Tuesday 31 October 2017

Death Spa (1989)

From http://wickedchannel.com/wp-content/
uploads/2013/04/deathspa.jpg

Director: Michael Fischa
Screenplay: James Bartruff and Mitch Paradise
Cast: William Bumiller as Michael Evans; Brenda Bakke as Laura Danvers; Merritt Butrick as David Avery; Robert Lipton as Tom; Alexa Hamilton as Priscilla Wayne; Ken Foree as Marvin; Rosalind Cash as Sgt. Stone; Francis X. McCarthy as Lt. Fletcher
A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #148

Synopsis: Starbody Health Spa is the best in health spas. Fully automated by an advanced, innovative computer system. The best equipment. The most beautiful and charismatic people, not at least co-owner Michael Evans (William Bumiller). But Michael's late wife only a died a year before when, wheelchair bond, she dosed herself in gasoline and lit herself alight. And the new woman in his life Laura (Brenda Bakke) is blinded one night in the spa when chlorine gas is inexplicably poured into a steam room, immediately leading to the police investigating. When diving boards fall down when said police are there to investigate the previous incident things progressive get worse from there. Is Michael himself responsible? Michael brother-in-law David (Merrit Butrick), creator and operator of the spa's computer? A ghost? Why's the tiles flying off the walls in the women's shower room?

A shot over an urban skyline. Full, multi-spectrum colour in the dark. Neon sign of the Starbody Health Spa. Lighting hits the roof. With a title like Death Spa, or the alternative Witch Bitch, you don't expect it to immediately have an atmosphere that envelops you into it. But that's the case with Death Spa. Utterly ridiculous as a film but made which such a compelling mood in its style it's still effecting. It's a film which progressively gets stranger as it goes along, entering a groove that deepens as it continues. Obviously one questions whether the film's legitimately good, but this is one of those cases that, in the right frame of mind, its compellingly strange. It's an eighties flashback, a last hurrah as it was released in the last year of this decade cramming as much as possible into itself. Aerobics with its skimpy, multicoloured spandex. Health food crazes and exercise, all through a cornucopia of fashion from leg warmers to a Flintstones t-shirt of Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble exercising at their own prehistoric gym. Yes, it's all beautiful people, an exaggeration of what a real gym would be with its vast and diverse shapes, one where the visage is emphasised by the gratuitous group shower scene in the female bathroom which used women from a porn casting agency as extras. It's an exaggeration, one from an era where films attempted to capitalise on this trend, but having found myself drawn to the virtues of exercise, the exhilaration of merely a home placed bench press and how it could almost be Zen in its removal of negatives thoughts, I can still appreciate this idealised version still having a jest of fun and energy even if it comes off as a music video. The absurdity of these symbols of American excess is more in how over-the-top glamorous it is in spite of a film like this being visibly an excuse for an exploitative movie.

What you don't expect from this film, which has a factor in my response to it, is how distinct and well done the look and production style of the film is. Imagine a schlocky b-movie with the aesthetic of a Rinse Dream production having ingested mad Italian horror logic for dinner. Particularly when you compare it to the other spa related horror film from around the same time, David A. Prior's Killer Workout (1986), which is serviceable to say the least, it's a surprise that a film that basically boils down into a possessed gym manages to have the level of style it has. It's not even a scary film as horror, which should immediately undermine it, but you get something weighed by the level of quality thrust upon it this issue doesn't come up. Dolly shots of the camera prowling across corridors. The colour matched against the artificiality of the environment, gothic architecture if redeveloped as mall culture public building. The music by Peter D. Kaye that, whilst occasionally slipping into some corny scary cues, which adds to a hazy mood. I confess, whilst these words may sound cruel, that I don't know any of the other work the production crew of this movie has made including the director but they managed for Death Spa of all things to give it a fantastic tone, doing their damndest to shot this film the best they could technically in spite of how silly it is.

This helps to connect together a plot which gets more and more elaborate, convoluted to be perfectly honest, as it continues. The two police officers trying to make sense of the strange spate of injuries and accidents taking place, a pair straight from a buddy cop movie from the era. That Michael's wife could be haunting the premises, typing computer messages to him trying to convince him to join her, something that spooks him enough to hire a paranormal investigator. That there might be a conspiracy to drive him insane from his own staff when a bird's nest is found in his office onwards. Or that his ex-brother-in-law is acting weirdly, a twin who might be hearing his late sister talk to him. A whole torrent of plot points that get crushed together into a mass you have to accept and let pass over you. If the film was more conventional and less slick in style, it would be a tedious slog. With its current tone it's something much weirder, where the reoccurring flashbacks Michael has of his wife's death are with her shot against a dusk sun with the vibrancy of a Kenneth Anger film.

It's a film with no hesitation in being lurid either which emphasises this weirdness. The nudity which could be seen as crass to some, strangely emphasising the sweltering mood for others in how explicit it is even for horror from the period. Something gruesome which takes the influence of Italian genre cinema fully. Where a woman is half melted by acid, heart exposed beating and still alive. Someone's head blowing up in pieces shot in a slow motion haze and possessed food processors. Material that straddles the line between the rewarding and utterly stupid and being both. It can present to you a beautiful coloured aesthetic, even if it's of the time, than presents a romantic scene between Michael and Laura where a piece of asparagus is comically phallic in how its eaten. It's difficult to ask whether the film altogether is actually well made or if it's just the production style that saves it, but it helps immensely how wild the film is, culminating to an extreme at a Mardi Gras costume party at the gym which escalates things further. It's a final act that doesn't drop in quality but escalates the strangeness further, between gender confusion and ghostly influence to the idea of burning someone to death in a tanning bed and a flesh eating, frozen fish. Effectively taking the strangest of American genre cinema, upping the quality of the film technically, upping the level of luridness, and adding Ken Foree. Something unique at least even if you scratch your head afterwards.

Personal Opinion:
For the curious. Those who can appreciate how silly it gets will come for its premise, stays for the style and madness.

Abstract Spectrum: Psychotronic/Weird
Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Low

From http://whysoblu.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Death-Spa-1.jpg

Monday 30 October 2017

Two Dollops of Killer Tomatoes

I grew up with knowledge of the Killer Tomatoes since a young age, created after co-screenwriter Costa Dillon saw Ishirō Honda's Matango (1963), and continued over multiple sequels by the same director, and Dillon's high school friend, John De Bello into the early nineties. An intentionally absurd, self reflective farce taking old sci-fi b-movies tropes, it takes the fruit most often mistaken as a vegetable and images if it developed sentience and decided to rebel against mankind. I remember seeing a piece of the 1990-1991 animated series, where my fixation on these rebellious tomatoes first came from. Alongside that series, there were four films, the first two the most well known. With a proto-primordial Zucker brothers structure of absurd comedy, the tone the first Killer Tomatoes film has is rough around the edges. As intentionally goofy sci-fi, ironically these films have to be watched in terms of the rise of genetically modified crops and the fear of them, inexplicably bringing so seriousness to films that were meant to be a joke1.

From https://i.imgur.com/HPxoG9U.jpg

Attack of the Killer Tomatoes (1978)
Director: John De Bello
Screenplay: John De Bello, Costa Dillon and Stephen Peace
Cast: David Miller as Mason Dixon; George Wilson as Jim Richardson; Sharon Taylor as Lois Fairchild; Stephen Peace as Wilbur Finletter; Ernie Meyers as The President; Eric Christmas as Senator Polk; Al Sklar as Ted Swan; Jerry Anderson as Major Mills; Jack Riley as Von Schauer; Gary Smith as Sam Smith
A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #146

The fascinating thing about the first film - created between De Bello, Dillon and fellow high school friend Stephen Peace - is that whilst ultimately a mess, it perfectly slides into that era's rich history of American independent genre cinema. Shot in San Diego, California you have a film with the same rough edge of the other independent films, only with the desire to elicit laughter at itself deliberately. The opening credits make you aware of this farcical nature from the beginning as the text is full of jokes, none too lame to not be included. The humour's scattershot, some jokes funny, others not which is ultimately the issue that surrounds Attack.... Also be aware, sadly, that some of the humour is also un-PC. To those who will perceive me as being "soft" for including this warning, what qualifies as politically incorrect is usually not funny anyway, jokes that merely present race or sexuality (for example) as they are in exaggeration, usually for the sake of laughing at them rather than anything remotely further. Sadly this does crop up in Attack... a couple of times, alongside a lot of sex humour, which makes a film that would be suitable for families actually difficult to shown to children.

There was a great energy at the start. The first scene brings up a lot of hope, a tomato appearing out a kitchen sink plughole to terrorise a stereotypical housewife. It doesn't have a prologue and immediately gets to the red invasion, which helps the film a lot, where the police are already fighting them and things are getting worse. It's the perfect set up both for this absurd humour and even a cheap, but funny political joke or two as the president (Ernie Meyers) is in damage control by contacting an ad company to suggest the tomato menace is not as bad as it sounds, in his office permanently signing documents for their own sake and having bartered the Statue of Liberty to the Middle East for a loan. A sense of mayhem is found alongside the ridiculous humour where actors have to pretend to shot tomatoes and scream that they're not being pushed back. This also includes a helicopter crash captured on film that was not meant to happen. This is the one moment that stands out in the film because its sudden on screen and was an actual accident, no one thankfully hurt or killed, the actors hesitating but improvising that a rouge tomato jump at it in the sky, an ad lib on screen that for any major flaws with the film around the sequence is stuck in my mind still.

When the film is directly about the tomatoes it succeeds. There is something ridiculous, despite the existence of John Wyndham's The Day of the Triffids (1951), in tomatoes devouring people. The rudimentary effects behind them, whilst not being bad for the sake of it, emphasises this. Actual tomatoes. Prop tomatoes. Giant red inflatables larger than cars waddling across the camera. Many speaking gibberish growling noises. There's even a tribute to the aforementioned Toho films with a battle in an urban city using extensive model shots, all explosions and prop buildings and tomato juice on everything. Considering tomatoes are remotely the least sinister of all fruit and vegetables - consider the pineapple with its hard shell and spikes, or the pumpkin which has become part of horror symbolism culture - these red fruit are funny to imagine in this role. To be lobbed at people in stocks. A good base sauce for paste. For Red Nose Day charity. Not for a monster stand in. The joke works when the film accepts the absurdity of this situation, but important, plays the attack of the tomatoes as matter of fact, finding humour elsewhere in the scenario.

The film's problems are in this elsewhere. The human characters themselves is where you realise this film has a shaky structure, one which is merely built to suppose any strange jokes the creators could come up with but with the danger that the humour is hit-and-miss to an extreme. You have a crack team of specialists to fight the tomatoes, the only one of importance being Wilbur Finletter (Stephen Peace), a former Vietnam War veteran who wanders around in full parachute and uniform even if the parachute itself is constantly in the way of his movement. Peace is not bad as a comedy figure especially paired to David Miller as the government agent Mason Dixon meant to coordinate this task. This team of specialists however is pretty useless in terms of humour and story. A female athlete who eats steroids literally for breakfast but little else. A scuba diver in full wet suit, back in the era where that was inherently surreal. A master of disguise Sam Smith (Gary Smith), who could've been more useful as a funny character, especially when he attempts with some succeed to disguise himself as a tomato and infiltrate the enemy, but also has risible humour attached to him such as, as an African American actor, dressing up as Hitler just because. The female reporter Lois Fairchild (Sharon Taylor) who also plays a large role in the film is also not that interesting, contributing not a lot and really there for dated sex humour that's somewhat demeaning.

This humour, despite being the main point of Attack..., is inconsistent to an extreme. Attempts to be wacky are as liable to fail as they are to succeed, with reoccurring jokes taking huge chunks of the running time that could either be awful to sit through as much as be a pleasure to follow on with. When it works, it's the jokes about the ad company being hired to disguise the tomato invasion in propaganda, the presidential press secretary Jim Richardson (George Wilson) meeting an ad company manager obsessed with pure commercialism. Ads appearing on screen to the viewer, as well as his latest projects (never seen onscreen but heard) which allows us to witness Wilson's horrified reactions to material like Jesus Christ shilling a tech company. Or the unexpected fact this turns into a musical at multiple points, such as with the ad executive bursting into song about his work or soldiers performing a choreographed dance before they fight the enemy. Its heavy handed but, outside the homicidal tomatoes themselves, its where the film gets the most interesting. However there is so much undeveloped slapstick, crass sex jokes, and jokes in general that fall short that I have to concede that Attack of the Killer Tomatoes is the sum of its individual parts judged separate rather than a success. Aspects I am happy to have seen, and laughed at, but it's also a failure.

From https://i.pinimg.com/736x/5e/2d/f3/5e2df3555c8412991
ec9f8470e46e84b--tomato-movie-sci-fi-horror-movies.jpg

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From http://www.scifi-movies.com/images/
contenu/data/0002003/affiche.jpg

Return of the Killer Tomatoes (1988)
Director: John De Bello
Screenplay: John De Bello, Costa Dillon and Stephen Peace
Cast: Anthony Starke as Chad Finletter; George Clooney as Matt Stevens; Karen Mistal as Tara Boumdeay; Steve Lundquist as Igor; John Astin as Professor Mortimer Gangreen; J. Stephen Peace as Wilbur Finletter; Michael Villani as Bob Downs; Frank Davis as Sam Smith
A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #147

Return of the Killer Tomatoes is in many ways the superior film even if the original, despite being a failure, had the more intentional risks to praise. It also has to be kept in mind this isn't really a film about giant killer tomatoes, but where a mad scientist Professor Mortimer Gangreen (John Astin) can turn tomatoes into human beings with toxic waste and certain choices of music. As bizarre as you could get as a premise still, slap bang in the late eighties after teen sex comedies populated the era. Surprisingly it does continue on from the last film, ten years later in a world where tomatoes are outlawed, a subplot never really tackled fully but amusing that they've become prized contraband and the owner of any grocery store could be the equivalent of a moonshine dealer in Prohibition America hiding the goods in the back. Wilbur Finletter (Steve Peace returning back to the film) is now running a pizza parlour after his military service, where weird (and likely disgusting) pizza toppings have to be used like candy to replace tomato sauce2, and our two leads, nephew Chad Finletter (Anthony Starke) and Matt Stevens (George Clooney) work behind the counter.

Clooney, and young and bouffanted here, is part of the reason the sequel is known, his early pre ER television days a curiosity where, before his television success let alone when people called his the Clark Gable of his era, he feels here like he's merely in primordial form here. His comic timing especially isn't as defined here as when you get to his work for the Coen Brothers, the only really interesting joke (that just happens to also be crass) being how he's conning beautiful women with a fake competition in hope of getting laid himself. Starke as his friend, the straight man to his joker and the main lead, is also just adequate. The plot's absurd fluff where Chad meets Tara (Karen Mistal), the perfect woman who just happens to have once been a tomato, Gangreen's ideal woman he wants back. It's a cocktail of meta humour, sex jokes and farce which is as erratic as the first film even if the look and style of the film is considerably slicker than before.

The more overt meta humour works, the film actually stopping half way through as the cast and crew deal with the fact they're run out of money, the film afterwards suddenly full of product placement in the background and blatantly in dialogue. It's moments like this where Return..., even as a fun romp first, gets the funniest and more rewarding. Going for the strangeness of its material is as successful. Where the scuba diver returns from the first film for a cameo, living in a water submerged lounge where even the pet dog has a scuba mask on. How it runs with Gangreen's machine being able to create an army of Rambo knockoffs, big beefy musclemen, or even the Pope just from tomatoes and certain music. And Igor (Steve Lundquist), one such creation who despite being the henchman really wants to be a news reporter more, a joke the actor does pull off with real fun. Even the fluffy tomato creature named FT turns out to be funny as a creature which makes noises, waddles around unconvincingly, and is willing even to sacrifice itself by jumping on a live hand grenade.

It's a shame, considering these virtues, that the ending does lean more of the scattershot tone of the first movie, a mess of jokes and plot which vary in whether they work. It's this which does undermine Return..., arguable that if the creators focused more on giving a more serious plot to these two films, they would have been more well structured and actually funnier as a result. Also strange with Return... is that, whilst its more overt about the sex comedy, its surprisingly chaste, not a criticism or a compliment, just a very strange detail with the sequel that stands out.

From http://theslaughteredbird.com/wp-content/uploads/
2016/07/Killer-Tomatoes-Product-Placement.jpg

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1) And Matango, despite its absurd premise of mushroom men, is actually a bizarre and compelling psychodrama, one in which shipwrecked people forced to survive on an island may be hallucinating their own turning into mushroom people from eating the local fungus, or that the mushroom people are real but the desperation and madness being formed in the survivors is as dangerous as the local population. It's a film in dire need of availability as its underrated from the director of Godzilla (1954) and very alien from the traditional "fun" sci-fi Toho studios were also doing.  

2) Though considering you can have caramelised onions, hummus, cheese, even pumpkin as options instead of tomato sauce for pizza or otherwise, we're clearly dealing with the deliberately absurd. Only a mad person would consider eating any of the pizzas made during this film.

Sunday 29 October 2017

The Gruesome Twosome (1967)

From https://i.ytimg.com/vi/qRF4-b_xiLM/maxresdefault.jpg

Director: Herschell Gordon Lewis
Screenplay: Allison Louise Downe
Cast: Elizabeth Davis as Mrs. Pringle; Gretchen Wells as Kathy Baker; Chris Martell as Rodney Pringle; Rodney Bedell as Dave Hall; Ronnie Cass as Nancy Harris; Karl Stoeber as Mr. Spinsen; Dianne Wilhite as Janet; Andrea Barr as Susan     
A Night of a Thousand Horror (Films) #145

Synopsis: Mrs. Pringle (Elizabeth Davis), with her mentally disabled son Rodney (Chris Martell) and a stuffed cat named Napoleon, run a lucrative wig shop where their products are made from real human hair. Freshly scalped from young women who take interest of the rented room sign they also have up in the window.

Before we get on with this, let's not forget Herschell Gordon Lewis thought himself a businessman first, not a filmmaker with artistic inspirations. He had a personality, which is why in spite of this fact and the technical flaws of his film he could have only made these films as they were. The businessman in him however must've been aware that, if not careful, his success with gore films would've gone the way of all the nudie-cuties he made before, slowly losing their financial worth due to repetition if he didn't get bored first. Having switched to splatter films, he made a trilogy of gore films - Blood Feast (1963), Two Thousand Maniacs (1964) and Color Me Blood Red (1965) - which have a cult legacy. After that, he did make A Taste of Blood (1967), but also two children's' films, other exploitation movies, and the paranormal weirdness that is Something Weird (1967), so perfectly titled a legendary cult movie preservation and distribution company took their name from it to aspire to collect films as weird as it. Within this is The Gruesome Twosome, where he'd have to be nastier in the gore but it becomes apparent that his personality, his eccentric sense of humour and willingness to be absurd, would have to take over to keep it afresh. Ironically this is his claim to auteurism even if he'd have found that an absurd sentence and laughed his arse off at the notion.

Kitsch is self aware here. There's no denying he made the films with deliberate humour as well as being repulsive in the gore. The man who made the first splatter movie also pastiche the subgenre not long afterwards before others did. The Gruesome Twosome's infamous moment is at the beginning and immediately alerts you to how Lewis isn't taking the material seriously without losing the sense of ghoulish fun, without becoming smug but instead retaining its unpredictability. A prologue with two wigged polystyrene heads talking. Meant to pad out time to make the film feature length, nonetheless playful and bizarre. No one expects inanimate objects to speak even in cinema. Objects having life is immediately surreal because it undermines the binaries between what is alive and what shouldn't, especially as mannequin heads are vaguely human looking. The cartoonish facial features added, big paper eyes and lips like Miss Potato Heads, is on the joke and the fact they talk as casually as they do is even absurder. They set up the premise and put the tone perfectly in place.

Story wise, it's as minimal as you can get, minimalism in exploitation an extreme its practically a Michael Snow work. The "off" nature surrounding its threadbare plot, is where things become interesting and what a young John Waters would've gotten off from in terms of inspiration. If Elizabeth Davis as Miss Pringle didn't act so broadly, as flamboyantly, as she does than her role would become tedious, a nonentity which gains life because she's as over-the-top as she is and clearly enjoying herself. That her relationship with her son, despite being killers, is so perversely wholesome in the few scenes they have, reading him bedtime stories and giving him a new electric carving knife as a gift. Talking to Napoleon, a stuffed animal, as a living creature with thought, not a stuffed taxidermy, enough that the final shot of the film for impact is the cat itself and its wide eyed frozen expression.

Helping on the opposite side of the law is that our plucky heroine Kathy Baker (Gretchen Wells) is as unconventional. Imagine a young female sleuth from a children's series mixed with the cast of Scooby Doo and you get Kathy, so infectiously obsessed with the world around her in a wholesome way it's strange for me to write that, for a character in a splatter film, I'd want to hug her and stay within her energy cloud of personality. Energetic and sweet, obsessed with trying to solve the spate of killings of women, even jumping to conclusions that her college's caretaker is the culprit (with a Swedish accent so broad even the Swedish Chef from the Muppets is subdued). She's a lot more rewarding and positive than most heroines in serious horror films still to this day, a terrible thing to realise, but Lewis' sixties films always have these chirpy, twee figures who emigrated from the older type of horror films to these nastier, animal organ filled orgies of gore. The contrast is inherently startling but it also means you actually care about the characters; not because they're well written or acted, but that they actually stand out, something that anyone whose suffered through straight-to-video/DVD horror nowadays will be very aware of.

Repetitions of women being scalped take place, gore shots meant to be distasteful but in a playful way. All done with a gristliness that still gross you out to this day particularly in the bright sixties colours and for how blunt they are. Over and over until our heroine is on the right track to investigate the murders. Lewis leaves the seventy minute film to go on lengthy tangents rather than a plot that stretches from the first minutes. Filler in any other film, personality here and he manages somehow to get away with it if you are in -tuned to the pleasure of the non-plot moments in cinema in extremes. Viewing these scenes, you react realising time has stopped but for those in the right frame of mind they can start to pick up a camp to the material as it continues. Her decision to follow the Swedish caretaker back to his home feels like it takes ten minutes for an obvious red herring, hypnotic in how long it felt for me. And for another weird moment that takes the cake, intercut between Kathy hanging out with her blockhead boyfriend and her friends at a drive-in, you constantly go to an unknown heterosexual couple. Faces never seen, extreme close up of the hands only as a table takes up the shots. Huge bowl of crisps (potato chips). Huge bowl of fruit which the hairy male hands usually molests and squashes in as lurid detail as the gore shots. Beer opened and poured in glasses. The female wanting to be romantic, the male thinking with his stomach. It would be avant-garde in another film, here a silly "men are from Mars, women from Venus" gender farce that takes up considerable length and Lewis included on purpose.

Those who not appreciate these tangents find them irritating, expecting films to progress or to not be this intentionally silly. Fans of psychotronic films can detach themselves from continuity in plots, there for these off moments of strange drama and character interaction. The worst moments in genre cinema are when they are merely perfunctory. Nothing that stands out is actually worse than bad acting, as there is no emotional effect. Weird character moments for faceless figures never seen again will always get a reaction out of people even if it could be negative. Not merely a kitsch but humour in these snapshots of weird events. Adding to this is the aesthetic. Does it sound bad that modern genre cinema can have no sense of taste, even bad taste? No, because as history informs people, even bad taste has an aesthetic, still carried symbolic weight of the times. Eventually the 2010s will have an aesthetic defined I'll look back on with pleasure once the artificial dullness is removed. And actually, with sixties cinema, low or high art, you do see a lot of great taste too even if the fashion is so alien to now. The surprise viewing these schlocky films is that a lot of their aesthetic is based on things now critically evaluated as good art. The lounge jazz in particular is something you never get now in even splatter, usually orchestral or retro synth for horror nowadays, but this stock jazz music was common in American exploitation. It's cool jazz, a nice contrast alongside the sudden stop mid-film, as sixties college girls in negligee munch on KFC chicken, for a surf rock/pop rock song dance-along. The colour and vibrancy of sixties cinema, even in the grottiest of preserved prints, is amazing even in terms of what is middle road Americana. Kitsch maybe, but it still possesses human emotion to it, given emotional connection when given human life and especially with the awful fake realism of modern horror that's artificially grey and brown we suffer through in modern times, not even the real 2010s culture but subdued in extremis.

Personal Opinion:
Not as iconic as Blood Feast, but those initiated in Herschell Gordon Lewis will be aware of the quirks of his cinema and appreciated this film. For myself, I realise how technically rudimentary his cinema is, how broad the performances are, and that he slapped these movies together for business, but he stands out from so many tedious gore films made within these same standards because he was clearly enjoying himself. A showman aware to bring his odd humour, knowledge that it was deliberate that succeeds.

Abstract Spectrum: Grotesque/Psychotronic
Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

From https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BNmMxYzQ2YjctZmJhMC00YzNhLWFhZ
DItZjNiZWQxMzEzZGI4XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyNDY2NzgwOTE@._V1_.jpg

Saturday 28 October 2017

Phantasm II & III (1988-1994)

From http://wrongsideoftheart.com/wp-content/
gallery/posters-p/phantasm_2_poster_01.jpg

Phantasm II (1988)
Director: Don Coscarelli
Screenplay: Don Coscarelli
Cast: Angus Scrimm as The Tall Man; James LeGros as Mike Pearson; Reggie Bannister as Reggie; Paula Irvine as Liz Reynolds; Samantha Phillips as Alchemy; Kenneth Tigar as Father Meyers; Rubin Kushner as Grandpa Alex Murphy; Ruth C. Engel as Grandma Murphy; Stacey Travis as Jeri Reynolds
A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #143

Phantasm (1979) is a horror film as its meant to be, a campfire tale of human emotion that also happens to be an oddball crowd pleaser. With its exceptional success because of this, Universal Pictures acquired the rights to the sequel in the height of the eighties horror film boom for their own use. It's the big budget sequel but between part II and III is where the most contentious aspects of the series for me will stand out. The first, upon reflection, is an immensely rewarding rediscovery. One whose ending manages to take a cliché and deliberately turn it into both a metaphorical emotional impact for the viewer and emphasising how odd the first Phantasm was, neither in reality or dreams and entirely in a confounding nether realm. Obviously for Phantasm II to exist you need to re-do this ending, beginning a series of film serial-like cliff-hangers, where the end footage is played again but with new scenes interwoven. The problem with this is that, with no true ending to these sequels, they need either to contribute something of interest or become time killing and ultimately worthless, the goal originally to close out on Phantasm IV: Oblivion (1998) and now Phantasm: Ravager (2016). To get to the ending, it would help to have sequels that bring something of worth to them.

I will also remark, just from Phantasm II having the biggest budget, how really marked in the theme of death this series is even over other horror franchises. It's a film which plays on the fear of death even when being more entertaining and bombastic. These films more than any other franchise meant to be as entertaining tackle this subject with a lot more inante power to them due to their tone, more affecting than any other whether you are spiritually inclined, agnostic or atheist. It's a theme Don Coscarelli has gone over in his career, his obsession, which he does tackle even just in the tone and look of his films. I admit, going through a depression because of unemployment, one which has become existential, has made viewing these films regardless of my critical opinion of them all immensely affecting, a tone I have been unable to shake off. Probably the worse films to have watched in this low mood but at the same time a testament to the material's qualities This fear paints the entire aesthetic, from the Tall Man (Angus Scrimm) having suited morgue attendants as minions to the production design. The sequel also presents an interesting new arch for the series, where the scale of the first film's portrait of the Tall Man as an adolescent's fears now grows to be a menace that inflicts entire towns. Scenes of Mike (now played by James LeGros) and Reggie (played by Reggie Bannister) entering a town entirely desolate is effective and creepy. A scale for a film which yet is set around only a few characters and an existential fear disguised as sci-fi weird horror.

It's the most violent certainly of this series, paradoxically to the modern day the Universal Pictures backed sequel film increasing the gore to make it a more populist sequel. An emphasis on comedy where Reggie is now Bruce Campbell, his character lovable but by way of a wannabe middle aged lothario, doing his damndest to be a hero, but also flawed, out of his depth and really obsessed with lusting after women. The later could come off as creepy considering he's considerably older than any of the women he's with throughout parts II to IV, only succeeding because Reggie Bannister is a charming, charismatic actor whose able to make dialogue that would sound so wrong from other actors work.

However with this there's also the cost of mainstreaming the original film, an independent movie whose awkward, rough edges were its charm, a prom queen or king with acne who were prettier than the ones with too much makeup and gel in their hair. Why recasting A. Michael Baldwin with James LeGros as Mike doesn't work. Considering how good he was as a child, replacing Baldwin was absurd in the first place, for a tangent with an actor in LeGros who is okay but ultimately a bland figure now here. The less said about Liz (Paula Irvine) and an un-used telekinesis subplot the better, a psychic link to Mike and a potential romance which never goes anywhere and is ultimately made worthless with what happens to her in Phantasm III. The issue of films having write out plot points from previous sequels is the biggest flaw of the middle of Phantasm's franchise, this sense these films are in a cycle of the protagonists continually chasing the Tall Man and neither being a symbolic repetition or leading to an actual end of interest. I admit to liking Phantasm II as a spectacle - the morbid aesthetic, the chainsaw battle etc., a killer title theme by Fred Myrow and Christopher Stone the series wisely returned to - but I also admit that it's pretty empty compared to the first film. That sense of losing the quieter, more creepy personality of the first film which spent an entire scene of Mike doing a MacGyver to escape his locked bedroom. Which dealt with the bond between brothers and friends for large passages of its length. Idiosyncratic personality being scrubbed off here.

From http://www.thatsnotcurrent.com/wp-
content/uploads/2016/10/PhantasmII-3.jpg

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From http://reel90.com/wp-content/uploads/
sites/6/2014/04/E7_Phatasm-III-poster.jpg

Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead (1994)
Director: Don Coscarelli
Screenplay: Don Coscarelli
Cast: Angus Scrimm as The Tall Man; A. Michael Baldwin as Mike Pearson; Reggie Bannister as Reggie; Bill Thornbury as Jody Pearson; Kevin Connors as Tim; Gloria Lynne Henry as Rocky; Cindy Ambuehl as Edna; Brooks Gardner as Rufus; John Davis Chandler as Henry
A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #144

Idiosyncratic personality fully scrubbed off here. Sadly here it feels like there's little to appreciate for me only until you get to the final scenes, the most rewarding aspect of the entirety of Phantasm III as it allows Phantasm IV: Oblivion to exist, a far more rewarding sequel. For most of Phantasm III however it feels like a rehash of Phantasm II with less to offer. It repeats almost the exact same plot as before. Thankfully A. Michael Baldwin is playing Mike again, and his entire plot line for this film is the most rewarding aspect of the film, leading to a progression where the Tall Man has greater intentions for him than to be turned into a hooded dwarf. That Bill Thornbury returns as his older brother Jody, dead and now a sphere with its sense of consciousness still there, should bring an entire new weight to the film's main plotline.

Baldwin though is not in a lot of the movie at all.  Instead most of the film has Reggie (Reggie Bannister) with Tim (Kevin Connors), effectively Macaulay Culkin from the Home Alone films if the traps killed people, and Roxy (Gloria Lynne Henry), an African-American woman who attempts to use nunchaku on the silver spheres and is tough. They present an interesting duo to have but unfortunately they don't possess any really interesting aspects about them. Their dialogue between them is very clichéd. Tim is just depicted as a precocious kid in spite of the back-story of losing his family having the potential to bring a greater emphasis on familial bonding, with Reggie and Tim easily developing a symbolic father-son/uncle-nephew interaction if the script developed it more. Roxy is more disappointing, a strong black female character who completely goes against stereotypes of female characters in a lot of horror regardless of race, more androgynous and tough, someone with short hair and wears combats like Sarah Connor, the perfect foil to contrast the danger of Reggie's obsession with women becoming creepy by making her someone who finds it ridiculous. Unfortunately she never gets any real drama of interest and disappears at the end of the film with no conclusion to her story. Thankfully Phantasm: Ravager has Gloria Lynne Henry return to the role, but I wish that her initial introduction meant more than it did.

Where Phantasm III is of interest is just the ending. When Mike is "infected" by an operation by the Tall Man, leading to the plot of Phantasm IV which becomes more introspective, an odder film like the original. Phantasm II and III for me don't really interest as much as they should, which do possess a lot to admire between them in terms of style and mood, but sadly in the case of Phantasm III feels pointless.

From http://www.joblo.com/images_arrownews/phantasmiii-a.jpg

Friday 27 October 2017

Evil Ed (1995)

From https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMTY0Mjc4MTA0M
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Director: Anders Jacobsson
Screenplay: Anders Jacobsson; Göran Lundström; Christer Ohlsson
Cast: Johan Rudebeck as Edward "Eddie" Tor Swenson; Per Löfberg as Nick; Olof Rhodin as Sam Campbell; Camela Leierth as Mel; Gert Fylking as SWAT team lieutenant; Cecilia Ljung as Barbara; Dan Malmer as Zip; Kim Sulocki as Dix; Göran Lundström as Bondage Face; Robert Dröse as Fridge Fritz
A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #142

I had never heard of Evil Ed until 2017. Immediately my interest was piqued when details of it were disclosed by Arrow Video for their physical release. A Swedish splatter film post-Peter Jackson from the nineties. Swedish horror tends to be a rare thing. Any horror film from a place that never had a large industry surrounding them(the US, Britain, Japan, Italy, Spain etc.) is immediately of interest, allowing me to witness how a country's culture seeps into a template. Them and more unconventional genre and art films are far more rewarding for this than critically awarded films in my opinion, particularly now when the auteurs of the old guard like Ingmar Bergman were replaced by "World Cinema" as a marketing concept.

There is also the fact this is a splatter comedy from Sweden. The stereotype of Scandinavian cinema is serious filmmaking. Horror films from Sweden, the few that are well known outside of the country, are in my mind Ingmar Bergman's more fantastical works and Let the Right One In (2008). Something which evokes Peter Jackson's early "splatstick" work like Brain Dead (aka. Dead Alive) (1992) is an anomaly against this stereotype. That it's from the mid-nineties as well is of interest. Horror cinema a year later from Evil Ed's debut, at least in the English speaking world, would go from years of odd, unconventional films that would only get critical status decades and terrible sequels to Scream (1996) that would become a cultural zeitgeist. Films from Asia, which became a prime influence alongside horror from non-English speaking countries, existed throughout the decade but it would be in 1998 that you get Hideo Nakata's Ringu and, from South Korea, Whispering Corridors which had an effect and attract interest. In the midst of an obscure period, this lone production clearly being made off the creators' own time and investment immediately stands out.

Immediately you come to an odd paradox with Evil Ed. Edward (Johan Rudebeck) works as a film editor. Usually he's working on black-and-white art films until he's asked to hastily replace the late editor from the horror department, whose office is decorated in arcade machines and beautiful women, led by a scuzzball manager who makes his living off a franchise of packaged horror sequels called the Loose Limbs series that he needs Edward to edit. Can a comedy horror that reveals in the gore have its tongue in its cheek when editing these splatter atrocities causes Edward to first hallucinate and then lose his mind? Admittedly David Cronenberg made Videodrome (1984) asking himself what would happen if violent television could actually corrupt people like the conservatives said, but Cronenberg even with his grottiest, early horror films always came to them with cerebral ideas. Evil Ed, made with humour could easily be called a hypocrite.

Whilst likely unintentional, there was however a period before this where extreme genre cinema existed which could even make hardened fans of splatter have existential questions. The Guinea Pig films from Japan, whilst fake, gained infamy when Charlie Sheen thought the second of them Flower of Flesh & Blood (1985) was an actual snuff movie and called in the FBI to investigate it. Far more problematic, the progression from Italian mondo movies and the Faces of Death series turned to Traces of Death (1993), which rather than a mix of pre-existing footage and faked death scenes became a series of real death compilations for the sake of a thrill, crossing a line in its point morally. A tipping point where even the creators of this film, including campy film-within-film scenes of pointless and random splatter, would distance themselves from. It could also just be a film parodying all this in the most exaggerated manner possible just for a laugh. The film was meant to be a satire of the Swedish Statens biografbyrå, the oldest censorship board in the world until it was disbanded in 2011, making Evil Ed effectively a piss take of everything their institution was meant to represent.

The initial issue you as an audience member have to deal with is the dubbing. English dubs from decades before, like the Italian films of the sixties to the eighties, have a distinction to them and there are fans of them as there are detractors. For every ill advised decision - like Bob in House by the Cemetery (1981), reoccurring child actor Giovanni Frezza clearly voiced by a woman doomed to infamy trying to do a childish voice - there's a pretty consistent, even charming, aspect to these dubs of yore. Dubbing changes in tone from the nineties on. They are more broader. A frankly artificial tone where even the American accents feel like they're faked, be it here in the nineties Gamera movies. That the film never denies that its set in Sweden, even parodying Ingmar Bergman with another film-within-a-film that's subtitled, does make the entire production decision to do this pointless and actually a detriment. The only person whose able to recover from this is Johan Rudebeck in the lead, as he's able to emote with body language and a natural charisma that shows through even if his voice isn't his own. The rest is peculiar to the ear to say the least even as someone who loves even the broadest of dubs of old Eurocult oddities.

Evil Ed can be split into two halves. The first is much more amusing, continuing on the idea that Peter Jackson's earliest films showed of ingenuity with the unpredictable. Even if some of the ideas are random, and connect to nothing else, an unpredictability came that shows the fun and imagination taken to bring the material onscreen. Edward's hallucinations bring in a whole sleuth of material which doesn't necessarily make sense in tone but work in the heightened absurdity. A large amount of this is bizarre practical effects and even puppetry, when a foul mouthed gremlin inexplicably appears in his refrigerator. Material that is never explained, but shows the creators stepping outside of convention for something more original and idiosyncratic. A sense of inventiveness that can even succeed in being sombre and menacing, as Edward finds himself in a nightmarish mental asylum room with a demonic figure, real or in his mind who convinces Edward to purge the sinful from the Earth and begins his homicidal streak.

Once the homicidal stream appears however the film falls down into the predictable. What should continue to escalate in invention, why Peter Jackson's earliest films are still beloved, is lost in favour of pretty generic and unremarkable material. Chasing his stock wife and daughter figures around, even someone as interesting as Edward reduced to a generic killer, worse when especially with the divisive English dubbing when he starts to quote other films like Full Metal Jacket (1987), utterly groan inducing especially as a far more appropriate and rewarding way to depict the creators' love for cinema could be found in keeping an eye on all the film posters on the walls in countless scenes. Dialogue, which was already in a precarious position of being merely rudimentary is less interesting, and the material becomes deliberately "wacky", not funny in a natural way as that term should mean, but artificial. Also deciding the final scenes in the hospital should be an extensive action scene with armed policemen was the straw which broke the camel's back for me, as unless an action scene is properly coordinated and/or inventive like the best of John Woo, gun battles are innately lazy even if I accept how much hard work is clearly behind them. Not disrespecting the hard work but that onscreen gun fights are not cinematic for me as the anticipation and denouement of them are. Once the film reaches this half where all these issues arise, my excitement for a discovery in Swedish ebbed away to disappointment.

From http://gruesomemagazine.com/wp-content
/uploads/sites/6/2017/07/eviled_gremlin.jpg

Thursday 26 October 2017

A Tale of Two Rings

From https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/
en/f/fb/Ring-Virus-poster.jpg

[Warning: Spoilers Throughout]

The Ring Virus (1999)
Director: Kim Dong-bin
Screenplay: Kim Dong-bin and Kong Su-chang
Based on the novel by Kôji Suzuki
Cast: Eun-Kyung Shin as Sun-ju; Jin-young Jung as Choi Yeol; Doona Bae as Park Eun-Suh; Bae Doona as Park Eun-suh
A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #140

After Ringu (1998), the Japanese film industry hit upon a goldmine. Sure Rasen (1998), the sequel released at the same time in cinemas which changed the tone and plot, bit the dust at the box office1, but Ringu has a monumental affect in Japan and eventually outside the country. It lead to another first sequel in 1999 and a prequel in 2000, plus reboots from the late 2000s onwards. Outside of Japan, it became horror canon quite soon after being available in the West. Naturally other countries took interest and there were two remakes. One many known of came from Hollywood and Gore Verbinski, but what about the South Korean version?

From https://thatwasabitmental.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/ring-virus-4.jpg

The Ring Virus
is pretty much a copy of the original Japanese film. (Well, the theatrical one, we'll get to how the TV movie Ring: Kanzenban (1995) surprisingly makes a surprising connection into all this). Virus takes most of the original theatrical film's plot structure verbatim, following as well a female journalist (now played by Shin Eun-kyung) who, investigating the mysterious death of a niece, discovers a cursed videotape that after viewing leaves the victim only seven days left before their death. It's nice to know how over in an entirely different culture, it doesn't need to be drastically changed in terms of the plot, strong enough as material that could've been an urban legend if not originally a novel. There's even the same grungy aesthetic I liked from the original, bringing in its own bleak palette and droning electronic score.

From https://thatwasabitmental.files.wordpress.com/
2011/01/theringvirus14246915-01-18.jpg

However, even if I liked The Ring Virus, its predictable and sags significantly in the middle in pace to a crawl. Lifting the plotting of the original film ultimately makes it a movie many will find a chore to sit through, when the exact same plot points are repeated without much addition to it. The decisions involving the lead characters are as much an issue. The heroine's ex-husband from the original film is replaced with a coroner Choi Yeol (Jin-young Jung) who, despite initially coming off as detestable, is actually a cool character ultimately. His tendency to burst into armchair existentialism about death can get ridiculous, but this tendency alongside the decision to spend the last seven days of his life completing a really difficult jigsaw puzzle wins me over. Shin Eun-kyung, as the heroine, however is a major flaw for this film. The character is now shrill rather than a single mother who is forced to do her best to protect herself and her child, a daughter here, not as rewarding as a lead as Nanako Matsushima in the original Ringu or, as will be revealed, Naomi Watts in the American version.  

From https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PxsMrZKr3WY/VxOZtBUos6I/AAAAAAAAAVI/mxtk
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The one big different out of any of the films is that Virus includes the neglected subplot that Sadako, now Park Eun-suh (Bae Doona), was actually a hermaphrodite and suffered rape by her half brother before her death, pushed down the well as all the versions of the character have. The only other version I've seen that includes this plot point is  Ringu: Kanzenban2, which is strange to realise considering how obscure that TV movie, faithfulness to the original text not necessarily the case yet in places still bringing out plot points from Kôji Suzuki's source material in the obscurest entries.

From http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-XflA99a1qZQ/UKRuzOvEM-I/
AAAAAAAAA1U/z9V7ypgzzes/s400/The-Ring-Virus.jpg

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From http://horrornews.net/wp-content/uploads/
2011/09/The-Ring-movie-2002-6.jpg

The Ring (2002)
Director: Gore Verbinski
Screenplay: Ehren Kruger
Based on the novel by Koji Suzuki
Cast: Naomi Watts as Rachel Keller; Martin Henderson as Noah Clay; David Dorfman as Aidan Keller; Brian Cox as Richard Morgan; Daveigh Chase as Samara Morgan; Joe Chrest as Dr. Scott; Jane Alexander as Dr. Grasnik; Lindsay Frost as Ruth Embry
A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #141

Eventually Hollywood remade Ringu and I confess, for its flaws, it's actually a rewarding take that has its own personality. One, more importantly, that doesn't make the same mistake as many Hollywood remakes of even their own cinema of being so broad and loud they're embarrassments. Gore Verbinski himself is one of those few legitimately fascinating directors who work in the mainstream of Hollywood, not a director christened an auteur like Christopher Nolan but a working director who yet stands out from his career decisions. He managed a Faustian pact which actually allows him to benefit in this up until recently where, before he left the franchise, as long as he directed a Pirates of the Caribbean film or a blockbuster, he's been allowed to also pepper his filmography with idiosyncratic projects. I admit that The Weather Man (2005), a comedy-drama in which Nicolas Cage plays a weatherman changing his life for the better, wasn't great but you don't expect it to follow the first Pirates of the Caribbean film as his next project. Nor Rango (2011), an eccentric animated western full of anthropomorphic characters that references anything from Sergio Leone or Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Nor A Cure for Wellness (2017), a two and a half hour, lavish horror movie. The kind of projects that, if any of them turned out to be successful, fans of cinema like me bored of Hollywood would be dying to see more of and bring us back under the Hollywood sign with interest.

From http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-n4O2lOWwa9c/VhloZTPx5kI/AAAAAAAAWGo/Ff-xtfCq45c/s1600/The_Ring_2002_720p__kissthemgoodbye_net_0317.jpg

What's wonderful as well is that, even though The Ring is a mainstream horror remake, it feels a lot more experimental and idiosyncratic than other horror films that would be inspired by its box office success. Don't confuse that sentence with the idea Verbinski suddenly brought in Stan Brakhage references for the cursed videotape footage itself or anything overtly weird. (Though with that tape itself, which includes an ominous shot of a ladder and a chair spinning upside in the air, I can't help but wonder if Hans Richter's Ghosts Before Breakfast (1928) was an influence). It's not expected, when even Rob Zombie's Halloween (2007) felt compromised and only felt bolder in the more eccentric 2009 sequel, that Verbinski's take on Ringu, one of the first of these modern remakes of the 2000s, feels idiosyncratic to him and remarkably inventive. He gets carried away at points in ways that feel silly but his tale also has a distinct style that's memorable and effecting. Bleak, grey aesthetic sweeps over the film but it doesn't feel like bad "realism" that plagues modern horror cinema but deliberate, partially filmed in Washington state and, like The Exorcist (1973) also filmed in the region, sharing a similar urban concrete bleakness to the proceedings. Here, lack of colour was a purposeful choice, as is when he suddenly has a tree with blood red leaves against a grey sullen hill for sudden effect. He can stop the plot when Rachel Keller (Naomi Watts) waits after her ex-boyfriend Noah Clay (Martin Henderson) to watch the cursed tape, to have her look out the window of his apartment complex, minutes passing as we through her eyes watch people live ordinary lives watching TV or going on with their lives for atmosphere.

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

Naomi Watts
in the lead is also a godsend. One of the other mistakes of a lot of Hollywood films is always casting young actors that visually appeal to a young audience, male or female, but without actual personality to them. Here casting Naomi Watts you have a great actress who at this point juggled mainstream films with David Lynch's Mulholland Drive (2001), and can bring a gravitas to the material. Martin Henderson as Noah is more of a hunky, pin-up figure than Hiroyuki Sanada's original ex-husband character, but he's as interesting as a likable figure who, in an idiosyncratic detail, is a video technician who can provide a different role as someone close to the heroine to help solve the mystery, alongside more affability that makes his eventually death as tragic and scary as it was in the first Ringu. Watts by herself is a considerable advantage, emphasising one of Ringu's secret virtues being its interest female protagonist, one which if you get the right person as with Watts for an American version emphasises this virtue more.

From http://horrorfreaknews.com/wp-content/uploads/
2016/05/the-ring-watching-the-video.jpg

That the story fits the new geographical and cultural location helps greatly. The basic premise of a cursed videotape like a good urban legend can translate with some retelling. The material which might have been lost in translation - that Sadako's mother in the original film was a shamed psychic - is replaced with a slice of American gothic, which helps replaces what could've ripped the heart out of the film is not replaced properly fully. Here its rural gothic, horses a reoccurring symbol as Sadako (now Samara here) was the daughter of a horse breeder who, after multiple miscarriages, finally was blessed with a child only for Samara's psychic gifts to be horrifying. Aspects of this version now bring in elements of psychodrama and medical based horror as the back-story has Samara being in a medical facility for part of her life, evoking for me sixties American cinema where psychoanalysis and medical facilities became part of the country's cinematic tapestry in terms of madness and the dark side of human beings. As a cocktail of influences, it's fascinating to pick them all out whilst remembering that it's still a retelling of the original Ringu. Ringu itself was an old Japanese ghost story transferred to the modern day so the US Ring is appropriate in modernising such material within its own sources from various eras.

From http://www.joblo.com/images_arrownews/ring02-7.jpg

Sometimes this film can be over the top. I'm thinking how, whilst having Brian Cox in a small role is always awesome as Samara's surviving and mentally scarred father, his decision to bring every pieces of electronics in his house into the bathtub to electrocute himself just comes off as absurd. The horse jumping off a ship in fear of the curse too. In being a remake of the original it's also having to deal with scenes iconic from the Japanese film too. I don't mind the cursed videotape's content, even if parts of it are overegged in terms of being horrifying, but it struggles with having to remake the scene of Sadako/Samara crawling through the television screen at the end when the original was perfect by itself. But I admire the restraint on display. It manages to avoid the clutches of modern horror's greatest of failings, the over bearing music and emphasis on jump scares, for the most part. Hans Zimmer provides a rich score and even if the film does occasionally fall prey to cheap scares it stays as a more atmospheric, creepy tale instead.

From http://www.quartertothree.com/fp/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Ring1.png

Gore Verbinski
decided to bring a lush but carefully used sense of style to the material, making it feel like an A-Picture, and this sense that he cared for the material along with everyone else who worked on it means so much. That was what lead to the term "remake" being a dirty word for many movie fans, the cineastes and the casuals alike, when the creators were visibly just doing a day job. Not even doing it to the best expected for a nine-to-five career, as one would presume in any other vocation like the food industry or craft, let alone an artistic medium. That was what eventually caved in the J-Horror boom, as Japanese (and Asian) terror flicks were being remade, as they became critically and financially unrewarding. The 2002 version of Ring was very successful, leading to them, but not one should pin any blame on this film when it was actually a good movie in the first place. Blame everything else afterwards for not learning what went right here..

Fromhttps://static1.squarespace.com/static/5637f9fbe4b0baa6d85a1011/56382b71e4b0dcf08214
a809/57ec7794f7e0abf8c054ee55/1475124696238/the-ring-screenshot-19.jpg?format=1500w

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1) Reviewed HERE.
2) Reviewed HERE.

Wednesday 25 October 2017

Phantasm (1979)


Director: Don Coscarelli
Screenplay: Don Coscarelli
Cast: Angus Scrimm as The Tall Man; A. Michael Baldwin as Mike Pearson; Bill Thornbury as Jody Pearson; Reggie Bannister as Reggie; Kathy Lester as the Lady in Lavender; Bill Cone as Tommy; Mary Ellen Shaw as the Fortune Teller; Terrie Kalbus as the Fortune Teller's Granddaughter
A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #139

Synopsis: Having lost his parents not that long before, Mike (A. Michael Baldwin) is worried his older brother Jody (Bill Thornbury) will leave him. This concern is amplified when he witnesses, after the funeral of one of Jody's friend, the undertaker (Angus Scrimm) lift the coffin from the open grave by himself and place it in a hearse. This "Tall Man" is a maleficent being, part of a sinister series of sights including hooded dwarfs, a mysterious woman in lavender (Kathy Lester) who seduces young men and kills them, and silver spheres that float in the air and produce harmful weapons from their forms. With his older brother Jody and Reggie (Reggie Bannister), the hippy iceman cream and friend of the brothers dragged into this by pure accident, Mike attempts to confront this horrible conspiracy at the funeral home in their home town.

And thus begins Phantasm, that rare franchise where even when a bigger budgeted sequel come to be, has been always in the hands of its original creator Don Coscarelli. Even when he passed directing what may be the final entry, Phantasm: Ravenger (2016), in favour for David Hartman to take the chair he has had direct involvement in all of the five films. Looking ahead, it's a question whether this franchise and his decision to make them a connected, large scale mythology is actually successful for me personally, as much of a risky gamble as would a studio milking the success of the first film their own way. What's interesting though is that, returning in 2016, this is the only franchise (excluding remakes and staying in one single world in chronological order) to have spanned from when most of these iconic horror films of the seventies and eighties first came from, American independent genre films or creations from very small studios and figures like New Line Cinema (A Nightmare On Elm Street) or Moustapha Akkad (Halloween). It has witnessed the boom of gory genre cinema in the eighties (Phantasm II), the decline in the early nineties (Phantasm III), the straight to video era (Phantasm IV), and now the retrospectives of these films, streaming culture, cult film viewings and a selective screen theatrical tour (Phantasm V). Whether the series works altogether depends on the viewer, but I appreciate the wide scale of time within American horror cinema it has passed through regardless of my final opinion on the collective franchise trajectory.

From https://static1.squarespace.com/static/502a2a23e4b0ce22e4c42f9d
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The first can thankfully stand by itself, and what's fascinating is that, after its director first began by making a drama and a comedy for his two features, Coscarelli decided to make a horror movie that sincerely tackles death and the grieving process. Phantasm is a film which pushes at its obvious restrictions, that it story mainly has to take place around the funeral home but with the advantage that its tone is rich nonetheless. It's a unique film, obsessed with a premise that cuts into people with a real fear and predating Coscarelli's later film Bubba Ho-Tep (2002) that was about old men dealing with their own aging mortalities. With Phantasm however it's from the perspective of a young boy, Mike's journey through the film played out as much as a dream representing his fears of separation from his brother as it is real and morbid.

From http://horrornews.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/
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With the advantage of how good the cast is - Angus Scrimm as the Tall Man, Baldwin and Thornbury, and Reggie Bannister who would become to Phantasm what Bruce Campbell would to the Evil Dead films - it plays like a nightmare from a young boy's perspective entirely. Where the source of evil is just a very tall undertaken who wears a black suit, a figure who merely walks calmly out of the shadows to snatch people away. Something that evokes primordial fears of childhood that grow more serious as one becomes a teenager. That shouldn't discount how fun the film is as well, as capable for humour and moments of character interaction which feel sincere and affable, but is a film whose atmospheric music by Fred Myrow and Malcolm Seagrave fits the already ethereal tone. That the film is openly more stranger than this, when the hooded dwarves and dimensional portals are involved, isn't a detriment to this but is a build up for a film that eventually starts to slide in and out of reality. So drastic at points it's difficult to tell what is merely Mike's anxieties and what's actually chasing him and the people close to him.

From http://horrorfreaknews.com/wp-content/
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Weird is apt as Phantasm in structure is a haze, shifting between dream sequences and narrative with unpredictability. As such a film unintentionally straying off narrative as its also done on purpose to represent the emotional concerns laying at its heart. That the film openly blurs genre is as much a factor. Part old gothic horror, the funeral horror like an Italian genre film setting but real architecture, to the older Fortune Teller who makes a brief appearance and places Mike through an actual supernatural encounter warning him of the future (and franchise long narrative) he would find himself in). Crashing into suburban American and then the sci-fi starts to abruptly appear as well adding to the bizarreness. I'd argue the later films pared this material a little bit too much down as there are details more rewarding here because of this unconventional potpourri of influences, details which show Phantasm's origins from the strange melting pot of seventies independent horror cinema but still rewarding, particularly the inclusion of the Lady of Lavender, a figure who could've been borrowed from an old turn of the century horror tale as a tempter of people to their doom, placed within a seventies modern small town and managing to be able to still seduce guys at the bar.

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With the late Angus Scrimm the centre of it, an older character actor who could've appeared in an old fifties western, this feels like a film fed from the old American b-movies from the forties onwards, taking its cues from a still untapped psychotronic well. One deep enough that it works effectively as much for psychological effect as well as being creepy in its oddness. Considering the importance of Mike's perspective as a character, ultimately the one whose viewpoint is in the middle of all this film's events, its appropriate in terms of a film dealing with fears of the mortal threads of life against the adolescent fever imagery that the material is barely touched upon in great detail, even the iconic silver spheres only seen twice or so, but has so much potency it lead to an iconic reputation.

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Personal Opinion:
A film that upon reflection for this review is growing qualities as I contemplate it, in hindsight to having gotten through most of the sequels which have their varying qualities, realising the virtues that mean more with the original feature that they came from. This is especially as I've not watched any of these films since my early twenties or even younger, over ten years, when once there was only four entries not five. To revisit Phantasm which virtually no memories in the slightest of any of them barring the ending of Phantasm III (1993) is like seeing the film from virgin eyes, and it appeals to me both for its home-grown qualities and that ultimately, it's a horror film as its meant to be, a campfire tale of human emotion that also happens to be an oddball crowd pleaser.

Abstract Spectrum: Fantastique/Psychotronic/Weird
Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Low

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