Halloween 31 For 31: A Very Short Introduction for the 2016 Version

...and I do mean very short. For those new to the blog, I'll be doing thirty one reviews for all thirty one days of the month of October, something I've done for at least three years now over two blogs. All horror films or apt for the season. I prefer a more eclectic palette, especially as this blog is called Cinema of the Abstract and calls for more unconventional films, preferably with a mix of films from around the world, of various decades, and maybe even some television and/or cross-over with my secondary blog 1000 Anime.

The biggest change since the last one in 2015 is that, whilst I'll be covering films appropriate for the Abstract Canon the same way I've been doing so far, (check the right side, if you are a new reader, and there should be a link to the full list), I'll truncate my usual style because of how painstaking and time consuming these October writing marathons can be. The most important part of this project is to just enjoy myself, see films for the first time, revisit ones from years before, and remind myself that whilst this is also a great way to improve my ability to write productively that its always entertaining, even in how it exhausts me by the end, and enforces my love of horror as a genre.

Zombi 3 aka. Zombie Flesh Eaters 2 (1988)

From https://lastroadreviews.files.wordpress.com
/2012/10/20121012-162213.jpg

Director: Lucio Fulci (with Bruno Mattei and Claudio Fragasso)

Screenplay: Claudio Fragasso

Cast: Deran Sarafian (as Kenny); Beatrice Ring (as Patricia); Ottaviano Dell'Acqua (as Roger); Massimo Vanni (as Bo); Ulli Reinthaler (as Nancy)

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) # 25

Synopsis: A military project to resurrect the dead, a chemical contagion called Death One, breaks out into the public and even when the military themselves deal with it, their method of disposing of one of the bodies both makes the contagion stronger and spreads it over a wider area through the smoke created. In the midst of the resulting chaos and attempt to clamp down on the new epidemic, a group of soldiers, friends caught by the contagion infecting the wildlife, and a woman called Patricia (Ring) with her infected boyfriend find themselves having to survive the rampaging zombie hordes and the military trying to cover it up violently.

Zombi 3 is as much effected by your attitude to its production history as much as the content itself. At this point the Italian genre industry was in severe decline in the late eighties, though considering my opinion on this film, it wasn't that bad if you could still appreciate the cheese factor, the likelihood that whilst the industry could still churn out films it couldn't survive by the nineties, killing it off (sadly) to this day baring an occasional film getting into international festivals. Zombi 3's history is interesting in itself, and that's not even including the (unofficial) sequels to this afterwards that weren't necessarily even zombie films. For those that don't know, George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead (1978) was co-produced by Italy in the midst of their genre renaissance,  recut for Italy and dubbed Zombi, doing extremely well and leading to an unofficial sequel called Zombi 2 (1979), known famously as Zombie Flesh Eaters in the UK. Made by Lucio Fulci it did extremely well around the world and lead to a boom of Italian zombie films into the eighties. By the later eighties there's not even that many zombie films in existence, barring one or two, from even the US and Fulci's career was slowing down as his health was declining. Fulci gets to make a sequel to his film, only for his health to be at its worse during the production shot in the Philippines, and the result Zombi 3 having to be drastically fixed to be releasable.

From http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_VXNWSr1UpT4/TI2e8ox-zjI/
AAAAAAAAE9g/mEnuWYsQkwc/s1600/Zombi+3+4.JPG

It varies how much Fulci actually shot for final work, but at least fifty minutes or so of what is seen is his work, the other thirty minutes having to be made in collaboration with screenwriter Claudio Fragasso and his longstanding colleague Bruno Mattei, having worked together many times before in the early eighties. It's confusing how to judge what was Fulci's work or not, as a Frankenstein creation of three different voices, because Fulci before Mattei even got hold of the footage decided to make an action horror film. The result feels like an odd sequel to one of Mattei's Strike Commando films with Reb Brown fighting zombies, a more manic tone as you have characters having to actually run away from an occasional undead who can run, alongside Return of the Living Dead (1985) enough evidence that the argument about whether zombies should run or not is pretty pointless even in terms of the historical canon of these films.

From http://i96.photobucket.com/albums/l171/kbegg/
reviews/zombi%203/zombi3cameos-1.jpg

Some of the old Fulci magic is still here, his obsession with fog machines and bold colour lighting reminiscent of his best horror films with their ominous moods; particularly with this film transitioning from a grimy Vipco release version I first saw to Blu-Ray quality, it's amazing how good the film looks despite the late eighties being when the money was bleeding out of the Italian film industry. What's a flaw is that it's not remotely scary or eerie, not even haunting or visceral like other Fulci films, instead the entertainment to be found in its various bursts of energy that defy the fact Fulci was violently ill during the entire production. Famously Zombi 3 is known for the zombie head in the refrigerator scene - utterly silly but succeeding by not caring about logic whatsoever - but there's plenty of manic moments throughout the film to like. Such as a zombie failing a machete about with surprising intensity or a gruesome, nicely set up shock with a pool of water behind a motel. Then there's the truly bizarre sequence, never evoked again in the narrative, of birds dying and coming back from the dead as zombified contagion carriers, clearly part of Fragasso's obsession with ecological issues throughout the film but a truly strange moment from Italian genre film history that, in hindsight, is one of the few cases of a zombie film showing non-human entities being infected.

From http://www.ivid.it/fotogallery/imagesearch/images/
zombi_3_deran_serafian_lucio_fulci_007_jpg_binb.jpg

The film does have a rollercoaster structure in terms of when its well paced and when it suddenly staggers along like a drunken men, its history visible in how messy the pace is, but when its paced well its amazingly swift in how the scenes play out. The other thirty or so minutes of Zombi 3 had to be built on by Claudio Fragasso and Bruno Mattei which is a lot of this reason. I once made a very cruel opinion of them, worse having barely seen the films of theirs, that they were amongst those responsible for killing the Italian genre industry. A lot of that was from suffering through the latter's Cruel Jaws (1995). Nowadays its clear they were working filmmakers who find themselves in the position of not being amongst the best (Dario Argento, Fulci, Mario Bava, even someone underrated like Enzo G. Castellari or Sergio Martino) but gaining a personality and reputation from their more infamous work, people who made films but were between them more drastically effected by their budgets then most and with Mattei notorious for using other people's material. Fragasso here at least comes off as an entertaining screenwriter who never feels boring, from the zombified birds to something he openly admits to taking from the carsploitation film Vanishing Point (1971), a blind African American radio DJ who is also the narrator in Zombi 3 as a strange stylistic quirk. He is, alongside Mattei, responsible for a lot of the moments, while fun, that, ironically their work to salvage the production leading to the tonal problems with additional footage of the military and frustrated scientists discussing the outbreak of Death One. The resulting footage is surprisingly naive in tone, such as the naming of the contagion written into these scene "Death One", a charm of a fifties b-movie in them which redeems them even those such scenes cause the film to loss its swift pace immediately. The other moments - action scenes and helicopter shots without the main cast - come off a lot better.

From http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4n5Irca2UwQ/UNYeXMjnxYI/
AAAAAAAAAlc/rFmxt7M1Svs/s1600/zombi3_88_img1.jpg

Technical Details:

Not a great deal to go through as I've covered a lot of the production history already, but it's worth repeating how a Blu-Ray transfer really redeems a film many would call trash. It's not up to the aesthetic style of Zombi 2 but it's still distinct, its Philippine locations and tropical look giving it some distinction alongside the late eighties aesthetic.

The music as well is worthy of mention. Yes, the main glam metal song is utter gorgonzola, memorable if just for its mid-song voice echo, but Stefano Mainetti's score aside from this is a nice dread inducing synthesiser work that makes up for the lack of scares. I'll likely uncover some of the worst Italian genre films from this period and nineties, but generally there were always bad films from the country even in the golden period, usually ones never talked about or unlikely to get Blu-Ray treatment like Zombi 3 has. Particularly against some of the terrible horror films from this era not from Italy, than this is still a bar higher in quality than I first viewed it as. Its definitely better than some of the worst of zombie cinema within the last decade if anything.

From http://monsterhuntermoviereviews.com/wp-content/
uploads/2014/08/Zombi-3-02.jpg

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

Abstract Spectrum: Grotesque

In terms of their collected filmographies, this is far from the weirdest film in either Fulci's or Mattei's careers. (I haven't seen enough of Fragasso's yet to make comment). The only true disappointment returning to this, and why I hated it originally, is that it has none of the strangeness of Fulci's best films even when it came to some of his none horror films. He had a knack for the irrational in his work that was compelling and incredibly well made, of decay and the illogical, that is almost non-existent here baring the briefest of moments.

Abstract Tropes: Body Parts Used in Inappropriate Ways; Decay; Fog; Rich Coloured Lighting

Personal Opinion:

Considering my original low opinion of Zombi 3, if you accept its flaws it's still an entertaining Italian genre film. I don't find it a disappointment like before, the fact that the genre industry of the country was declining no longer an issue now especially as, when these films are getting releases you couldn't fathom just a decade ago, I release that even on their declining period films like this one are still so much more entertaining and better made than more modern horror films in the same template. 

Ghost Ship (2002)

From http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-mubsk3WMxtM/UHy3wZvAPXI/AAAAAAAABME
/nvXL33VhGvQ/s1600/ghost+ship+logo.jpg

Director: Steve Beck

Screenplay: Mark Hanlon and John Pogue

Cast: Gabriel Byrne (as Captain Sean Murphy); Julianna Margulies (as Maureen Epps); Ron Eldard (as Dodge); Desmond Harrington (as Jack Ferriman); Isaiah Washington (as Greer)

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #24

There's a form of tragedy for me discussing the production company Dark Castle Entertainment as, at the right age when they were first founded, I grew up with the first initial films and the potential promise they had at that point in American horror cinema over the Millennium. Originally they were meant as a tribute to William Castle, the legendary showman horror director, but only after two films (House on Haunted Hill (1999) and Thirteen Ghosts (2001)) they stopped remaking Castle's filmography and started producing both original films and even non-horror movies like Ninja Assassin (2009) until they stopped in activity since 2013. Unfortunately most of the films I've seen from the company weren't rewarding in the slightest, and particularly with their first two films, Castle remakes that had immense flaws but a distinct ghoulish style to them, there was a hope for the company to have a distinct personality to make things more interesting in mainstream horror cinema at the time, when the slasher revival was going into decline and a strange aesthetic - think Limp Bizkit, pop punk, plots were you wished you had the original Playstation console controller in hand instead - took over American films for a youth audience in general.

The disappointment was immediately found in Ghost Ship, the third film out the gate, and revisiting now it's also a disappointment in terms of squandering a nautical horror premise that would've been great if done well. Growing up in a country that's an island, entirely unconnected to our nearest neighbours Europe baring an undersea subway tunnel, the symbology of the coast and especially the sea, with Britain's history of boating and ships travelling the world, has a great depth to it. Particularly when you're father used to build model boats of such ships like the Bounty, this becomes even more significant for me, the sea one of the only areas on planet Earth which is still very hostile for human beings to try to survive on. The premise allows a perfect ghost story, where a group that finds and claims lost ship wrecks encounters a legendary Italian cruise ship that was lost in the early Sixties, only to find themselves stuck on a haunted ship surrounded by hundreds of miles of fog covered sea. 

If there's one virtue to Ghost Ship it's the production design. The first two films of Dark Castle's, while riddled with flaws of modern American horror cinema, had such distinct personalities and production design that I've effectively come to like them as guilty pleasures I have no shame in liking. House on Haunted Hill, while very dated to its era of Marilyn Manson-like imagery, is an incredibly creepy and lurid film with a surprising amount of grotesque material for a mainstream American film. Thirteen Ghosts had an incredible production design and background mythology to it that, while squandered by the generic plot, still gave it some credibility. Ghost Ship has at least an interesting ship location to its plot even if its wasted, a waterlogged and abandoned ship that has a personality and menace to it to compensate for everything else, an inherent haunted eeriness to claustrophobic corridors which had splendour only to rot away. This is also a film famous, before it slips into tedium, for a great opening set piece that starts as a pastiche of the sixties, down to even the type of title font for the title, before an incredibly gruesome splatter scene takes place to shock the viewer. Sadly the film fails to capitalise on this beginning, the exotica or the incredible splatter set piece, but it's a great way to have started Ghost Ship anyway.

Aside from this, it's an incredibly generic horror film full of one dimensional characters trading quips rather than dialogue before cheap jump scares fill out the rest of the time. What's more annoying, as this is a common flaw still today, is that modern American horror films have quite an admirable trait of casting the protagonists as women who do not fall into the stereotype of damsels or even the glamour queens of old fifties b-movies, only to fail the actresses by giving them little to do and, with Julianna Margulies here, forcing her to gawk at a generic ghost girl that appears to her constantly as an exposition dump with a crisp English accent. The film is so predictable in how its presented that even Gabriel Byrne cannot spark a moment of interest anytime he appears onscreen let alone anyone else. The worst part is how the plot itself is exceptionally rubbish as well by the end, wanting to evoke Satan in its idea of a cruise ship trapping souls but without any courage to reference Satan or religion barring convoluted vagueness. By the third film, Dark Castle Entertainment already lost a personality that allowed me to forgive the first two films for their problems as a teenager and help them to stand out from what was being released around this time, none of the beautiful gruesomeness of House on Haunted Hill to the originality and obsession with clockwork and glass of Thirteen Ghosts. Ghost Ship barring its moments of style is colourless like a lot of horror cinema at this time onwards into the modern day, blasting a nu metal song at its end credits as if the whole thing was merely meant to be a placeholder to appeal to teenagers; the song itself isn't that bad, making me want to re-evaluate the band Mudvayne who play it, but it's completely out of place when exotic lounge music or an orchestral score would've been more appropriate, little mistakes like this that kill any personality in the film and spread to major issues for it altogether.

From http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Dw0Sj8dttLY/UQ7Lqe-VZPI/AAAAAAAAA3E/
9efdEG4jcHQ/s1600/GhostShip2002_RipsB_0017_Layer+18.jpg

Birdemic: Shock and Terror (2008)

From https://thereservoirblogs.files.
wordpress.com/2011/05/birdemic_web.jpg

Director: James Nguyen

Screenplay: James Nguyen

Cast: Alan Bagh (as Rod); Whitney Moore (as Nathalie); Adam Sessa (as Ramsey); Catherine Batcha (as Becky); Janae Caster (as Susan); Colton Osborne (as Tony)

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #23

After viewing Birdemic, I've proven to myself unequivocally that I hate ironic film viewing. Admittedly it doesn't help I watch like this or Samurai Cop (1991) by myself, films which only really work in group situations preferably with alcohol involved, but the idea of celebrating bad technique in cinema to merely mock it is problematic and regressive. I openly admit to liking technically bad films myself - from the Canadian oddity Things (1989) to Batman & Robin (1998) - but I love them sincerely as much for their fuck-ups as for the few virtues they have, their failures causing me to laugh but also look on with delight as they go into strange, irrational directions either because of the technical decisions or the scripts. Birdemic makes Manos: The Hands of Fate (1966) look technically proficient in comparison and just a painful experience to sit through. A modern day bastardisation of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds (1963), in which a small US town is invaded by CGI eagles, it felt better to just lift bullet points rather than try to make a cohesive set of paragraphs.

+  The experience was so tedious I immediately rewatched The Birds afterwards. It's completely unfair to compare the two but it's impossible not to when it comes to how long each takes to establish the characters and their drama until, forty plus minutes later or so, the killer birds are on them. Kicking Birdemic when its down is unfair but it's amazing how colourless and lacking the personality the dialogue is. The first forty minutes is meant to be a romantic film but most of the dialogue is about environmental concerns or the most rudimentary of content, short characterless verbs which don't lead to any colourful dialogue from the characters as it should in real life or a film with a fun script. None of the oddness sincerity of something like Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959) is there either to help avoid this robotic tone from these empty platitudes and statements making it worse.  

+ As someone who has watched a lot of low budget films, and can get wisdom from those who've watched even more of them such as the No-Budget Nightmare podcast, one of the biggest issues with very low budget films is how they build up an entire feature length beyond the main set pieces to link them together. Dialogue and establishing scenes can be the death of high budget Hollywood films let alone the likes of this, one of the biggest dangers especially in horror or thriller cinema like this when characters merely stand around discussing exposition without rhythm or dynamics to the glue of these scenes to connect set pieces.  Birdemic for a great deal of its length before and after the CGI eagles start to attack filled with non-entity dialogue either meaningful or funny to gain from them. A large part of it is that no one really wants to hear characters talk about their plans to set up a company to develop solar panel technology or be involved in software company meetings, but if you have to do so, it helps (which James Nguyen) doesn't if you actually have some depth to these conversations that sounds like the characters actually have knowledge on any of these subjects, not merely the most vague surface words about the topics.

+ The sound is an irritance in this fact as, while clear and audible, you can heard the transition in background noise from each shot being edited together to the point of irritance. In fact the constant abrupt changes in noise bring out the fact the film uses way to many edits just for single scenes.

+  Because of this, I have sympathy for the actors especially the leads Alan Bagh and Whitney Moore, who seem like likable people but are struggling without hope against dialogue that really doesn't allow them to even show charisma onscreen, turgid to sit through as a main plot threat is about environmental concerns and the lead hero wanting to create pioneering solar panel technology. Considering they are supposed to have a romance, even terrible purple prose romantic dialogue would've been a benefit and more rewarding, the more soppier and melodramatic the better.

+ A huge problem, which has been frequently talked of already, is the film's laborious, empty headed pro-environmental message which has no actual depth to it, merely screaming at the top of its voice about saving the environment but sounding like it's from someone who has no idea how to or what the subject involves. It actually comes off as a best-worst example of how not to do polemic messages in cinema. I'm the stereotypical left wing liberal but I hate follow liberals with probably more vitreous at times than even the extreme right, because of their lackadaisical, hypocritical and howled viewpoints, simplistic and misguided points on subjects that need greater tact to them to improve the world for the better. One of the biggest problems with messages in cinema, barring the fact that I find most social message dramas a waste of time and overrated, is that if the film is bland or terrible no progressive message within it, even if its applaudable morally, is of worth as its been compromised and squandered. This is more significant now as big companies in Hollywood, whether they have any progressive views in mind or are cynically doing so, are becoming more progressive on the surface in their choices, such as the plan to cast an African American actress as Mary Jane Watson in the next Spiderman film, applaudable ideas but in danger of being empty gestures if they're compromised by a bad film around them. Birdemic's the kind of film that'd put people off environmental concerns if they took it seriously at all, probably what some people think all those with environmental concerns actually sound like.

+ When the CGI eagles do actually appear after what feels like two hours already, the result isn't that spectacular still, most of it consisting of actors waving their hands randomly in the air with eagles superimposed afterwards. Even the inclusion of wire coat hangers as a self defensive weapon only lasts for a brief moment, not enough time to stick out, exceptionally disappointing when that was an "iconic" moment in terms of the film's cult reputation.

+ There were some virtues. The music by Andrew Seger at the beginning was surprising in how good it was considering the film's reputation. Unfortunately the film drags so much the music starts to feel the effect and became bland as the plot goes along, but at the beginning its surprising in quality.

+ There's one vaguely funny character, a tree hugger living in the woods, who reminded me of a low rent Woody Harrelson. That Harrelson has played a character like this in Roland Emmerich's turkey 2012 (2009) added humour to this fact.

+ The two children the leads rescue are comically absurd in their behaviour. Most of Birdemic as the CGI eagles attack consists of the characters going shopping and driving on country roads. Despite the dead bodies and people trying to rob them at gunpoint for petrol, there's no sense of trauma especially from the children and the only clear danger is that gasoline now costs $100 dollars because of this freak natural disaster. The children's complaint near the end, when they have to catch fish and fresh seaweed to sustain themselves, that they want a McDonald's instead is one of the most unintentionally spoilt and deluded things ever utter from child characters, so much so that even a viewer with no malice in them would want these fictitious characters to have their eyes poked out by the CGI eagles regardless of their ages.

+ The viewing experience altogether reminded me, while its be a long time since I've seen it, that there's a potentially more rewarding rip-off of The Birds from Mexico that should've had more attention. Beaks: The Movie (1987), directed by Rene Cardona Jr., the same man who made the Video Nasty Night of the Bloody Apes (1969), was far and away more entertaining back when I saw it, having the same delirious tone of the genre films the Italians were making in the eighties (being a co-production) and had, even if through crude effects, real birds involved. The idea of a character being mauled by a savage canary bird, one of many quite inventive scenes in the film, is a hell of a lot more rewarding than the CGI eagles in Birdemic.

In any other circumstance I'd have rated this merely a 2/10, never someone to condemn films any lower in rating, but the context and background behind Birdemic's public popularity and its tone as a movie is so disappointing to me that I have to call it a 1/10 film and one of the worst I've seen in content and attitude. It's not the technical deficiencies that stand out but its general mediocre attitude to being bad filmmaking, not even rewarding for its failure, and not having any of the charm of older infamous films. That there films made with less budget that are better than this, but this one got the cult status, is another reason I hate this film, something like Jennifer Help Us (2014) shot on an iPhone and managing to be a little gem in spite of its few flaws more deserving of this film's popularity. That it feels so pleased with itself in its hollow environmental message and cribbing of Alfred Hitchcock's film is utterly obnoxious and detestable. 

From https://thewolfmancometh.files.wordpress.com/
2010/03/birdemic-gas-station.jpg