The Burning Moon (1992)

From https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/w1280/
c4Nij7L3wNvfZZIS3kGKjAEjIYQ.jpg

Director: Olaf Ittenbach

Screenplay: Olaf Ittenbach

Cast: Olaf Ittenbach (as Folterknecht/Peter); Beate Neumeyer (as Julia Sanders); Bernd Muggenthaler (as Cliff Parker); Ellen Fischer (as Linda Sanders); Alfons Sigllechner (as Vater)

A Night of a Thousand Horror Movies #66

Synopsis: Strung out on heroin, a jobless delinquent Peter (director-writer Olaf Ittenbach) tells his younger sister two bedtime stories. The first tells of a sociopath escaping from a mental asylum and posing as a young woman's blind date. The second, set in fifties Germany, follows a priest who rapes and kills members of the community, a local farmer and his friend viewed as the culprit by the local townsfolk with bloody consequences and a trip to Hell itself involved.

Sometimes, one is faced with not only crushing disappointment but a restless tedium, The Burning Moon even with its reputation as one of the bloodiest shot-on-video films in existence such a painfully dull viewing experience to sit through, all its gruesome violence merely for nothing. Realising its lo-fi style could be used unfairly against it, I'm not dismissing the film because of its budget, although its aesthetic will be a cause of concern later in the review for creative purposes, the issue instead with The Burning Moon that barring its gore and practical effects, Olaf Ittenbach's film is exceptionally lack sure in terms of creativity or any sense of interest. With bookends involving Peter, a layabout we first watch purposely sabotage one of his job interviews and get into a gang fight, the nihilistic tone of The Burning Moon is set up but ultimately it's a surface dressing without anything rewarding or even illicitly pleasurable to it onwards. None of the two stories that follow merit a lot to write about, the first a generic serial killer story which is merely for the sake of its gore without any shock to it.

From http://www.tasteofcinema.com/wp-content/uploads/
2016/03/The-Burning-Moon-1992.jpg

The second story is a little bit more interesting if more of the juvenile nihilism of the entire film, in having a priest kill people than be the one who delivers their funeral service. As with the first story, its rudimentary in style and plotting, eventually to the point its flat look and lack of personality bites into your patience. It takes over eighty of its ninety minutes or so for The Burning Moon to reach something of interest and get a reaction out of viewer when it reaches the infamous Hell sequences - a basement of practical effects horror of mutant demons, various forms of dismemberment from a drill through the teeth to being spread eagled to death, and a complete lack of hygiene with body parts and blood everywhere. It's the entirety of this sequence, certainly memorable, which created The Burning Moon's reputation in my mind. Whilst the rest of the film can be as bloody and schlocky in its lingered upon practical effects, here the barrage of effects each second is a brief moment of delirium when everything else is laboured. The only issue, however, is that it completely pales in comparison to two far superior depictions of Hell in psychotronic cinema - José Mojica Marins' This Night I'll Possess Your Corpse (1967), with its shift from a black and white film to lurid colour and snow in Hell, and Nobuo Nakagawa's Jigoku (1960), a depiction of Buddhist Hell no way near as violent as The Burning Moon but far and away more disturbing and gruesome in its aesthetic beauty and hellish imagery.

From http://viceland-assets-cdn.vice.com/blogs/en/files/2011/04/fire.jpg

The practical splatter effects in the end of the main point for The Burning Moon existing in the first place and at the centre of it all where my issues with the film stem to. They are particularly nasty but there's little else barring this string of gore moments to actually keep the film together. Barring an occasional moment which elicits some sort of a reaction, like a POV shot from inside someone's mouth as they're forced fed an eyeball, it eventually becomes desensitising violence for me, not causing any sense of revulsion or disgust but merely a numbing sensation sitting through it all. Films which end up doing this are for me the more problematic than something which causes a viewer to squirm, like Takashi Miike's Ichi the Killer (2001), as because there's no sense of cause-and-effect done to said viewer its merely seen as a pile of practically done atrocities, not to mention the fact that because of this deadening effect the shock scenes in The Burning Moon become utterly useless if I as a viewer don't feel any disgust to them. Add to this the aforementioned flat production style and this makes the sluggishness of sitting through these special effects worse.

From http://viceland-assets-cdn.vice.com/blogs/en/files/2011/04/hell.jpg

Technical Detail:

Shot-on-video is an area of cinema which is a fascinating niche. Not to be confused with films shot on digital or released straight to videotape (and eventually DVD), this is entirely the period of cinema shot on various forms of videotape media (Betamax, VHS etc.) which were dominant n the eighties and nineties (and still were until recently in news broadcast archives and Japan). I don't look down on the fuzzy look of the medium in the slightest. Baring the issues, having volunteered for a media preservation organisation, of trying to preserve a medium which wasn't necessarily designed for long term preservation like celluloid, the look of videotape is capable of having an incredible effect on viewers, something Harmony Korine's Trash Humpers (2009) and the Ringu franchise tapped into perfectly, how even its technical faults as a medium added to its virtues. It provides a potent waxiness in image which could be used to an incredible advantage and, for older films which used it for practicality like The Burning Moon, it certainly adds to the weirdness of films like Things (1989), effectively the Citizen Kane (1941) of this medium-based genre.

Unfortunately with The Burning Moon, the presentation is so perfunctory that this sheen merely comes off as lifeless. Because of this, the main aesthetic touch is the terrible hairstyles and clothes of early nineties Germany, which isn't enough to entice.

From https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Au_WQYrQuoU/hqdefault.jpg

Abstract Spectrum: Grotesque/Psychotronic

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

Unless you touch on the Hell sequence, a montage of atrocity which visibly comes from the same school of Jack Smith's Flaming Creatures (1963) of filming a group of people writhing about in fake blood in a basement, The Burning Moon is a gore film by design, a gore film as a result without any touch of weirdness or unconventionality at all to it.

Tragically, what was meant to be a nihilistic, transgressive film made by scoundrels for scoundrels, made by people like the viewers on low budget videotape, feels like those brandless cans of foot on the shelves in Repo Man (1984), a budget brand of gore film which has no real transgression or daring to it, its lack of weirdness as much a visible sign of its blandness. Compare it to a superior, far more infamous German film from the period, Jörg Buttgereit's Nekromantik (1987), which takes on numerous flights or fantasy and (rewarding) artistic pretensions, then The Burning Moon looks even more inferior in comparison.

Personal Opinion:

An exceptional, tedious disappointment for me. Visible evidence of shock for shock's sake not being enough to make a film good.

Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995)

From http://www.impawards.com/1995/posters/
halloween_the_curse_of_michael_myers_xlg.jpg

Director: Joe Chappelle

Screenplay: Daniel Farrands

Cast: Donald Pleasence (as Dr. Sam Loomis); Paul Rudd (as Tommy Doyle); Marianne Hagan (as Kara Strode); Devin Gardner (as Danny Strode); George P. Wilbur (as Michael Myers)

A Night of a Thousand Horror Movies #65

An important note for this review is that I viewed the theatrical cut. The Producer's Cut, which was made available in the USA in a limited edition Scream Factory set which put all the Halloween franchise together, is difficult for me to acquire so I had to judge the theatrical cut. This is important as there're well documented differences which drastically effect the versions. The theatrical cut of The Curse of the Michael Myers, after a tolerance even to the dumber moments of the Halloween sequels, is where the wheels fully fall off the franchise's cart. I could accept illogical plot points, dumb characters and death by boiling therapeutic Jacuzzi beforehand but The Curse of the Michael Myers is legitimately bad in its theatrical form, not able to get away with its sillier content because of how utterly dull and visibly tampered with it is.

At this point, the franchise acquired by Dimension Films, this is the first 90s Halloween film with an entirely new decade of fashion and type of horror movie in existence, yet they decided to follow the twist ending of the 1989 fifth film and the entire pagan plot line from before, Jamie Lloyd (J. C. Brandy replacing Danielle Harris) having escaped a cult with her newly born child, leading a much older Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasance in one of his last films) and a grown up Tommy Doyle (Paul Rudd), one of the charges of Laurie Strode's from the original 1978 film, to discover said cult which has been responsible for Michael Myers and is using him to kill. Allowing six years to pass for real is not a necessarily a bad idea in terms of sequels - as Halloween H20 (1998) will show, having time passing for viewers to have lived with the prequel adds to the significance of the plot alongside seeing actors and their characters age. Even visibly weak in voice and appearance, it's not sad to see Pleasance here as a milder, inquisitive Dr. Loomis investigating the events that are taking place, instead what should've been perfect closure as the character is trying to close the book on what's consumed his life. The problem is that's the only good comment I've got for The Curse of the Michael Myers within a film that's utterly disastrous.

What happens, in terms of trying to take the cultist lore of the sequels before it, is that most of Pleasance's scenes are visibly cut from the theatrical cut, absolutely reprehensible especially as the film's dedicated to him after his death during its production, and Tommy Doyle comes off as a sociopath, through Rudd's cold delivery and spying at the old Myers house through a telescope, rather than a sympathetic and psychologically damaged young man. The other protagonist, young mother and college student Kara Strode (Marianne Hagan) - a member of another Strode family clan living in the older Myers' house under an abusive alcoholic father, and whose young son is being corrupted by the cult - doesn't have a lot to do and, in how she looks and acts, would make more sense if she was a single mother in her early thirties, forced to live back with her parents, rather than the young college student she's clearly meant to be.

From http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-mW1BZhZEhJo/VCRFJKApsiI/
AAAAAAAAwuY/Nm42O6msx04/s1600/HALLOWEEN%
2BTHE%2BCURSE%2BOF%2BMICHAEL%2BMYERS%2B(1995)%2B5.png

The film's also an utter mess in terms of plot; even if the previous sequels weren't exactly bulletproof in their logic, here it does feels like the narrative was cut to shreds by post-production issues. The whole narrative arc of Part 4 onwards if already killed off in a terrible creative decision, to make a cult the reason behind Michael Myers in the first place, turning the character from a bogeyman to a toothless puppet, but the theatrical cut ironically cuts out all the cult subplot that originally tried to deepen it in the original version, thus making the whole point of the Part 4 to 6 story ultimately pointless. The noticeable tampering on the film also leaves a literal mess of snap cuts of images just for cheap scare effects, an obnoxious soundtrack of screams and moans for each kill, and more bloodier but terrible murder scenes including something worse than any from Halloween II (1981), involving a washing machine that somehow still works with all the electricity being turned off and electrocution, despite the power being cut out, leading to a Scanners-like head explosion. The ending, knowing what happened with the final cut of the film until the Producer's Cut came to existence, is embarrassing in how jarring the events in each scene are connecting to each other, taking place in a mental health facility that's designed as an industrial hellhole from a Silent Hill videogame with an abrupt end and Myers being able to be subdued with merely an iron pipe.

I find however the most problematic aspects of The Curse of the Michael Myers is how it's both aesthetically awful and as mean spirited as it is. The general tone of the later is one dimensional, with crass figures like the alcoholic father or especially the obnoxious shock jock who comes to Haddonfield for cheap Halloween season publicity, less adult but more like being screamed at in un-meaningful dreck. As for the former, the nineties was a glorious decade for cinema, the last when celluloid was the main medium before digital started to take over, and when even blockbusters could be unconventional and inventive, but it was especially for horror films after Scream (1996) also when the worst traits of the American genre industry started to appear, where the post-music video aesthetic used in The Curse of the Michael Myers is distracting and the film even fails in using John Carpenter's musical theme, turning it into a guitar lick abomination. Altogether, unless Halloween Resurrection (2002) manages to be even worse, this is really the nadir for the franchise; all the sequels before this still have some fun to them, whilst the only humour I have here is calling it The Curse of the Michael Myers with "the" added intentionally rather than by mistake of my typing. 

From https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/M/
MV5BNjQzMDE4ZGMtZWMwOS00NGE4LWJkYz
MtYzg0N2IwMjZjYjMzXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyNTAyNDQ2NjI@._V1_.jpg

Cosmos (2015)

From http://www.impawards.com/intl/misc
/2015/posters/cosmos_ver3.jpg

Director: Andrzej Żuławski

Screenplay: Andrzej Żuławski

Cast: Jean-François Balmer (as Leon); Sabine Azéma (as Madame Woytis); Jonathan Genet (as Witold); Johan Libéreau (as Fuchs); Victória Guerra (as Lena); Clémentine Pons (as Catherette / Ginette)

Synopsis: Taking residence in a family run country guesthouse, Witold (Jonathan Genet) and Fuchs (Johan Libéreau) believe themselves to be in the midst of a mystery when Witold finds a dead bird hung by its neck on a branch. Witold, visibly in emotional turmoil from the start, is nonetheless convinced of this mystery as further strange sights disrupt his reality - the maid Catherette's (Clémentine Pons) lip disfigurement, a tea kettle in a tree, strange images marked on the wall - as everyone around him in the family is as eccentric and in the midst of their own emotional angst. One such figure, the married daughter Lena (Victória Guerra), becomes a singular obsession for him.

Żuławski directing a comedy of manners? Words I'd never expect to write but with Żuławski unpredictability is his forte; like the best and true definers of auteur theory, they are never predictable in the types of genre they blend and tackle. With Żuławski as well, much of his filmography is still difficult to acquire; the bias of Possession (1981) as the key film of his career, and the only film of his most will see, does have a drastic effect on your attitude of his filmography as a whole. Cosmos, based on a novel by legendary Polish author Witold Gombrowicz, whose namesake fittingly travels through this modernised parody of a mystery, is certainly a 180 degree turn from the stereotypical view of his films but very much in his wheelhouse, the only difference is that whilst the likes of Diabel (1971) have characters constantly screaming about death and misery, this is a farce where a family and their paying guests constantly scream about how each other doesn't understand them or how they have unrequited feelings for another whilst they're trying to collect all the peas dropped on the kitchen floor, the childish older patriarch Leon (Jean-François Balmer) sticking cocktail sticks into one at a time and lining them up in a straight line.

From https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-BmsVSiobji0/V0ia1Mu8z4I/AAAAAAAAFdk/
t0cJgMMMnpMTTVqr3MUNhJ7r28e7SCrewCLcB/s1600/Cosmos1.jpg

The film is exceptionally dense just in the literary and cinematic references alone, the dialogue and the story needing multi watches to fully digest, but the significant idea behind Cosmos is to deliberately take the piss out of the mystery genre, where in the end none of the strange circumstances Witold encounters are anything else but odd coincidences or a result of someone's angst, even he going as far as contributing to the events with a very severe, if not most severe, incident involving the pet cat. Tailed by his trusting friend Fuchs, smartly dressed but appearing in each scene with new bloody noses and bruises each morning from constantly disastrous cruising nights, they have to wrap their heads around the guesthouse owners and their quirks. The matriarch Madame Woytis (Sabine Azéma), who can get so overwhelmed she actually freezes in the spot for a period of time like a malfunctioning machine. Leon, whose dialogue at first is witty and henpecked by his wife, but starts to take on childish plays on words and more swearing as he goes along. Their maid Catherette who is baring a small lip disfigurement is the sanest person in the house, but with someone in the family who's also played by Clémentine Pons later on in the film And Lena,  the object of Witold's overwhelming obsession, who sleeps on a bed without the mattress on the springs, doesn't react to severe events as the viewer would presume her to, and whose husband first appears dressed as Tintin.  

As the mystery is ultimately a farce, you are instead turning your attention to the world and its little details; a "metaphysical noir thriller" according to its late director, the title Cosmos is apt in how ultimately the mystery Witold is obsessed with is insignificant to the literal cosmos of human behaviour, able to see a rake etched in water stain in the corner of the wall but completely blind to the significantly bigger sexual symbolism in the same spot in the lounge. As Witold reacts violently to each odd event which bursts his personal bubble, even beating his chest like a deranged gorilla at the dinner table, everyone's internal emotions are literalised as part of Żuławski's trademark, slapstick for him kinetic and as exhausting for the characters themselves as it will be for some viewers. All Witold is able to find is absurdities with little connection, instead the real mystery to be found in dealing with his emotions for Lena, her emotions for him back and how her husband, a likable guy himself, reacts badly when he pegs what is taking place between them as they all decide to go to a summer cottage to escape the stress of the hostel.

From http://www.filmcomment.com/wp-content
/uploads/sites/2/2015/08/cosmos06.png

Technical Details:

Żuławski's style is entirely artificial, very much against the notion of realism throughout his career which is hence why his most well known trademark, the hyper stylised and extreme acting style, is what it is. Restraining his use of prowling camera movements for his final film, although it makes his prescience known gliding through the guesthouse corridor and tracking characters along through their monologues, the irony of his hyper dynamic style tackling a genre which would seem safe is fitting for such an openly brazen and intelligence person to conclude on, able to get away with actor Jonathan Genet doing one scene directly to the camera, in extreme close-up by himself, in a Donald Duck voice and it making perfect sense.

The dialogue in particular, in testament to translator and Żuławski documenter Daniel Bird for creating English subtitles for a film this quickly paced and dense, is a huge chunk of Cosmos' style. Restraining himself in terms of the more extreme moments of his career - from a man who had Isabelle Adjani writhing around in white milky liquid in the subway to On the Silver Globe (1988) and its mass anal impaling crucifixion - or in the use of constantly moving camera, the dialogue is still rapid fire and breath taking to follow, each character having individualistic quirks to them seen in their dialogue which, even if you were to struggle with at times, still paints their character in the poetic flourishes they use; that Żuławski has no qualms with referencing anything from himself to even Star Wars means the dialogue is exceptionally flexible and inventive, a reflection of how imaginative he was as a screenwriter. The acting as well is also exceptional as to be expected from Żuławski's films, able to convey just in exaggerated body language what their emotions are before they even speak.

From http://fr.web.img6.acsta.net/videothumbnails/15/10/16/12/23/368545.jpg

Abstract Spectrum: Expressionist/Weird

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

Cosmos feels like entering an alien environment, relatively close to reality within a guesthouse full of arguments, constantly delicious culinary dishes and nature constantly appearing within the middle class environment, a slug literally letting nature be known sitting on the butter for the croissant. When the extreme emotions of the occupants of the house are shown, and reach their peak however, things drastically change, having to keep pace with Cosmos and see the literal "cosmos" of title in how dynamic and unconventional human behaviour is at its fullest.

As a result of this, the experience of Cosmos is an ever increasing series of stranger events taking place as the realisation Lena is as interested in Witold as the other way round becomes know to the later, the madness of a priest suddenly unzipping his flies and releasing bees into the air deliberately maniac energy is actually more pronounced in a film like this than in one like Possession as, while the later is more extreme in content and tone, the more abstract of the pair, the stereotype of what this type of slice of life drama with possible mystery content is belies the surprise of what actually takes place, having greater impact.

From https://bostonhassle.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/cosmos-2015.jpg

Personal Opinion:

Sadly Żuławski is no longer with us, but with his final film Cosmos he was still as uncompromising as his reputation suggests, delightfully wild with intelligence and actively encouraging me to rewatch it over and over again to catch more details and moments of gleeful humour

Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (1989) [Mini Reviews]

From http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-lnrpTNQUvuw/UlmFprcJsII/
AAAAAAAAXjw/olA9hCIWKko/s1600/Halloween5-00.jpg

Director: Dominique Othenin-Girard

Screenplay: Michael Jacobs, Dominique Othenin-Girard and Shem Bitterman

Cast: Donald Pleasence (as Dr. Sam Loomis); Danielle Harris (as Jamie Lloyd); Ellie Cornell (as Rachel Carruthers); Don Shanks (as Michael Myers); Wendy Kaplan (as Tina Williams)

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #64

Around Part 5 is when you can see the cracks start to appear in the Halloween franchise. Some will have justified arguments that it practically broke here, but for me, as it follows Michael Myers again terrorising Jamie Lloyd (Danielle Harris) again, there's still a great deal to like in the film before the wheels could've come off the wagon. There's still a solid slasher film here if you're willing suspend disbelief as its more supernatural content, as a mute Jame is living in a home for mentally disturbed children after the shock ending of Part 4 and has a psychic link now to Myers, brings a greater absurdity to the content. The idea of what was originally a realistic film about a killer with a knife becoming more and more supernatural - Season of the Witch (1982) notwithstanding - is exceptionally strange as this series of viewings have gone on, to think that to literalise the bogeyman the productions had to be this ultimately the real flaw of the sequels when, for fans, a metaphorical take of Myers as a psychological threat that Halloween H20 would go back to is more potent.

Thankfully this isn't Jason Goes To Hell: The Final Friday (1993) where you need a relative of Jason Voorhees with a magical fantasy sword now to kill him, the psychic link a simple McGuffin to a vicious, ominous movie, one which manages to get away with a young girl being terrorised by an adult, even trying to run her over in a car at one point, and depicting it with teeth to it you don't find in any of the Myers related sequels so far in the series. Stylistically, this is still as memorable as Part 4, everything from night time onwards having a great atmosphere that adds tension, especially in prolonged sequences such as in an isolated barn at a Halloween party, fake jump scares actually succeeding throughout the film unlike others because the environments are swamped in shadow and slow building pace.

The aspects which will divide viewers are, ironically, the idiosyncratic traits unique to Part 5. The psychic subplot does feel very unexpected, fully immerging as some form of symbol of Jamie's relation to her uncle, taking an extreme with the idea of inheriting his bloodline, the horrible reputation of his crimes like a real life family of a murderer,  whilst giving an excuse for creepy POV shots. Everything involving a faceless man in iron toed heels, so evil he punts a small dog to the side, is a bizarre decision to try to sustain the series when you have hindsight; that after it finishes with shocking the viewer with mayhem and a jailhouse on fire, the sequel did so bad at the box office it took six years for the next film in the series, with another company, to be made, dampening this intentional rug pull. Then there's the most controversial aspect, Donald Pleasance's performance as Dr. Loomis as a man fully losing his mind and spending most of his time screaming at a young girl to help him like a madman. It's either an apt depiction of him breaking down, desperate to end Myers, or the biggest slice of bowl of ham acting you'll ever see.

Part 5 also starts to have utter stupidity in terms of creative decisions, traits that if the series didn't get unplugged for the next six years would've lead to utter disaster sooner. Mainly it's the soundtrack that betrays this film, somehow spitting out something as dreadful as the Romeo Romeo song, which appears in a transition scene for no reason, or the infamous comedy trumping sounds for the dumb cop duo. The entire thing with Myers suddenly having a Samhain tattoo on his wrist is also absurd, crow barring the cultist back-story where it doesn't belong. These are little defects which thankfully don't destroy the final film - this isn't a steaming piece of garbage - but certainly warnings of what could've happened. 

From http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-6XwP9ZR9Lps/UIRLdODUNrI/
AAAAAAAADag/V5_RmQEtPdM/s1600/ScreenShot504.png

Halloween Part 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988) [Mini-Review]

From http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Dp5YZeLg2FU/Ulm-QliJTXI/
AAAAAAAABXQ/sAWxS50jxDs/s1600/halloween-4-return-of-michael-myers-poster.jpg

Director: Dwight H. Little

Screenplay: Alan B. McElroy

Cast: Donald Pleasence (as Dr. Sam Loomis); Danielle Harris (as Jamie Lloyd); Ellie Cornell (as Rachel Carruthers); George P. Wilbur (as Michael Myers); Beau Starr (as Sheriff Ben Meeker)

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #63

After Part III Season of the Witch (1982), it took six years before Halloween returned to the silver screen, Michael Myers firmly back in its centre having been in a coma since the second film, awoke from his slumber in an institute when word of him having a niece is uttered in ear shot. The decision to write Laurie Strode off screen, as Jamie Lee Curtis was long past slasher films in her mainstream career, and switching to an adopted girl played by a young Danielle Harris is actually a smart move to have gone with. I may find the decision to make Strode related to Myers annoying, but if one is forced to continue the series, having the bogeyman plague other members of the family is far more practical, and meaningful, the random groups of teens in the first three Friday the 13th movies.

Particularly when you get to Part 5 as well, Harris as a child actor in the film is incredibly charismatic and likable, making the fact her two films in the franchise are about Myers threatening and trying to kill a young girl more disturbing. Particularly when her adoptive older sister Rachel, played by Ellie Cornell, is merely okay and Donald Pleasure is turning his Dr. Loomis into an Ahab character slowly losing his mind, Harris is an anchor for viewer sympathy greatly needed.

It's amazing as well how beautiful and moody the film looks. The Blu-Ray era has been an incredible godsend for cinema like this; once a luddite who had no interest in the technology, my sudden change to the medium over DVD over the last year has nothing to do with picture resolution but because it has lead to films being restored or at least, with this one, getting better visual quality for them. The orange hued yet cold autumn colours of Haddonfield adds to the creepiness of the premise, of scarecrows in the fields, Jack O' Lanterns everywhere and a small local town plague by memories of the bogeyman before he even returns. The slow, extremely glacial nature of the film, even next to the first two in the series, adds an atmosphere that can stand up to the prequels in having its own personality.

The real issue, with is subjective for each viewer, is that after Season of the Witch bombed The Return of Michael Myers is a very safe direction to have gone with the franchise. Beyond its supernatural twist ending, which leads to the precipice of the franchise's obsession with adding occult details, it's a very solid and easy to understand slasher film. In the long term, a franchise entirely about Michael Myers terrorising people could end up with what happened to Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees as staleness kicks in, which is up to my opinion of the next sequels after Part 4. In the short term, The Return of Michael Myers does a commendable job of being a solid, mood drenched horror film.

The sense of classiness I always viewed Halloween as a franchise in having is especially found here, a mostly bloodless chiller which is about tension, drawing things out and not falling into terrible late eighties perms or z-list glam metal songs. Aspects are up to question in logic - the most egregious being the subplot of the locals becoming an armed mob, with an unresolved event when they shot an innocent bystander by mistake - but the rest of Part 4 is entirely better on this re-visit than I originally thought of it.

From http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-XXfCzwNpJuY/ViQNehHHF7I/
AAAAAAAAJRk/maD5lmVktmI/s1600/Halloween%2B4%2BRoof.jpg

Premonition (2004) [Mini-Review]

From https://upload.wikimedia.org/
wikipedia/en/f/f1/Premonition.jpg

Director: Norio Tsuruta

Screenplay: Norio Tsuruta and Noboru Takgi

Cast: Hiroshi Mikami (as Hideki Satomi); Noriko Sakai (as Ayaka Satomi); Hana Inoue (as Nana Satomi); Maki Horikita (as Sayuri Wakakubo); Mayumi Ono (as Misato Miyamoto)

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #62

Fate and the idea that life could be dictated by a planned out will is a powerful concept that crops up constantly in storytelling, an attempt to explain the inexplicable and tragic in real life, but also a potential fear inducing notion that one has no control in how their life passes on. We've passed from mythology where fate played an important part for, say, ancient Greek heroes but with fortune telling and other areas of spiritualism the idea of predicting the future is still tantalising for many. Premonition, based on a manga by Jiro Tsunoda, plays with a potent idea of how by newspapers, which sudden appear and spread news of tragedies and deaths before they happen, premonitions can be a curse to have. When one older male scholar Hideki Satomi (Hiroshi Mikami), finds one in a lay-by telephone booth predicting his daughter's death, and for such a tragedy to happen, it starts events years after where he starts to be plagued by newspaper prophecies about deaths and murders he cannot stop. It's absolutely riveting as an idea, as he tries to fight against it with his ex-wife Ayaka (Noriko Sakai), a researcher in prophecies who enters his life again to helping him learn of the cause.

The film in script, fitting for a manga adaptation, evokes the cosmic horror of Junji Ito, the film able to have moved into his territory of the openly surreal if the plot was changed halfway through, the premonitions a literal curse which eventually cripples the victim with predictions of the future they can rarely succeed in changing, suddenly in the midst of a random activity forced into a trance where they scrawl the predictions on paper. As Hideki learns, one is either doomed to being locked in a padded mental institution room writing predictions on the wall with faecal matter or, if you attempt to change the future in the one great sequence involving another's series of VHS diaries, you get damned and removed off the face of the Earth. All this of this is perfect but the film finds itself caught between this tantalising content and an incoherent and eventually bland plot structure, succeeding very little and fumbling. It doesn't help that a large part of it doesn't properly use the cursed newspaper concept at all - CGI newspaper which moves and even growls at people is just silly even in the ludicrous nature of this type of cosmic horror. Even when it gets to its memorable final act, where reality is completely undermined and Hideki is forced through a series of variously horrible alternatives, it's been scuppered by the sluggish plotting of before and an outcome that is ultimately syrupy in tone, leaving one disappointed in the opportunities Premonition missed out on.

From http://theatreofblood.se/sites/default/files/styles/
review_thumb/public/premonition3.jpg?itok=QJoJjLFb

Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982)

From http://static.rogerebert.com/uploads/movie/movie_poster/
halloween-iii-season-of-the-witch-1982/large_
5uBGnab5nt9UfSPyH40M4PW4pZG.jpg

Director: Tommy Lee Wallace

Screenplay: Tommy Lee Wallace

Cast: Tom Atkins (as Daniel Challis); Stacey Nelkin (as Ellie Grimbridge); Dan O'Herlihy (as Conal Cochran); Michael Currie (as Rafferty); Ralph Strait (as Buddy Kupfer)

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #61

After Halloween II (1981) was meant to close the story of Michael Myers - currently, whilst a new project is underway, its production hell not the final girl that can kill him off alongside Jason Vorheeves - John Carpenter and the late Debra Hill decided to turn the franchise into a series of episodic films based around the Halloween season with different stories. Ironically, this is what American Horror Story as a TV series is doing with such success now, but they immediately started it from second series onward, not after two films like the ill-fated Season of the Witch did. Season of the Witch, whilst it's given a boost in name recognition, shouldn't have been part of the Halloween franchise - it has had last laugh in its critical reappraisal within the last decade but being part of the franchise both lead to its bombing at the box office, as audiences were not surprisingly confused why Myers wasn't in it, and because it feels jarring to be named a Halloween film when it's completely alien in tone and ideas. Whilst it has Carpenter's guiding hands over it, his powerful music composed with Alan Howarth and Dean Cundey's incredible cinematography painted over it, it should've have left its connection to the franchise to just the in-joke of the original Halloween (1978) playing on TV in scenes.

Barring this, I adore Season of the Witch as a grim, unsettling take on Halloween as a seasonal holiday both in its symbology and as someone who adores the holiday like many do. The premise is simple and works as a strange and compelling short story chiller - after a patient is murdered in his hospital of work, Dr. Dan Challis (Tom Atkins) is pulled into a conspiracy with the victim’s daughter Ellie Grimbridge (Stacey Nelkin) that involves a novelties and toy manufacture’s series of Halloween masks and the sinister intentions behind them. As someone who loves even the tacky decorations and sweets of the season - the plastic skeletons, the novelty foods and biscuits etc - Season of the Witch leads to a nasty point, based on a single extended monologue explain the truly horrifying intentions behind a set of masks being sold, referencing the history of the likes of Samhain but perversely turned into an evil act of ritual sacrifice that's seen as right to do for the sake of humanity. Even if the satire about consumerism is broad, it eventually leads to on having to think carefully about what Halloween means, at a time in the year said to be when the border between the living and the dead is at its thinnest, and how its macabre imagery is so codified against this nasty reality check shown in the film.

From http://www.denofgeek.us/sites/denofgeekus/files/styles/
article_width/public/1/12/halloween-3-boogeymen.jpg

A large factor to why this works is the subconscious influence of legendary British screenwriter Nigel Kneale. Kneale, famous for the Quatermass franchise, and famous British television horror and sci-fi stories, was a fan favourite for John Carpenter, who got Kneale to collaborate with him on the original story of Season of the Witch. This however lead to a disappointing fallout to take place, Kneale objecting incredibly to the level of violence that the film had - not surprisingly considering the final work is surprisingly brutal in this area, with someone even pulling another's head clean off with their bare hands with a giant blood squirt, a level of violence rarely found in any of the non-Rob Zombie versions for the whole franchise.

Despite taking his name off the final script, his fingerprints are still visible from his original work. Having now seen a lot of his work, the world of Silver Shamrock, a novelty mask and toy factory who have their own tiny rural town, evokes the sinister rural town of Quatermass II (1955 for the TV mini-series, 1957 for the Hammer feature film version) and how its nebulous nature, everyone within part of a conspiracy, are visible to any stranger who keeps their eyes open about their surroundings. Kneale is also someone who is able to deal with occult and supernatural ideas with far greater nuance even if he was to rationalise them through science and sci-fi concepts like aliens, to the point that the far better use of Samhain and pagan references in Season of the Witch over any of the other Halloween films is likely influenced by his ability to rationalise even the strangest of ideas with real weight. The other significant factor, which is a trope very common in British horror storytelling, is the importance of objects having magical properties, not merely being connected to an evil other but in themselves as cursed and maleficent, objects which can be used as part of something else but, as much constructions with their own histories and character to them. (I.e. a certain whistle found on a beach in a famous MR James short story, for an American example with a wider scope the Necronomicon in HP Lovecraft's fiction and how merely reading the book is inherently a dangerous act for the reader from its history). The three masks in the centre of the film - a witch, a skull, a Jack O'Lantern - are objects that are revealed as eventual catalysts to a horrifying mass outbreak of death, with many children who will immediately die as a result of those whose parents bought them, their constant appearance throughout the film invoking a greater sense of character and threat from their apparent innocuous nature. Even the Silver Shamrock theme on television,  which has become an ear worm for many viewers of the film, has a mantra like nature close to a magical incantation in how catchy it is (and especially with how a television sweepstake for the company will be the spark for the tragedy to start in connection with the masks directly).

From http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-M2wkjOp-CK8/Udis6i_0ECI/AAAAAAAAhPg/
3tVcZrjYbmM/s1600/Halloween+iii+Season+of+the+Witch+3.png

That this all involves Stonehenge will baffle some, but another factor to my love of the film that has grown on this viewing is that Season of the Witch is also a strange, strange sequel for any franchise to have regardless of it having any connection to the first two films or not. It's also a strange film just by itself, a baffling little oddity to throw at a mainstream horror audience. I like the weird in cinema but I also find upon revisiting this film that weird horror films are actually a lot of effecting and creepy for me, their irrational content leading a sense of unpredictability and greater threat. There is the Stonehenge plot line, which could easily bring to mind Spinal Tap for many, but also the clockwork robot minions of the main evil which could come off as silly; but they add to the creepiness of the final work, the latter particularly playing into the fear one has for nameless thugs, who are played by actors without masks but with their identical haircuts and suits have a menace particularly in how brutal their methods of killing people are.

And of course the final scene is one of the best for any horror film to end on, the sting in the tale that cements its qualities. In the middle of a franchise of slasher movies, it's position now I'm going through the films in near exact is more perplexing, a curveball that you would rarely find in most franchises from then on, meaning that my love for it has to now be in context that it should've been an entirely different project for Carpenter and Hill that merely existed amongst their regular collaborators. 

From https://emerdelac.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/h3_5.jpg

The Devil's Rain (1975) [Mini-Review]

From http://echoba.se/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/devilsrainQUAD.jpg

Director: Robert Fuest

Screenplay: James Ashton, Gabe Essoe and Gerald Hopman

Cast: Ernest Borgnine (as Jonathan Corbis); Eddie Albert (as Dr. Sam Richards); William Shatner (as Mark Preston); Ida Lupino (as Emma Preston); Tom Skerritt (as Tom Preston); Joan Prather (as Julie Preston)

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #60

On paper The Devil's Rain should be awesome, words which ultimately spell doom to the final results but let's stick to the image of the film inside my head first before I have to pop the imaginary bubble. The director of The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971) making a Satanic panic film starring William Shatner against Ernest Borgnine as the leader of a cult able to turn people into soulless, eyeless followers who melt like wax when beaten. Add a small role from Ida Lupino, a great actress and a pioneering female director of such gems like The Hitch-Hiker (1953), and the founder of the Church of Satan himself, Anton laVey, as a consultant for the Satanic rituals on screen and it should've been fascinating.

In actuality it's an exceptionally dull film. How it manages to be so dull is incredible in a perverse way in how it has nothing to bring to the table, but a large part of the issue is its complete lack of tension, mood or even kitsch to play out the feature length, like a black hole of charisma in terms of what's left. Shatner is a supporting actor behind Tom Preston and Joan Prather as Tom and Julie Preston, a bland couple with little interest in them barring a completely unused reference to the paranormal obsession of the seventies, Julie able to go into psychokinetic trances where she can see events in another time zone. Lupino is only in for a cameo and only Borgnine has any semblance of screen time of any interest, unable to support the film even in his demonic goat face makeup but at least chewing the scenery with the intensity expected from such a well regarded character actor.

Possibly the biggest disappointment, considering the founder of Church of Satan was on hand to contribute advice, is how utterly bland the evil cult as an entity is barring some pretty and blasphemous set decoration. Admittedly the Church of Satan is not about worshipping the Christian Devil - it's an atheist religion about its followers thinking for themselves, the choice of name meant to rebel against conservative moralists on purpose - but while the aesthetic choices are significantly more distinct than other cult related horror films, it's a further testament to the squandered resources found in The Devil's Rain. After this director Fuest's career practically fell off a cliff, tragic but it's absolutely depressing, considering how imaginative The Abominable Dr. Phibes was, that he went on to something the complete opposite of that film in quality. 

From http://www.denofgeek.us/sites/denofgeekus/files/5/69/devils-rain-4.jpg

Halloween II (1981) [Mini-Review]

From https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/d5
/e9/be/d5e9be9911f1d625c70b299b0d9d2f35.jpg

Director: Rick Rosenthal

Screenplay: John Carpenter and Debra Hill

Cast: Jamie Lee Curtis (as Laurie Strode); Donald Pleasence (as Dr. Sam Loomis); Charles Cyphers (as Leigh Brackett); Lance Guest (as Jimmy Lloyd); Pamela Susan Shoop (as Nurse Karen Bailey)
A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #59

One of the likely surprises I'll have with the Halloween franchise, (having gotten to Halloween 5 at this point of starting to watch and write about the series), is how the sequels I hated will grow on me a lot more now. I have serious doubts Part 6: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995) is going to have any merit, though I'd be happy with the shock twist if I did enjoy it, but with Halloween II in particular its slow, glacial tone is more effecting now whilst its absorption of the slashers its prequel spawn is rewarding rather than a bad idea, mainly because the film, as I've always viewed the franchise, was always more classier and better made than others and is able to use the tropes a lot a lot better.

Setting the film directly after the first was a risk, particularly with three years passing enough to have changed the fashions, but thankfully it proves to be a great advantage, a more manic Dr. Loomis for Donald Pleasance to play as his desperation is felt and the aftermath of the first film having a psychological effect on everyone that adds to this immediate continuation. Even knowing John Carpenter had to step in and shot new material doesn't detract from the final result, having to admire the technical quality of the first film still be present regardless of whether he or director Rick Rosenthal shot what scene. Dean Cundey's cinematography is still magnificent as it was in the prequel, the mostly if not all nocturnal setting for this film having an immense effect particularly for the isolated hospital setting, and Carpenter's music as naturally as good as his other work.

It's surprising, considering my original thoughts of the film and how much it's taken influence from the slashers the first movie birthed, that my initial views of Halloween II as being exceptionally dumb haven't been proven right. Barring the realisation that there's underground therapeutic hot tubs in American hospitals, with the temperature settings able to go up to "Scalding", its far more restrained and grounded then I originally thought. Merely the fact Michael Myers' has gotten bored and started using more creative ways to kill people, from syringes and even bleeding someone in the most patient way possible, brings up that this was aping the slasher films around it rather than them being indebted to this series. Thankfully the tone still emphasises the mood, allowing this to work.

I also don't mind the fact Laurie Strode is a side character in the film whilst the staff at the hospital she is in take centre stage, or we follow Loomis with the police for large portions outside the hospital. As much as it sadly means Jamie Lee Curtis is not allowed to show the great performance she showed in the first film, having her medicated to the point of lethargy and having to drag herself around from Myers is actually a scary proposition in terms of a viewer imagining themselves in her hospital gown. It also helps that, even when forced to write something, Carpenter alongside with Debra Hill still make the peripheral characters a lot more human and interesting, even as stereotypes, than at least the Friday the 13th films from this period - even the sleazy emergency ambulance driver who sings about wanting Grace to sit on his face has a personality in his dialogue reminiscent of a real staff employee, not a stock type hound dog from the more egregious films from the sub-genre and horror in general.

The real issue with Halloween II for me now, the one handicap, is that it [Spoiler] brought about the plot point of Laurie and Myers being siblings. It's a casually slipped plot twist near the end, softening its effect, but its future ramifications became a neutering effect on why the first Halloween was such a terrifying concept. Ironically, if that's the right word, the desire people have with real life murders wanting to know why they were committed, when many can be utterly irrational and un-explainable, entered into the world of horror movies which dealt with these real events through a safe veneer, the fact you could write in why the fictitious killer committed their crimes completely negating the point of such films as a healthy way to release fears about such violence. So, rather than the more frightening notion of Michael Myers as a bogeyman, Halloween II sadly dampened it, a worse decision knowing this film, and especially Halloween H20 in the nineties, would've still worked and actually had more power to them if Myers was just as homicidal non-entity trying to finish off a surviving victim he randomly choose.

From http://www.craveonline.com/images/stories/2011
/Film/Halloween%202%201981%20Hospital.jpg

Southbound (2015) [Mini-Review]

From http://pics.filmaffinity.com
/southbound-775227113-large.jpg

Directors: Various

Screenplay: Matt Bettinelli-Olpin (The Way Out & The Way In); Roxanne Benjamin and Susan Burke (Siren); David Bruckner (The Accident); Patrick Horvath and Dallas Hallam (Jailbreak)

Cast: Various

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #58

Modern anthology films are a conundrum. They can be incredibly rewarding, helping unknown talents get wider attention and given veterans the chance at making another film; I am a sincere fan of the ABCs of Death franchise because they take this to a fully international level where even fans can win a slot into the final films. However there's an issue of whether these shorts lead to feature films as they should logically do - David Bruckner, who does the most interesting segment of Southbound, hasn't directed or co-directed a feature length movie since 2007 and has been mainly doing segments for anthologies like this. That and the fact that quality can vary so much that, if many of the segments fail, it sinks the entire feature around them.

The Way In (Dirs. Radio Silence)

Southbound is an anthology with a paranormal Americana as an aesthetic, all the segments set on the same day, weaving between each other, within the same area of desert environment which is entirely within a pocket dimension, existing out of time and entirely demonic. The result is an attempt at a deliberately surreal and unconventional tone with the whole film, as people find themselves trapped within unconventional scenarios, cult director Larry Fessenden as the voice of the radio who makes cryptic proclamations of the events about to take place.

The full anthology is a mixed bag. Tonally it has a consistent, intriguing sense of isolation within its setting, but the stories themselves fail to capitalise on this tone for the most part or don't actually end properly, abruptly finishing. Radio Silence's two bookends really diverge from the rest of the stories from the get-go, away from the more mysterious and interesting threats to full on CGI skeleton-squid hybrids. Like their entry for V/H/S (2012), I don't like Radio Silence's use of computer effects at all, incredibly plastic creations against the real backdrops and actors. What starts as a potentially good opening - two men arrive at a diner terrified, with one of them bleeding from a stab wound from the stomach and something following them in the distance - turns into a damp squib.

Siren (Dir. Roxanne Benjamin)/Jailbreak (Dir. Patrick Horvath)

The other issue is that most of the stories are vague without intrigue to them and, as mentioned, have no real endings at all. The tone of rural America of diners, truck stops and small towns is perfect for a horror story, evoking the fear of being stranded from the outside world within long abandoned environments decaying internally, a type of setting constantly used in horror films as an advantage. The episodes Siren and Jailbreak however make a egregious mistake of not taking this atmosphere far enough. Siren, about a female band who get stuck with a flat tyre and are forced to stay with a creepy older couple, does immediately evoke the Satanic horror films of the seventies like Race with the Devil (1975) but literally crashes without any detail or conclusion to it. Jailbreak, about an older man entering the demonic town to rescue his sister, does have a bit more detail to cherish such as a fascinating twist to how his sister reacts to him appearing, but again it doesn't properly end.

The Accident (Dir. David Bruckner)

The only segment of any interest is The Accident, where a man accidentally runs over a young woman (one from another segment) and attempts to help her in the midst of nowhere through an emergency call operator or two over the phone. It does become more supernatural to a very creepy extent, finding himself in an abandoned emergency ward and the young woman's injuries exceptionally gruesome in their realism, but the short succeeds the most from dealing with a real fear for the viewer, guilt from accidentally harming another and being entirely to blame for it as you attempt to help them. The supernatural element, which becomes a symbol of his guilt and trying to deal with the consequences of his negligence, makes the short the only rewarding one of Southbound.

The Way Out (Dirs. Radio Silence)

Sadly barring The Accident, the whole anthology doesn't succeed, the final segment which connects to the first attempting the greatest risk in having a cylindrical tone, not working due to it starting as a generic home invasion narrative and returning back to the uninteresting The Way In.

As an attempt at an original take on the horror anthology, it never takes a real gamble at being incredibly weird or detailing its existing stories into more rewarding ones, its tone merely a window dressing. The lack of full, interesting stories barring one makes it immensely disappointing in the end.

From https://static1.squarespace.com/static/56a1633ac21b86f80ddeacb4
/t/56ba912c45bf217c98d0c788/1455067590705/