CHEMISTRY AMONG THE CANNIBALS: "Ravenous"

You’d think a film which includes a moment of high drama when one male character cries out, “He was LICKING ME!” is probably a gay movie, right?

You wouldn’t exactly be wrong, but director Antonia Bird's “Ravenous” purports to be a nonsexual film about cannibalism among soldiers in 1840s California. The story is loosely based on the case of Alfred Packer, a prospector and former Union soldier who was accused of eating companions with whom he was snowbound in the Colorado Rockies in 1875. It also echoes the more well known story of the Donner Party.

Guy Pearce stars as a US Army officer who freezes in combat when his unit is massacred in the Mexican-American war. He survives by playing dead, and is carted back to Mexican headquarters with the other corpses – and with his commander’s blood running into his mouth. In remorse, he suddenly rises up and captures the Mexican command, which nets him a promotion to Captain. However, he is recognized as a coward and transferred to a remote fort in the Nevada mountains.

A stranger named Colqhoun (Rober Carlyle) shows up at the fort and shares a spellbinding story of how his wagon train, relying on the guidance of one Colonel Ives, got lost in the Sierra Nevadas. They had to resort to cannibalism to survive; Ives had misled them deliberately, and provoked them to cannibalism.

The soldiers and their Commanding Officer, Colonel Hart (Jeffrey Jones), decide they should investigate Colqhoun’s story and search for survivors. They of course ignore the warnings of George (Joseph Runningfox), their Native American scout, who tells them that a man who eats human flesh becomes a powerful cannibalistic demon called a “Wendigo.”

When they reach the location of Colqhoun’s tale, his behavior rapidly gets weirder and weirder, and it soon becomes clear that he is, in fact, really Colonel Ives. He has lured them there to massacre and eat them. For me, this is the scariest part of the whole film. It quickly escalates from spooky to downright bloodcurdling, and Carlyle’s gleefully leering performance is the most chilling thing about it.

Boyd hurls himself off a cliff to escape from Ives, and breaks his leg. He hides in a pit with another wounded soldier who soon expires. Yes, he ends up eating some of his companion’s flesh out of desperation. Eventually he is strong enough to drag himself back to the fort, where no one believes his story. No one currently there has met Colqhoun – until he arrives again as the new commander, cleaned up and well dressed, calling himself Colonel Ives. No one will believe Ives is the killer, and he begins to secretly taunt Boyd, claiming eating flesh can heal all illnesses and wounds. And the fort's inhabitants begin disappearing.

The film certainly has a strong gay subtext. The relationship between the protagonist and antagonist is every bit as bitter (and intense) as a love affair gone wrong. Ives repeatedly tries to goad Boyd into eating human flesh, for which he has developed a taste, though he denies it vehemently for as long as he can. The situation echoes the classic clandestine relationship between a gay man and a married closet case-- not that I’ve ever personally engaged in such ill-advised behavior (nudge nudge wink wink). And there is a pivotal scene, which I can’t describe without spoiling the film, where the two do literally end up in each other’s arms.

It’s all played in such a way that even the supernatural aspects seem plausible – the only references to them are in convincingly delivered dialogue. The cast and locations are perfect, and the gore effects very realistic. Above all, Pearce and Carlyle have electric chemistry together – and their relationship is the heart of this haunting, disturbing film.

DON'T DEBUNK MY DIBBUK, THANK YOU VERY MUCH!

When I see a horror film, the primary thing I’m hoping for is that I’ll be scared. I find being scared by movies therapeutic – it’s good for my soul. And, truth be told, it seldom happens anymore. I’m usually mildly amused, but I don’t often find myself getting lost in the action, jumping at surprise movements onscreen, etc. When I do, I’m so delighted that I can easily forgive a film for failing in lot of other ways. Whether it satisfied the demands of my intellect is way down on my list of priorities – when I want that, I read philosophers.

I also particularly enjoy horror films that have some sort of spiritual content. I’m a recovering Roman Catholic, so I’m especially susceptible if – as in “The Omen” or “The Exorcist” – the imagery and atmosphere are Catholic. But I find most religions equally scary (don’t think about that statement too much). Any faith will do.

This week I watched "The Unborn" (2009), an American horror film about a young woman named Casey (Odette Yustman) whose unborn twin brother was possessed by an evil spirit called a Dibbuk -- which is gradually forcing its way into the world of the living so it can come after her. The story is tinged with Jewish mysticism from the Kabbalah; the biggest name in it was Gary Oldman, who did a plausible turn as a rabbi exorcist.

It was fairly eerie, and it took awhile before what was going on became clear; the girl is menaced by apparitions in mirrors, receives ominous warnings from her long-lost grandmother, and is stalked by a creepy little boy (unnervingly played by the remarkable Atticus Shaffer).

The flick got very bad reviews, mostly for things that are readily accepted in a movie that's say, Italian; the biggest criticism was that it didn't make really narrative sense (you could say that about practically any Dario Argento film, but critics love those). Yes, the plot made a point of telling us that twins are particularly vulnerable to possession by a Dibbuk because twins are like living mirrors, through which Dibbuks enter this world -- and yet the spirit possesses almost every non-twin character in the movie while trying to get to heroine Casey. Point taken, but -- who cares?

The movie is a roller coaster ride of scares. The demon in its non-human form is a repulsive vision that varies a bit each time we see it -- as did the monsters in "Alien" and John Carpenter's "The Thing." The cast does an excellent job, the cinematography is wonderfully stylish and spooky, director David S. Goyer times every shock perfectly. It kept me on the edge of my seat and made me jump several times. I enjoyed it, and I'd recommend it. You'll have a great time if you suspend disbelief and allow yourself to get into it.

NIGHT OF THE LIVING ACCORDION

I'm unable to write a blog this week because I'm busy covering a national accordionist's convention for my local newspaper. No, I'm not kidding.

In place of my blog I give you this short horror film from YouTube called Night Of The Living Accordion. At the end, you'll find the credits attribute everything to the star, one J. White. The only other film I've seen with similar credits was Bambi Meets Godzilla, which looks like a Hitchcock masterpiece compared to this thing. It's 8 minutes and 14 seconds you'll never be able to get back, so don't sue me. I warned you.

Ever hear several people sitting around in a hotel hallway playing different songs simultaneously on accordions? Now THAT'S scary.

See ya next week.

MAX SCHRECK COMES TO LIFE AGAIN

(John Malkovich and Willem Dafoe in Shadow Of The Vampire)


This week I revisited Shadow Of The Vampire (2,000) director Elias Merhige's fictionalized account of the making of the classic silent film Nosferatu. The film's central conceit is that star Max Schreck (brilliantly played with twitchy, barely-restrained menace by Willem Dafoe) actually is, unbeknownst to the cast and crew, a real vampire. Director F.W. Murnau (John Malkovich) has convinced him to play the role in exchange for the blood of his spoiled leading lady (Catherine McCormack) -- and on condition that he wait till the filming of the final scene to actually drain her on camera.

The company finds it odd that Schreck is shot only at night, and that they only see him in character and in full makeup (and the makeup job, I might add, is an unnervingly effective homage to Schreck's original). The catch is that, as they say, "you can't eat just one" -- cameraman Wolfe (Ronan Vibert) ends up a snack for Schreck, and producer Albin (a perfectly cast Udo Kier) starts to suspect what's really going on.

Everyone plays their role flawlessly, The film is darkly funny at times, but also really spooky and suspenseful. It lives up to the ingeniousness of the idea and makes it plausible. It also makes a very respectable tribute to the original film, especially in the recreation of "Nosferatu" scenes where it moves seamlessly in and out of the camera's POV, adding peeks at events occurring out of camera range.

The film's gay connection? For one thing, the title character in the novel Dracula is rumored to be inspired by author Bram Stoker's repressed love for his employer, stage actor Sir Henry Irving, on whom the vampire is allegedly modeled.


(Sir Henry Irving -- looks a bit like Gregory Peck, doesn't he? But perhaps what turned Bram on was having to call him "Sir.")

More to the point, Nosferatu director F.W. Murnau, a major character in Shadow Of The Vampire, was gay -- a fact the film doesn't ignore but doesn't really dwell on, either.


(F.W. Murnau)

Ironically, Bram Stoker's widow successfully sued Murnau because he filmed her husband's novel without her permission, and ordered all prints of Nosferatu destroyed. Luckily for us, a few bootleg copies survived.

STANLEY: There's nothing like a guy with a nice snake

(Chris Robinson stars in Stanley))

Stanley tries to do for snakes what Willard did for rats. It fails, but manages to do so entertainingly.

Released in 1972, Stanley is a low-budget morality tale about a Native American Vietnam vet, Tim (played by the gorgeous Chris Robinson) who lives in a swamp shack in the Everglades, barely subsisting by selling snake venom to a medical lab. Tim has issues, you see, and prefers the company of snakes to people -- particularly that of Stanley, a rattlesnake he carries with him everywhere. Tim comes up against the local gangster factory owner (Alex Rocco) who wants to turn every snake in the swamp into a cheesy belt. Tim, not playing with a full deck to begin with, wigs out when Rocco's thugs kill his brood of baby snakes, and an over-the-hill local stripper bites the heads off of some of his adult snakes onstage. The rest of the film is a bloody revenge festival.

The film is very preachy about animal rights, which is pretty hypocritical considering how many snakes are actually killed on camera during it -- crushed under rifle butts, shot, cut in half, swung by the tail till their heads smash against walls, etc.

To be fair, Robinson's affectionate snake handling is amazing, and the movie does live up to the poster's claim that it “will make your skin crawl" in many scenes, such as those where there are snakes crawling free all over his cabin (where he's holding a kidnapped girl).

The movie's main entertainment value comes from its many unintentional laughs, though -- from the hokey folkie protest songs on the soundtrack to ludicrous scenes where Robinson prays reverently among tombstones for his dead snakes or solemnly performs a snake wedding. The funniest thing is the way villain Alex Rocco repeatedly embarrasses himself on camera -- working out with absurdly tiny white dumbbells, or being caught freeze frame, grimacing, as he realizes he's jumping into a pool full of snakes. (Rocco’s scenes, for me at least, gain added laugh impact because I remember him playing Jo’s dad on The Facts Of Life.)


(Alex Rocco in midair)

Then, of course, there’s the added attraction of seeing Robinson shirtless a number of times. He’s drop-dead ruggedly handsome and just barely on the cusp of becoming paunchy – which to me actually makes him sexier. His acting may be wooden, but the thought of him getting wood is downright drool-worthy.

At 109 minutes “Stanley” drags a bit here and there, but it's worth seeing. It's very funny, though it's not supposed to be, and if you're scared sh*tless of snakes (like I am), it will make you jump (and even squirm) now and then.

SAM'S LAKE: can a slasher flick be PC?

Sam's Lake (2005) seems like a typical slasher film -- a group of five young adults visit a cottage on a lake near another house where a legendary mass murder took place, despite warnings from local hicks that the area “ain't safe." Dolls made from corn husks are hanging from trees, and on any neighboring houses; a symbol like a simplified dream catcher has been made from carefully arranged stones in a nearby clearing. So far we've borrowed imagery from "Friday The 13th" and its myriad knockoffs, and "The Blair Witch Project."

After the obligatory campfire story of the local massacre, our crew pays a nighttime visit to the house where it took place. While there, they hear spooky noises and find a journal kept by the "slow" boy who committed the murders. They go back to the cottage and read from it aloud -- bad idea. A major plot twist comes to light -- in the most dramatic scene in the film -- and most of the characters spend the film's last act running for their lives from, well, let's not spoil it for those who haven't seen it. The action does really take off from this point, and the rest of the film is much more exciting than what preceded it.

I saw the plot twist coming; you may not, and even if you do, its revelation is handled very effectively. The twist itself is plausible, but the problem is, it makes a few scenes that happened before it seem implausible in retrospect (though you won't have time to think about that during the action-packed remainder of the film).

"Sam's Lake" gets a couple of things right; the characters are likable rather than annoying, and they all have our sympathy because they've all had to struggle with difficult life situations. They aren't -- as is too often the case -- annoying young snots we want to see killed, so we do feel afraid for them. And it helps that the cast is good. The movie also doesn't overdo the gore aspect (though the first killing of a principal character is pretty bloody and shocking.)

Speaking of the first principal character to get killed – spoiler ahead -- he’s the gay one. He’s Dominik (Salvatore Antonio), the only mildly queeny best friend of title character Sam (Fay Masterson). His murder is the most brutal thing in the film. His depiction isn’t homophobic otherwise, though he occasionally gets subtle attitude from Melanie (Megan Fahlenbock). He does bring out the homophobia in movie critics, though, who love to refer to him as “the obligatory gay sidekick.”


("Gay sidekick" Domink, played by Salvatore Antonio.)

Several critics expressed annoyance at the film’s so-called “politically correct”/“Movie Of The Week” characters: a black man (Stephen Bishop) with a recovering addict Caucasian girlfriend (Fahlenbock), a woman fresh out of an abusive relationship (Sandrine Holt), and the gay male Dominik. I found it refreshing to have characters who had more of a back story than Hot Eye Rolling Blonde Bimbo and Hot Jock.

However, speaking of hot – Sam’s local friend Jesse (William Gregory Lee), a handsome and svelte young blond, runs around shirtless throughout the last third of the film. And I was glad he did. What’s a slasher flick without eye candy?

Writer/director Andrew Erin's film is entertaining and well worth seeing. I wouldn't call it great, but it's got more substance than a lot of slasher films. Generally fans seem to like the big plot twist, but it bothered me. See what you think.

TWO FROM TOBE HOOPER: MORTUARY & EATEN ALIVE

Mortuary

I got this 2005 Tobe Hooper flick in a 4-movies-for- $5 set at KMart. I haven't watched all of the films yet, but I bought the set because of this one, which I remember well. Denise Crosby (Pet Sematary) acquires a funeral home in a California small town soon after the death of her husband. She and her teenage son Jonathan (Dan Byrd) move into a house on the funeral home property.

Jonathan gets a job at the local diner, and makes some teenage friends -- and Goth bully enemies. His friends tell him the legend that a hideously deformed child from a family who once owned the mortuary -- who kept him locked up and abused him -- is still living there, haunting the place.

Of course this is true, and the first people who run afoul of him are the Goths, when they show up late one night to vandalize the cemetery. But there are bigger problems –including a weird fungus that looks like black veins and turns anyone living or dead that it touches into a homicidal zombie.

The cast is likable, the effects are good, the action fast-paced and involving. There's also a fair amount of humor that makes the movie more fun. My favorite scene is one where Mom makes several horrifically messy mistakes during her first autopsy while the kids are smoking pot upstairs, playing loud rock music, and the oblivious, stuttering local sherriff is pounding on the front door. The movie is enjoyable till the very end, when we're subjected to one of those "surprise" extra endings that makes no sense. It's still one of director Hooper's better efforts in recent years.




Eaten Alive

I watched this on IFC Grindhouse recently and went to bed with a headache. I saw it in the theater many moons ago, didn't remember it all that well, and was intrigued by the cast -- which included a very feeble-looking Carolyn Jones (TV’s original Morticia Addams) as a madam named "Hattie." It has a lot of good actors in it (also Mel Ferrer, Stuart Whitman, Marilyn Burns, William Finley -- a fave of mine -- and a very young Robert Englund as a horny redneck drug dealer). (Englund, BTW, was homely at that age, but his torso looks surprisingly hot in a wifebeater!)

Sadly, the actor with the most screen time was Neville Brand, playing a babbling demented-old-soldier hotel proprietor whose guests mostly ended up scythed to death and/or being fed to his pet crocodile. A lot of his dialog sounded improvised, and loud incoherent ranting gets old fast. William Finley inexplicably started barking like a dog at one point, and there was a little girl hiding under the house who kept squealing whenever she wasn't screaming. There was also extensive use of garish red lighting, which didn’t help.

I was horrified, but not in the way I hoped to be. I guess this movie was director Tobe Hooper's low point. I wanted to jump into the croc pond as a means of escape, but I stuck with it till the end. Ah, the things we do for love of the genre...

BTW, the most horrifying thing in the film was that Carolyn Jones's face appeared to have been utterly frozen by plastic surgery. She did a good job with the character's voice, but appeared incapable of any facial expressions at all.

After seeing this film, I'm posting about it as therapy. It's like trying to get a really nasty taste out of your mouth.

What's Your Favorite Werewolf Movie?

I have a soft spot for werewolves -- in my throat, which I diligently protect when they're around (just kidding -- I kid werewolves because I love them). Seriously, I love all the classic werewolf films: Universal's The Wolfman with Lon Chaney Jr., Hammer's Curse Of The Werewolf with Oliver Reed, Werewolf Of London with Henry Hull -- and the modern classics as well (The Howling, American Werewolf In London, Wolf with Jack Nicholson). But my favorites are lesser known; my top favorite was almost beaten out for that position by Dog Soldiers, a claustrophobic tale about soldiers holed up in a farmhouse besieged by the critters -- a kind of Night Of The Living Werewolf, if you will. And I've even enjoyed some of the sillier efforts like Werewolves On Wheels, a biker werewolf movie!

My absolute favorite werewolf movie, though, is an obscure British one called Children Of The Full Moon (1980). Directed by Tom Clegg, it was produced for the TV series Hammer House Of Horror and is only about an hour long.
The first time I saw it was on late night TV and I ended up not getting to sleep because it spooked me so much.

The plot follows a young married couple (Celia Gregory and Christopher Cazenove) who end up stranded for the night at the remote country home of an older woman (former bombshell Diana Dors) who presides over a strange brood of children. The kids wander around the house, and outside, at all hours of the night. Their father is mysteriously absent.

In the middle of the night, the young wife is attacked by what she claims is a monster. The couple survive and return to their lives, but their relationship remains troubled and haunted by that night. Later, when she's very pregnant, the wife feels compelled to return to the house in the woods.

That's all I can say without ruining it. It's subtle and low key, and emphasizes the story rather than special effects, which are minimal. But it's well-acted, well-written and quite eerie. It’s kind of a dark fairytale for adults.

Unfortunately, the DVD is hosted by Elvira – and while I like the idea of Elvira (ripped off though it is from Vampira, who tried unsuccessfully to sue her), having to listen to her inane jokes gets old fast. Luckily her segments are few and brief. Give me a provocatively dressed male vampire – are you busy, Spike? – and maybe I could put up with it. Meanwhile, that’s why God gave us fast forward.

What's your favorite werewolf movie?

Celebrate May Day With My All Time Favorite Film: The Wicker Man (1973)

It’s May Day (or Beltane, as pagans call it). May Day is the best day of the year to watch Robin Hardy's brilliant 1973 classic film, The Wicker Man, which happens to be my favorite film (horror or otherwise) of all time. Again, I mean the original British film, not the horrible remake with Nicholas Cage.

The late Edward Woodward (of TV's "The Equalizer") stars as a stuffy mainland police sergeant who's called to investigate a young girl's disappearance on Summerisle -- a fuedal community off the coast of Scotland. He is engrossed in his search, but appalled by the pagan customs of the island, where people, among other things, dance naked outdoors to worship nature, and teach their children about reincarnation. The natives calmly enjoy watching the sergeant become more and more scandalized as they prepare for their May Day celebration. Christopher Lee presides over all this as Lord Summerisile, the ruler and owner whose island bears his name. At one point, when Woodward has all but gone blue in the face, Lee cheerfully tells him, "do sit down, Sergeant; shocks are so much better absorbed with the knees bent." Ultimately something darker is going on, though it's not exactly what the film leads you to expect.

The island is a beautiful place, and the film is full of compelling and authentic-sounding folk music written by Paul Giovanni, celebrating its various local customs and personalities. Mostly we enjoy, with the inhabitants, their laugh on the uptight sergeant, and marvel at their exotic way of life. Telling you any more would ruin it, though you probably already know the ending – which has never spoiled my watching the film yet another time. Suffice to say that the film is mostly more like a seriocomic drama than a horror movie, but that the ending is pretty darn harrowing.

One highlight is getting to see Lord Christopher ebulliently leading a procession through the streets in drag. I’m pretty sure it’s the only time the great man has ever worn a dress onscreen, though if there’s another, I’d love to know about it! Lee also recites Walt Whitman’s “I think I could turn and live with animals” poem from Song Of Myself while watching a pair of snails copulate (and hearing voluptuous blonde bombshell Britt Ekland and a young villager – a virgin beforehand -- copulating not far away).

The whole movie is 103 minutes. Beware of the shorter American “theatrical” version that cuts Britt Ekland's mesmerizing nude song and dance, among other things.

This Town Is Serious About Population Control

Jeremy Sisto stars in "Population 436" (2006) an old-fashioned mystery/thriller that draws at least part of its inspiration from Shiley Jackson's classic short story "The Lottery." Sisto plays Steve Kady, a census worker who professionally visits the charming village of Rockwell Falls for what he thinks will be just a few days.

The residents welcome Kady warmly as a new friend, but it strikes him as odd that the town's population has remained at exactly 436 for over a century. His suspicions are further aroused when he learns that every resident who tries to leave dies "accidentally," and that anyone who wants to leave is considered a victim of "The Fever," a mysterious illness that causes people to go at least temporarily insane.

The treatment for "The Fever" -- practiced by the apparently unlicensed town doctor, who inherited his job from his father and grandfather -- is at first shock treatment and later, in more persistent cases, lobotomy. Kady becomes determined to rescue Amanda, a young girl currently in the doctor's "care," and of course also falls for a local woman (Charlotte Sullivan).

You can probably see where this is going, but the story and dialogue are well written, and made plausible by a perfect cast. The elements borrowed from Jackson's famous 1948 New Yorker story play only a small (but important) part in the plot, and the other twists are plausible enough to arouse our concern for the likable characters. Director Michelle McClaren has crafted an involving little film with a substantial story that will hold your interest -- and that doesn't compromise in the end.

(Of course, it never occurred to the writers that having at least SOME gay people in town would help avoid unexpected population growth. Just sayin'.)

MORE FAMILY HORROR: The Children (2008)

My partner and I have this little private custom. If we’re eating in a restaurant and nearby children begin screaming, making messes and misbehaving, one of us says to the other, “Have I thanked you lately for not wanting to have children?” I could see getting married if that becomes possible, but I guarantee you children will never be part of the equation for us.

That attitude was reinforced when I recently saw this 2008 British film. It's a very strange and violent little flick about two yuppie couples with way too many children between them -- most of them quite young -- who gather to spend the Christmas holidays together at a large house.

The first sign that this is a bad idea is that the youngest kid comes down with a flulike virus which quickly spreads to all of the other kids. Symptoms: first the child begins puking all over the place, then he or she becomes sadistic -- which quickly escalates into homicidal. The adults and the one teenager are apparently unaffected by the illness, but they have more than enough trouble to occupy them as they struggle to cope -- and ultimately survive.

Not having been able to master birth control despite their obvious socioeconomic advantages, the adults of course find handling violence and murder too tall an order. Teenager Casey (Hannah Tointon) is the first and for awhile the only person who realizes what's happening, but the adults -- as they so often do in horror films -- mistrust and even suspect her. With the grown ups too busy trying to deny what their tykes are doing, blame it on the other couple's kids, etc., the violence just continues to escalate unopposed, and the police, though called after the first "accident," never manage to show up.

The cast is good, and director Tom Shankland presents the whole story in a disarmingly matter-of-fact matter. The violence is gory and shocking. It's a scary movie with the look and feel of a highly realistic indie drama.

I'd recommend it, though I don't know that "enjoyed" accurately captures how I felt about it. It's a powerful film.

THE HORRORS OF FAMILY LIFE: Jack Hill's SPIDER BABY

(A luckless messenger gets caught in the web of Spider Baby).


Jack Hill’s rarely-seen 1964 cult film Spider Baby is one of the weirdest films I’ve ever seen, despite all the impressively weird films released in the several decades since its creation and long-delayed release. The film takes its name from the shocking opening scene in which a girl’s game of “spider” costs a messenger an ear, among other things. But the violence (actually pretty tame by today’s standards) takes a back seat to the strange dynamics of a twisted little family living in an isolated house.

Its central character is Bruno, a chauffer – played with affecting pathos by Lon Chaney Jr. – who cares for three demented young adults after the death of their father. The Merrye family suffers from a strange disease that causes mental and emotional growth to cease at age 10, and then to regress through childhood and on to an animalistic, violent state. “The children” are already having occasional outbursts of violence, and there are a couple of older relatives in the last monstrous stages secretly locked away in the basement. Bruno covers up what damage the children do, including the murder, and keeps them in seclusion in the dilapidated family home – until greedy relatives and a lawyer (complete with secretary) show up wanting to claim the estate and put “the children” away. The relatives’ big mistake: they insist on staying the night.

One of the creepiest (and funniest) scenes is dinner. The guests are appalled by the family’s “vegetarian” diet – which looks like clumps of weeds – and Bruno confides that, because of their illness, it’s dangerous for “the children” to be allowed to develop a taste for meat. Then he explains why the bald “boy,” Ralph, is allowed to partake of the one edible course – rabbit: “he’s allowed to eat what he catches.”

The cast is uniformly wonderful. Sid Haig, at the beginning of his long career as a horror actor, plays Ralph with an unnerving mixture of wide-eyed innocence and sudden bursts of savagery. The two girls, Elizabeth (Beverly Washburn) and Virginia (Jill Banner) are all breathy naivete and debutante manners one minute, then cold-blooded killers the next. It’s a testament to how good they all are that you identify with them despite their weirdness and violent outbursts. Your sympathies remain with them rather than the haughty Aunt Emily (Carroll Ohmart), a supreme bitch who is openly rude to them, and her oblivious crew (Quinn Redeker, Karl Schanzer, and Mary Mitchell) even after things get…well, nasty.

The center of the film is Chaney, who gives one of the best performances of his career. His loyalty to his charges and their late father is quite touching, and he even becomes tearful in one particularly moving scene when he realizes what he has to do.

The black and white photography by Al Taylor is eerie and quite beautiful, particularly in one sequence in the cobweb-shrouded cellar.

Some interesting bits of trivia: the film was actually shot in 1964, but its release was held up for four years because the producers went bankrupt. It’s been shown under various other titles, including “Cannibal Orgy” and “The Liver Eaters.” It also contains some amusing bloopers – such as a cameraman reflected in a rolled-up car window in the scene where Aunt Emily & Company arrive.

On the whole, though, it’s a fascinating 81 minutes – creepy, lurid, darkly funny, and at times surprisingly touching.

Mexican Fright Memories

Hunky Abel Salazar makes eyes at a hypnotized victim in The Brainiac

Does anyone remember the low-budget Mexican horror films from the 50s and 60s? Robot Versus The Aztec Mummy, The Braniac, The Bloody Vampire... and several films pitting professional wrestlers like the silver-masked Santo against vampires and other monsters. They were dubbed and released as kiddie matinee movies in Amercia by a guy named K. Gordon Murray out of Coral Gables, Florida. They're very campy now, but as a kid I actually got caught up in them and found some of them pretty scary. The one that got to me the most was The Brainiac, which I actually found recently as a DVD for $5.99.


Actually, director Chano Rueta's The Brainiac (1963) even now remains one of the weridest horror films ever. I originally saw it in the theater at about age eight.

The Braniac stars the suave Abel Salazar as Baron Vitelius d'Estera, a nobleman who is burned alive for witchcraft by the Inquisition in the first scene. He ridicules and curses his executioners, smirking as the flames consume him.

Three hundred years later the Baron returns to avenge himself on the descendants of his killers. His soul is brought back to earth by a comet (the most ludicrous effect in film history) and the astronomers who spot it are among his intended victims. The handsome Baron can put people in a trance using a light from his eyes that for some odd reason blinks on and off. This keeps them still while he transforms into a big-headed furry monster, creeps behind them, and sucks out their brains with a forked rubber tongue. He doesn't have to go hungry while in human form, either; he snacks on brains from a silver cup even while entertaining unsuspecting guests at cocktail parties.


Mexican brain foood in The Brainiac


Though unintended laughs abound, for deliberate comic relief we have a couple of chuckle-headed detectives who earnestly deliver lines like, "A maniac with a lot of knowledge is a threat." The special effects are among the chintziest you’ll ever see, but the music is eerie and Salazar’s face and body language exude a cool charismatic menace that shines through the terrible dubbing.

The film is 77 minutes of pure delirium. Former acidheads should take note that it may cause flashbacks.

The other Mexican fright flick that still sticks with me is The Bloody Vampire, released the same year. I may even have seen them as a double feature. I found the torture of a servant in this film so disturbing that it even haunted my dreams (partly because it was performed by a really buff, sweaty shirtless guy).


The big beefcake torture scene in The Bloody Vampire

Seeing it again now, despite its glaring flaws – more bad dubbing, an inane and way too talky English “script,” the ludicrous effect of a big rubber bat on a string bouncing in front of the camera – I still found many parts of it chilling. It has atmosphere galore, spooky sets, nerve-wracking music and sound effects, and an actor in the title role whose imposing physical presence and menacing charisma are not lost in the inept translation.

Charles Agosti plays Count Frankenhausen, a vampire who terrorizes his servants, holds his ailing but feisty wife prisoner in their palatial house, and causes a series of young girls from the nearby village to go missing. Like Salazar, he’s handsome – he resembles a younger Burt Reynolds, in fact – but he’s cruel, and sports a mouthful of very big sharp fangs when his bloodlust is aroused. He has a way with a whip, and hypnotic eyes that light up while an eerie electronic “hypno theme” plays in the background. The film contains memorable shots of him running down a corridor towards the camera, fangs exposed and cloak billowing behind him, that would be copied about a decade later in the more well-known Count Yorga movies. At one point he also goes off into a completely irrelevant five-minute monologue extolling the virtues of coffee, but he delivers in the frequent scary parts.

His wife Eugenia (Erna Martha Bauman) holds him at bay with a spear when he enters her room, and relies heavily for support on loyal servants Anna (Begona Palcios) and Lazaro (Enrique Lucero). The Count has his own enforcers and procurers, however; chief among them the icy and somewhat butch Frau Hildegarde (played to the hilt by the haughty Bertha Moss). But the Count doesn’t know that servant girl Anna, on whom he has romantic and sanguinary designs, is a spy in his household. She’s the daughter of this story’s Van Helsing, vampire researcher Dr. Valsama Cagliostro (Antonio Raxel). Unfortunately, a lot of the film’s dialogue among the good guys is pseudoscientific tech babble about a miraculous curative plant extract called "Vampirina," which sounds more like it should be dog food for "Zoltan, Hound Of Dracula." The dubbing is as dumb as the translation.

The most effective scene in the movie is the first, a sequence showing an uncannily soundless horse-drawn carriage driven by a Grim Reaper-like figure in slow motion over a foggy country road where a lynching has just taken place. Nothing that follows quite matches the atmosphere of that sequence, but the tension in the Frankenhausen home is palpable, and the violence shockingly gory for its time – close-ups of nasty neck wounds are accompanied by startling electronic sound effects, unprecedented in movies at the time. The torture of servant Lazaro, gleefully overseen by the Frau, is also surprisingly gruesome.

If you can forgive its flaws, this Miguel Morayta flick can really make your flesh crawl. It’s melodramatic and pretty silly on some levels, but it can scare you if you let it.

"Lassie" On Acid -- FIDO, A Suburban Zombie Movie

Director Andrew Currie's "Fido" (2006) can only be described as "A Boy And His Zombie" movie -- a "Lassie" episode on acid, only instead of a collie, we have a zombie. Billy Connolly brilliantly plays the title role without a word, mostly just using facial expressions and the occasional grunt to convey a great deal about his surprisingly sympathetic character.

The film is set in a fictitious world in which the zombie/human war that began in "Night Of The Living Dead" was won by the humans, and many zombies have been enslaved through the use of an electronic collar that turns off their hunger for human flesh. The time period has been shifted from the late sixties to the late fifties or very early sixties, a better era for playing out the film's ideas, and the look of the period is a big part of the running gag.

People live in towns safely fenced off from the "wild zones" where undomesticated zombies roam free; these areas are where you might end up if you can't afford a funeral (in which the head is buried in a separate casket). Unfortunately, the corporation that makes the collars, ZomCom, has used the situation to take over society, though most of the population is afraid to even talk about it.

Though there is violence and gore in "Fido," most of it is played for laughs, and you can't really call the film a "horror" movie. It's a black comedy/social satire that lampoons the conformity of suburban middle class life. "Fido" lives with a family that purchases him in order to fit in -- formerly the only family on the block without even one zombie. Timmy, the son (K'Sun Ray) and Helen, the wife (Carrie Anne Moss) bond with Fido, but complications arise when his collar malfunctions and they have to conceal the consequences. And yes, the name Timmy is a reference to "Lassie," and the scene in which the film openly refers to that is one of the funniest moments in "Fido."

I don't want to spoil the movie, so I won't say any more.

THE GAY BED AND BREAKFAST OF TERROR

The Gay Bed And Breakfast Of Terror, which had a limited 2007 theatrical release, is a spoof of “setting” slasher movies like Sleepaway Camp. This time the setting is a “gay friendly” bed and breakfast run by lunatic Helen (Mari Marks) and her spastic nerd daughter Louella (Georgia Jean). For the first forty minutes we meet their victims, five gay and lesbian couples going to attend a big commercial party who couldn’t find accommodations any closer or better. They don’t know Helen is a fanatical fundamentalist who intends to convert or kill them – and to imprison one of their men as a husband for Louella. Or that Helen has another offspring she keeps hidden – cannibal mutant Manfred (Noah Taylor), the “love child” resulting from her once being gang-banged by delegates at the Republican Convention.

Once the killings start, the film becomes a lot funnier (and quite gory). The dialogue is full of catty one-liners, and the plot is full of outrageous twists and revelations that have you thinking, “don’t tell me they’re going to go there” (and then, of course, they do). The gore effects aren’t bad, but Manfred’s “monster suit” is intentionally laughable; he’s supposed to be half man, half maggot, but he looks like he’s just swaddled from the waist down in shiny trash bags.

Sadly, intentionally bad doesn’t have the amusingly naïve charm of sincerely bad. If the flick worked better, I’d say, “Imagine John Waters making a horror film.” But John Waters has the instincts and energy these folks lack, though they do seem to take the same perverse glee in their work.

One big problem is that the film has no sense of pace at all; it ambles, lurches and drags. The acting ranges from wooden to competent with an occasional inspired moment. Director/writer Jaymes Thompson really needs to go to film school (or to go to a better film school).

The violence is gross, but not scary, because we don’t like any of the characters – we share their cynical, sarcastic view of each other, just as we would if they were snotty teenagers in a summer camp massacre flick, and we want to see them “get it.” There’s some gratuitous nudity and very mild softcore “sex” scenes (again, at about the same level of those in slasher flicks). The movie has its moments, but the script’s ideas are often a lot more entertaining than their (pardon the expression) execution.

I WAS A TEENAGE DRACULA? The "hidden" film in Herman Cohen's Trilogy

(Sandra Harrison after history's worst makeover in "Blood Of Dracula")


American International released a trilogy of teen-oriented horror films from producer Herman Cohen in 1957. All involved teens being turned into monsters by trusted authority figures secretly conducting “mad scientist” experiments. Two, including this one, were directed by Herbert L. Strock. This last film in the trilogy, for some reason, didn’t have a title beginning with the words “I Was A Teenage…”, and that may in part be why it’s much less well-known than the others, though it’s by far the campiest of the three.

Like “I Was A Teenage Werewolf,” “Blood Of Dracula” focuses on a particularly alienated teen – the hot–tempered Nancy Perkins, ably played by Sandra Harrison. Nancy is placed in boarding school because she won’t warm up to her father’s brassy new wife (married only 6 weeks after her mother’s untimely death). The degree of her anger is apparent in the opening sequence, when she grabs the steering wheel while being driven to the school and almost causes a fatal crash.

Shortly after her arrival she gets into a hair-pulling match with one of the girls who sneak into her room to “greet” her, but despite this she’s welcomed into “The Birds of Paradise,” the group of “cool” girls at the school. Unfortunately, the “Birds” aren’t the only people interested in taking her under their wing.

Teacher Miss Branding (Louise Louis) hypnotizes her – supposedly to calm her down after a second fight breaks out in the chemistry lab – using a rather large medallion “from the Carpathian mountains.” Pretty soon Branding is using the talisman long distance to turn Nancy into an animalistic killer that strangles various other girls. Branding supposedly wants to prove a theory that will put an end to war when the world discovers that she can “unleash a power in a single human being that will make the split atom look like a blessing.” The fact that the transformed Nancy has two absurd frontal fangs that make her look like a beaver in a Bride Of Frankenstein wig doesn’t help to make the attacks scary, though one – set in a supply closet – beat “Psycho” to the use of the swinging light bulb effect by three years.

But the movie has other charms going for it: the girls speak in self-conscious jive lingo that makes much of the dialogue unintentionally funny, and a boy they sneak into their room performs a sinister-sounding rock ‘n’ roll song (accompanied by a 45 RPM they play ) called “Puppy Love” -- complete with a suspiciously well-choreographed “impromptu” dance involving couch cushions.

Harrison also invests her character with enough “Rebel Without A Cause” angst to make you care what happens to her, and there’s a certain intriguing unacknowledged sexual chemistry between her and Louise Louis’s Miss Branding, who’s awfully preoccupied with proving herself as competent as any man. It remains fun to watch till the inevitable showdown, proving again that those who dabble in things better left alone “only work out their own destruction.”

BAGHEAD: ANOTHER DIFFERENT HORROR FILM

(The poster is reminiscent of "Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice," no?)


I saw this 2008 "horror/comedy" last night, and it was an interesting change of pace from the usual commercial horror flick.

It's a low budget indie fim that looks like a documentary -- but, unlike the "Blair Witch Project," it looks like a professionally shot one. The camera is handheld but the camera operator is competent, and the movie looks the way it does on purpose. The story concerns four friends who implusively go to a cabin in the woods to write and shoot a film, having just seen a film by an acquaintance that they're convinced they could top. Unfortunately, they spend more time drinking and obsessing about their relationships with each other than they do working on the film. There are two guys and two girls -- one guy has a crush on one girl, who just wants to be friends; the other guy, the studly ringleader of the group, has a romantic history with one girl and an escalating flirtation with the other. Naturally, complications ensue, including strain on the deep “buddy” relationship between the two guys, which is a major subplot in itself.

One unexpected complication is that the concept for the film -- that a man with a bag over his head is stalking the group -- begins to manifest itself in reality. At first it looks as though group members are playing mind games with each other -- the "baghead" scares individuals one at a time, the car is mysteriously disabled, etc. -- but when all four of them face off with the intruder at the same time, things get scary (and then scarier still).

Made by brothers Jay and Mark Duplass, the film is really more like a drama than anything else -- the group's intense relationships are the real subject. I don't know who decided to call it a comedy, but the label doesn't fit, though the characters do wisecrack a bit. There is suspense, violence, and enough slasher film tropes that it does qualify as a horror film, albeit a mild one.

The cast and script are excellent. The camera movement is not a problem. The soundtrack is minimal, so the action and dialogue have to involve you, which is refreshing. Everything that happens is plausible.

It's only 80 minutes long, and while I won't say it doesn't drag at all -- the direction largely works, but isn't masterful -- the story never failed to hold my interest. If you're up for something really different, check it out.

GODZILLA BEFORE RAYMOND BURR

Everyone has seen the first “Godzilla” film with Raymond Burr, but many people don’t realize it wasn’t really the first. Twenty minutes were eliminated from the original film to accommodate inserts with Burr that added nothing to the story but got a big American name into the credits. It had a little more pathos than your average big-city-gets-stomped-by-bigger-monster flick that came out in the 1950s, but a lot of fans would have been hard pressed to explain exactly why.

The original film, in Japanese but with English subtitles, is a totally different experience.

Considerably scarier but also somber and sad, the original “Gojira” makes the movie’s connection to the bombing of Hiroshima a lot clearer, lingering a lot more on the disaster the monster inflicts on Japan and the suffering of the devastated survivors. It also spends a lot more time on the Japanese characters whose story this really is, and makes it clear what wonderful actors are playing them (no awkward dubbing here). In fact, veteran actor Takashi Simura, who plays Paleontologist Dr. Yamane, had just recently appeared in another famous Japanese film – Kurosawa’s “Seven Samurai.”

Much more time is spent in this version on what is just a subplot in the Burr adaptation – the romantic triangle between Yamane’s daughter Emiko (Momoko Kochi), hero/scientist Dr. Serizawa (Akihiko Hirata) and salvage worker Hideto Ogata (Akira Takarada). Emiko is obligated by an arranged marriage to the scientist, who she respects and admires but does not love – she really loves Hideto. Serizawa has invented a device that can stop Godzilla from ravaging Japan, but resists using it because he fears it will be later appropriated as a military weapon (a nod to the film’s persistent anti-war message). Ultimately, he gives in – but lets the device destroy him, too, so its secret will die with him, freeing Emiko to follow her heart. It’s much clearer in this version how much his sacrifice reflects principles of honor in Japanese culture.

The monster here is also nothing like the amusingly silly rubber-suited wrestler of so many sequels aimed at a child audience. Filmed mostly at night, he is an ambulatory but shadowy tower of destruction relentlessly advancing on the fleeing population – death incarnate. The fact that his searing breath looks like steam here makes it creepier, more intimate somehow. Eiji Tsuburaya's special effects were very realistic for their time, and the night shooting added greatly to the film's atmosphere of menace.

“Gojira” will in no way detract from your continued enjoyment of the more familiar version, but seeing it for the first time is a revelation. There’s more to the myth of Godzilla than a lot of us who grew up with him ever knew. "Godzilla" with Raymond Burr is an exciting 50s monster flick; "Gojira" without him is an affecting, haunting work of art whose monster is a metaphor for issues that still rear larger than his 40-story frame.

Plenty Lurid, Little Karloff in SNAKE PEOPLE

(Chickens need a stronger union on Korbai in The Snake People)

Director Juan Ibanez’s curious 90-minute Mexican flick The Snake People (1975), starred, among other folks, Boris Karloff and the dwarf Santanon. It had suggestive snake dances, zombies, lesbian makeout action, gangs of cannibal women rampaging in the streets, voodoo ceremonies, surreal Freudian dream sequences, and two scenes of necrophilia interruptus -- not to mention wild avante-garde music and hallucinatory camera angles. It sure wasn't boring. It kind of reminded me of the Brazilian Coffin Joe movies.

Karloff plays a plantation owner on a South Seas island called Korbai, which is governed by France. His niece Anabella (one-name actress Julissa), a Prohibitionist, comes to stay with him. She quickly falls for hedonist army officer Wilhelm (hairy chested Charles East), who works for Captain Pierre Labiche (Ralph Bertram), a pompous ass determined to repress native voodoo practices by identifying and capturing the local religion’s “ringleader,” Damballah. (Damballah is actually the name of a snake god in Voudun, but it seems like script writer Jack Hill doesn’t know that). Girls are being killed in order to be brought back as zombie sex slaves, but then they get crazed and run around the streets in mobs killing and eating luckless pedestrians (especially soldiers).

The film spends lot of time gawking at lurid ceremonies presided over by a half-naked priestess (exotic Yolanda Montes), who rubs big live snakes on her breasts and even sucks on their heads. Snaggle-toothed dwarf Santanon sacrifices chickens and laughs maniacally for no apparent reason.

The story makes little sense and the dubbing is awful, but the camera movement and music are involving, and the action is more than weird enough to hold one’s interest. It’s interesting that there are some substantially long sequences without dialogue, where the story is told purely visually. There’s a good bit of nudity and some gore (mild by today’s standards). Karloff, sadly, doesn’t have much screen time and is mostly in the film for his name and for the sake of one implausible plot twist. But I got caught up in it, and found some of its imagery haunting.

SHANKS: WILLIAM CASTLE'S LAST, AND ODDEST, FILM

(Marceau as Shanks in the renimation lab)


Director William Castle’s last film, “Shanks” (1974) is practically unknown today, and with good reason. For one thing, it stars Marcel Marceau (as the Oz character in TV’s Buffy The Vampire Slayer once solemnly said, “nobody deserves mime, Buffy.”) For another, it aims for a childlike mentality and calls itself “a Grim Fairy Tale” – and like a fairytale, it doesn’t concern itself with even trying to be plausible. It’s very odd, not at all like any other film this writer has ever seen, and it was probably a hard movie to promote.

Marceau plays two characters – a deaf mute puppeteer, Malcolm Shanks, and an aging eccentric scientist, Mr. Walker, who employs him as his assistant in secret experiments. Shanks enjoys entertaining the children in his small town, but is exploited by his shrewish sister and drunken brother-in-law (fellow mimes Tsilla Chelton and Philippe Clay), who spend all his money and bully him.

Walker’s experiments involve reanimating dead animals with electricity and then directing their movements with a small push-button remote control box. When he dies suddenly, Shanks reanimates him. Soon Shanks kills off the mean couple who are sponging off him and reanimates them too. Then he uses them as birthday party entertainment for Celia, a teenage girl on whom he seems to have a crush, sort of a Marcia Brady type (Cindy Eilbacher). She’s supposed to be a sweet innocent, but has no problem with laughing as the corpses stagger around to amuse her, sometimes making little faux pas like -- whoops! – cutting off their own fingers with a slice of cake.

This is all very amusing till a group of bikers show up and invade Walker’s mansion, dragging the corpse of a comrade killed in a crash. They tie up Shanks and terrorize Marcia – er, Celia. A zombies-vs.-bikers battle is inevitable, of course, followed by an ending that makes absolutely no sense.

Since the main character and reanimated dead don’t speak, long sequences have no dialogue. These are sometimes prefaced by title cards that strain to remind us of silent movies, as does the hokey, heavy-handed “old-fashioned” music that comments heavy- handedly on the action, especially when the film is trying to be funny. What works during the wordless sequences is that the mimes give the zombies grotesque movements, like dead bodies awkwardly jerked around by remote control would indeed have – pretty much the only believable element in the film. The scene where Shanks first reanimates Walker and makes him stand up, agonizingly wrenching himself from one impossible position to another with his limbs loudly crunching from rigor mortis, is amazing to watch.

Sadly, the absurd plot is just too dumb to accept, and the SPEAKING parts are mostly way hammy (mimes have to overdo it to get their message across without words, and it seems to bleed over into their acting). The lack of logic and believability would be okay in a movie for kids, but this is trying to be a violent horror flick – and if you can’t take it seriously, it’s not scary. And the ambiguous relationship between Shanks and Celia, frankly, isn’t cute and charming – it’s the creepiest thing in the film.

Castle himself, by the way, appears briefly as a grocer. He should have stuck to wiring theater seats and hanging skeletons from the ceiling, because his famous gimmick films all worked way better than this bizarre but unsatisfying swan song -- though if you’re a fan, it’s a must-see curiosity.