sofas in groups of two or three and kissing, all while Baby crawls around their gyrating legs with cake icing on his face.  At one point, Germaine is hit on by Dennis, a party guest, who then switches his fixation to Alba.

Dennis-“You have beautiful skin.”

Germaine-“Are you a dermatologist?”

Dennis-“No, just a skin freak.”

Dennis is played by the wonderfully sleazy character actor Michael Pataki, who graced such films as THE RETURN OF COUNT YORGA-1971, THE BAT PEOPLE-1974, DRACULA’S DOG-1978, THE ONION FIELD-1979, and ROCKY IV-1985.  He’s hilarious in this scene.  All the time he’s flirting shameless, Mrs. Wadsworth and her girls drug Ann and drag her into another room, where they tie her up and plot how to kill her.  Dennis remains oblivious.

Ann escapes, and she takes Baby with her, kidnapping the young man, taking pictures of him standing on his own, and sending the photos to the Wadsworths.  The women are infuriated, and they arm up and head off to Ann’s mansion where the final showdown – and the final secrets of the plot – will all unravel.  Will Baby end up with Ann or the Wadsworths?  Why has Ann been so obsessed with this case?  And what’s up with the weird masculine mother-in-law?  The ending is shocking and horrifying in a way the rest of the movie isn’t.  In the final scenes, when we discover exactly what is really going on, we are forced to question everything we’ve seen thus far, and the final shot is one haunting freeze frame.

Mama loves her baby! Ruth Roman in THE BABY

Yes, THE BABY is a freaky movie that will simultaneously delight and disturb you.  On one hand, the movie is campy as all get-out, filled with great one-liners you want to immediately repeat.  But no one can say these lines like Ruth Roman.  Rolling her eyes, gnashing her teeth, her cigarette always in the corner of her white-trash cussing mouth, and her hair always getting higher and higher, she is the poster child for Munchhausen Syndrome.  Or Joan Crawford Acting School Syndrome.  She gives it her all, growling, barking, screaming, and petting Baby in an entirely inappropriate manner.  She really makes the movie horribly hilarious.  But, on the disturbing side, we can’t forget Anjanette Comer, who creates a very disturbing character, one who has her own set of issues and a horrifying agenda, all masked by a beautiful face and a great set of gams.  The battle over Baby between these two formidable women makes the movie fun in a way that may make you want to take a shower later.  You won’t easily get the movie out of your head.

The director, Ted Post, made a name for himself in television, directing episodes of 1960s and 70s shows like GUNSMOKE, COMBAT, RAWHIDE, and THE TWILIGHT ZONE.  He also made great creepy TV-movies like DO NOT FOLD, SPINDLE, OR MUTILATE (1971) and DR. COOK’S GARDEN (1971).  He also directed the very good BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES in 1970.  THE BABY relies on his television roots.  It looks flat and the color palette pretty much seems like sun-washed California, all quite serviceable if a bit pedestrian.  It has the subdued look of an ABC MOVIE OF THE WEEK.  It’s the script by Abe Polsky (REBEL ROUSERS-1970) that brings this one to life.  You have to wonder what kind of crazed mind came up with this sick plot.

Despite the obvious budgetary constrictions, THE BABY emerges as a taut thriller, a campy twisted comedy, a horror film, and a disturbing look at what people will do when they are desperate.  God, I do miss the Seventies!

THE BABY gets three and a half giant hair-dos out of four.

© Copyright 2012 by William D. Carl

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