THE ULTIMATE REVENGE FILM

Yes, this is my first review in quite awhile. I'm not going to get in the habit of doing lots of reviews -- just don't have time -- but the way this film grabbed me was really exceptional.

I saw this brand new movie on SyFy last night. I wasn't expecting much, but I was riveted. Brilliantly written and acted, this was the most intense horror film I've seen in ages.

Directed by Joey Stewart and written by Jason Kabolati, tt's about a group of high school kids tormented by bullies who finally have enough and plan to avenge themselves on their tormentors. After we watch the insufferable popular kids wreak merciless havoc on our heroes for about the first half of the film, the "misfits" invite the bullies to a party, drug them, and get medieval on their asses. With the recent suicides of bullycide victims in the news, the subject couldn't be more timely.

A familiar horror film theme, I grant you, but no one's ever done it as eloquently as these kids. During the long and harrowing "torture party" that makes up the second half of the film, most of the horror comes from the dialogue -- as Dane, the ringleader, and his cohorts make these very articulate speeches to their captives explaining WHY they're doing what they're doing, and scathingly dismissing all attempts to talk them out of it. He begins with a "good news/bad news" announcement: "the good news is that we're not going to kill you. The bad news is, you'll wish we had." Marc Donato's very chilling understated performance as Dane provides the film with a lot of its juice.

Not that the violence isn't awful (and very personal to each victim), or that the film doesn't have its share of unusually upsetting gore. The movie just understands that no matter how bad physical realities are, the worst part of horror happens in the mind. As Dane tells hs victims at one point: "Think of this as the Final, and there's only one question -- what did I do to deserve this?" They all know they did plenty, and it's way too late for "I'm sorry."

By the way, the other stand-out performance in the film is that of Dane's female co-conspirator Emily, played with unnervingly calm menace by Lindsay Seidell. Even when she's masked and silent, she's quite a disarming, electric presence.

This movie is definitely not for the squeamish, but is fascinating and powerful, and really has something to say. And it scared the hell out of me even though I, of course, identified with the misfits.

Oddly, there are a lot of internet reviews angrily bashing this film, dismissing the writing and acting particularly, though I found the film exclelled remarkably in these areas. I guess it's not all that surprising. We all know how many bullies are on the internet. I bet this flick strikes a nerve with them in a big way.

This film may cause you... ANGUISH!

Anybody else remember this 1987 movie? I first saw it in on the big screen. It starts off with a scene from a lurid horror movie that you think is the film you're watching -- then pans back into a theater where an audience is watching that film. Then real-life violence starts happening in that theater. Then the perspective starts switching back and forth between the two movies and theaters.

Strategically located speakers were installed in your actual theater to the front and side of you, and some in back; the sound would come from different places depending on what was occurring onscreen. The effect was to make you disoriented -- you couldn't help but get confused about "which" theater the current action was in (or YOU were in). it may be sacrilegious to say so, but William Castle never came up with a gimmick as effective as this one. It took the device of setting violence in a movie theater, which was unsettling enough in Lamberto Bava’s Demons or the classic slasher He Knows You’re Alone, and ratcheted up the suggestivity factor.

The late Zelda Rubinstein starred in the "movie within a movie" part. That “movie” is called The Mommy, and involves a mother who sends her (unlicensed) “doctor” son out into the night to gather human eyes for her –- from live and unwilling donors! There’s something about horror involving eyes that particularly gets to me. Who could forget that scene with the binoculars in Horrors Of The Black Museum, or the scene with the doctor’s wife and the big splinter in Zombie?

The Mommy was gorier than Museum and as gory as Zombie, but what really messed with you was the "which theater" aspect. I just watched the DVD and it's still a creepy film, but it doesn't work nearly as well as it did in the theater. When I first saw it with a horror movie buddy who was as jaded as I am, he was so spooked that afterwards he was afraid to go to the men's room by himself! I went with him willingly, because I was afraid to wait in the lobby alone! Rumor had it that the film also had sublminal messages in it, and if so, they certainly affected me. I never get that scared at a movie.

Directed by Bigas Luna, this Spanish film is dubbed into English -- but it's an unusually good job. It's 89 minutes long. Watching it in the dark with the volume turned up helps evoke some of the lost "theater" effect.

SWEENEY TODD: Singing While Slicing & Dicing

(Johnny Depp sings to his razor.)

Awhile ago. my loving partner gave me the Johnny Depp DVD version of "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street," and I'm still pretty sure it wasn't a veiled message meaning "God, get a haircut already or I'll cut your throat." I'm kidding, of course -- we both love the show.

For those who don’t know, “Sweeney Todd” began life as a “penny dreadful” serial in 1846. The title character is a barber who robs selected customers. and cuts their throats. Their flesh is then baked into meat pies by his partner in crime, Mrs. Lovett; her pies become wildly popular because they taste so good. The story was first brought to the stage as a Victorian melodrama, but the most famous version is a Tony Award-winning Broadway musical with songs by the brilliantly caustic Stephen Sondheim. In the musical version, Todd has a humanizing back story; he was framed for murder by a corrupt judge who stole his wife and daughter. Todd’s daughter Joanna is now the judge’s ward, held as a virtual prisoner. His crimes are driven by his obsessed desire to avenge himself, and to reunite with her. The story is complicated by the unwitting interference of two young people – a sailor who loves Joanna from afar, and Todd’s errand boy Toby, who is more devoted to Todd’s associate Mrs. Lovett than anyone realizes. To make matters worse, Mrs. Lovett herself is in love with Todd.

"Sweeney" is a story meant for the screen, where it’s able to use the more in-your-face, detailed gore typical of a horror film to toss in a shock or even a gross laugh. In some ways it can treat its slasher aspects more casually than stage versions did, which adds to its dark humor. Depp himself is PLENTY scary here, though he has to be likeable and funny too. Tim Burton directs him so that he always manages to have intimately sidled right up to you when he suddenly ratchets up the menace.

Scare meter aside, the move had to sink or swim as a musical first, and it does that well. I don't buy the complaints that '"Sweeney" suffers from Depp not being a belter like Len Carou or George Hearn in the stage versions. Depp doesn't need to belt anyway -- his intimate talking-on-pitch singing is spot on, and emphasizes Stephen Sondheim's lyrics, which cut as sharply as Todd's lethal razors -- only here they start slicing from someplace unnervingly close to your own ear.

The other singers all fare extremely well. Helena Bonham Carter has a more conventionally beautiful voice than you’d expect to come lilting out of her Goth pasty face, and is free to clown with a lighter touch than her impeccable predecessor Angela Lansbury could; she and Depp have perfect chemistry together. It’s worth the price of admission just to see their performance of Sondheim’s ironic “By The Sea,” set amid a clever montage that follows them through little skits showing their relationship turn dismally dull as Carter’s lead vocal lists her ever-brighter expectations for their future together. Depp’s increasingly bored reaction shots are priceless.

The juveniles, errand boy Toby (Ed Sanders) and the cloistered Joanna (Jayne Wisener), actually sing better than the actors who had the roles in the various stage productions – especially Wisener, whose full-bodied, bell-clear soprano solo “Green Finch And Linnett Bird” would spread its wings lot more convincingly than it ever got to onstage if more than a shred of the song remained in the movie. That’s one bit of slicing I could have done without – editing of songs to suit a more typical movie length.

One thing director Burton does flawlessly is to imbue the film with the atmosphere of old London, tawdry and brutal, in a more pervasive way than any stage set could – the film drenches you with it (not to mention with gallons of blood).

This is probably the best movie version of the musical “Sweeney Todd” that fans could hope to expect. For those who insist on the whole score being included, there’s the Great Performances TV version with Angela Lansbury and George Hearn, which is still available as a DVD.

THE HORROR OF PARTY BEACH: Annette Funicello meets The Gill Man?

(So, Bob, you told Lori that the waittress meant nothing to you... How'd that work out for you? Bob?)


This movie actually scared the hell out of me when I saw it in the neighborhood theater at a Saturday afternoon chiller matinee in the sixties. Of course, I was a little kid then. Now it seems pretty campy.

The plot? Well, these reptilian/humanoid monsters from the sea -- created by an underwater radioactive waste leak, of course -- rip into various bikini clad girls with their claws. There's a rock band, the Del Aires, that plays in a beach pavilion (one song is called "The Zombie Stomp"); a gang of menacing bikers: shirtless guys fighting in the sand: a hacked-off monster arm, still alive but surprisingly flammable; and a stereotypical maid named Eulabelle who does an even funnier Butterfly McQueen than Vicki Lawrence did, only not on purpose. The "scales" on the monsters pretty much make it look like the costumes are hanging in shreds. It doesn't sound like it makes any sense, you say. Who cares? The whole movie is pretty much just one unintentional guffaw after another.

You get an idea of how plausible the whole thing is when they reveal the one way the monsters can be killed: sodium makes them burst into flames. Hmmmm. These monsters came out of the sea, which is made of salt water, but that didn't hurt them -- well, without the sea, you can't have the beach party aspect: logic be damned!

In some ways it is pretty daring for its era. Though it did so in black and white, it was one of the earliest horror movies to graphically depict gore, and in one scene showed a guy's corpse with his face half torn off. Its pacing is pretty effective, it has some eerie night photography, and some trippy electronic music. But then you see those "monsters" and you've just gotta laugh. Some claim "Horror..." was tongue in cheek, intended as a "spoof" on monster movies, but I prefer to believe in the film's seemingly innocent funky charm.

Like "The Mole People," it was also made into a comic book using stills from the film with word balloons added. I sure wish my mom hadn't thrown those out! When the DVD version was first released awhile back, a reproduction of the comic came free with the disc while supplies lasted.

The DVD also includes "Curse Of The Living Corpse," another film directed by Del Tenney, which was released alongside "Horror" as a double feature in theaters.

"Corpse" was written by Tenney (he didn't write "Horror"), and is something of a whodunit. What's left of a wealthy family gathers when their patriarch dies, and a masked figure begins killing them off one by one. Their father wasn't crazy about his children, and the methods of murder all correspond to the curse he threatened them with if his will was not precisely followed. Is the killer a member of the household, or the old man come back from the dead? One of the suspects is a young Roy Scheider, who chews scenery amusingly as a relentlessly sarcastic drunk. "Carnival Of Souls" star Candace Hilligoss is in it too, though she was five months pregnant at the time.

Tenney writes a fairly credible story, and the masked killer scenes are pretty scary. "Corpse" is in every way a far better film than "Horror" -- but it's not anywhere near as much fun.

By the way, "Horror Of Party Beach" was featured on an episode of "Mystery Science Theater 3,000" that is consistently cited as a fan favorite. I remember Tom Servo quipping when he first sees one of the monsters: "So, radiation has a sense of humor?" If you have one too, you'll probably love "The Horror Of Party Beach."

Running times: "Horror Of Party Beach," 78 minutes; "Curse Of The Living Corpse," 84 minutes. Both films were originally released in 1964. The DVD is available from Dark Sky Films.