If you are not yet familiar with David Firth's inspired, insane, and downright disturbing Flash cartoon "Salad Fingers," then you should haul ass to the links below:
"A mother is God in a child's eyes."
Little Sharon DaSilva (Jodelle Ferland, who could easily pass for a young Kristin Kreuk) has developed a sleepwalking problem. One night after being narrowly rescued from a shear cliff by her mother Rose, Sharon mutters the words "Silent Hill." This is only one in a long line of similar incidents, and Rose is determined to get to the root of her adopted daughter's troubles. Against the wishes of her husband Chris, Rose takes Sharon to Silent Hill, a town that was abandoned in the early 1970's because of a massive subterranean coal fire, a fire which still continues to burn.
Upon reaching the town, Rose sees a child in the road and, swerving to avoid her, crashes the car, knocking herself unconscious. When she wakes up Sharon is missing and the air is filled with a haunting blizzard of ashes. Rose sets out on foot into Silent Hill to find her daughter. The town seems deserted at first, but Rose soon crosses paths with an old crone who has also lost a daughter, a motorcycle cop named Laurie, and several nightmarish beasties of varying description. Periodically a siren will sound, signalingng the coming of both the darkness and the hellspawn that lurks within that darkness.
The track record for films based on video games is not an impressive one. When we see Rose memorizing a map or collecting a clue that she inexplicably knows will lead her to Sharon, I feel like I'm being clubbed with a baseball bat that has "based on a video game" etched into the wood. Is it necessary for films of this type to duplicate the structure of gameplay? I recall having similar issues with Resident Evil: Apocalypse, and I just find the practice distracting.
Given Silent Hill's video game roots, I was not surprised that this is a visually striking film. Unlike a lot of CGIed to death movies (the remake of The Haunting springs to mind), Silent Hill's computer generated effects work very well. The creatures are horrific and the town is ominous and forbidding. The atmosphere is the film's biggest star.
What ultimately damages the film is the one dimensional characters. Rose is a determined mother, Sharon is an angelic innocent, and Laurie is a dedicated officer of the law, but none of them have any depth beyond their basic definitions. The atmosphere and monsters are top notch, but without worthwhile characters it's hard to care about the film as a whole. Gaming and horror buffs will enjoy it, but I can't see it having mass appeal.
Silent Hill's official website
Silent Hill's entry at the Internet Movie Database
Time is running out to win a copy of John Carpenter's Cigarette Burns. All entries must be received before midnight on May 3, 2006. Click here for details.
“After the good time we're going to show you boys, I don't think you're going to want to leave.”
Here's how I assume the pitch meeting went for Camp Slaughter:
“You'll love this one! We cross Friday the 13th with Groundhog Day and a dash of Brokeback Mountain.”
“How could I NOT love it? Take this sledgehammer. Your budget will be whatever you can get out of the candy machine in the lobby. Oh, and grab me a Snickers while you're at it.”
Daniel, Jen, Mario, and Angela are on their way to Boston. They first notice something is amiss when they pass the same road sign twice. Even more telling is the fact that the sign says “Welcome to Maine.” The only way these characters could pass through Maine on the way to Boston is if they are coming from Canada–which clearly they are not–or if the film is shot in Northern California and no one bothered to consult a map.
The car breaks down in the middle of nowhere and the four are forced to spend the night in the vehicle. When morning comes the car is surrounded by the nauseatingly perky, short-short wearing counselors of Camp Hiawatha. They bring the four back to camp and offer to call a tow truck that any self-respecting horror buff knows will never arrive. Even stranger than the overly fun loving staff are the calendars, ancient magazines, and the cringe-inducing dialogue of Nichole the Valley Girl. Camp Hiawatha is doomed to repeat a single summer day from 1981 in which the campers and counselors are all brutally killed.
To the best of my knowledge this is the first Friday the 13th knock off with a homo-erotic subtext. The scenes of muscular bare-chested young men touching, patting one another on the butt, and embracing are too numerous to be misinterpreted. Strangely, this theme never moves beyond implication, so my Broke Back Mountain reference is admittedly overstated. The fact that the the main characters are driving a Hummer would make for a joke too lame even for me.
I will give the filmmakers credit, the idea of a summer camp in which the counselors are brutally murdered each and every day only to awaken the following morning to do it all over again has some merit. Anyone who has seen any of the Friday the 13th movies can tell you just how much these characters NEED to die. Allowing them to be slaughtered continuously for 24 years seems almost just. This, however, is where the accolades stop.
Despite a decent premise, Camp Slaughter is bad beyond redemption. There isn't a single likable or interesting character to be found. Some characters are referred to as campers, but they all seem old enough to be counselors themselves. The gore effects are amateurish and lack accompanying sound effects. Director Alex Pucci over-uses closeups, allowing us to explore the actors' pores and nasal cavities to distraction. Clever dialogue like “I know these roads like the back of my dick,” is just wasted.
Remove this from your Netflix queue. Seriously. It's for the best.
Camp Slaughter's entry at the Internet Movie Database.
"Just look at the size of those feet!"
In a secret laboratory near Blood Cove, Dr. Lazaroff and his team have created a sea monster from scratch. The slimy beast combines equal parts Creature From the Black Lagoon, Beast From Haunted Cave, and the critters from Horror of Party Beach, and has been created based on the work of Victor Frankenstein. The creature fights off Dr. Lazaroff's mind control chemicals and escapes, presumably to die in the open sea. To continue with their plan to create an unholy beast to fight terrorism, Lazaroff and his associates must travel to Shellvania (you know, just beyond Transylvania) to exhume the original Frankenstein monster and bring him back to the U.S.
Meanwhile, girlie photographer Bill Grant (played by writer/director Bill Winckler) and his crew are shooting some cheesecake photos for Frisky Kitty Cat magazine at Blood Cove. The photo shoot is ruined and the model slaughtered by Dr. Lazaroff's sea creature. Grant and his crew seek refuge at the Doctor's seaside estate, but they soon find themselves held captive and forced to assist the good doctor in his diabolical plans.
I so wanted to like this movie. This film is obviously a labor of love, made by a director with passion for the creature features of yesteryear. Shot in glorious black and white, no attempt is even made to cover up the seams in the sea creature costume. They are worn proudly like a red badge of courage. The nudity is both gleefully gratuitous and surprisingly tasteful, and there are moments where you can actually believe you're watching a lost B flick recently unearthed by the likes of Something Weird Video.
Sadly, it just doesn't work. The Frankenstein Monster as depicted on the box cover reminded me of Dick Briefer's Frankenstein comics from the 40's, one of my favorite portrayals of Shelley's monster, but apparently this was a trick of the light. B movie roots or not, I'd hoped we as a society had progressed beyond the stiff-legged Frankenstein monster with the outstretched arms and mono-syllabic dialogue, but that's exactly what we get here. Add to this a beer gut and a pirate shirt, and suddenly Glenn Strange's pedestrian performance as the monster seems as accomplished as Karloff's. The fight scenes between the two creatures are badly choreographed, and the story just wanders around before bumping into a deus ex machina.
Fortunately for Winckler the movie is pretty much critic proof. Since this is an homage to B monster flicks of the 50's, the over the top acting, campy dialogue, and meandering plot can all be chalked up to stylistic choice. They all increase the illusion that this is a lost flick from that period. Even the constant referral to the monster as "Frankenstein" can be explained in this way. The film might have been better served by taking things a step further, casting non-actors rather than actors trying to sound like non-actors, and digitally fuzzing the image to further enhance the look of old film.
I don't want to be too hard on a film whose heart is obviously in the right place. Frankenstein Vs. The Creature From Blood Cove gets an enthusiastic A for effort if not execution.
An American Haunting (2006)
This one hits theatres on May 5 and I've been seeing the TV spots a lot. The movie is based on the allegedly true story of the only documented case in the U.S. in which a ghost caused someone's death. Whether or not you believe in such things doesn't really matter. The real question is: does it scare? The commercials and the trailer have piqued my interest, and the poster, as you can see, is wicked cool. Who can say for sure, but I'm hoping this is the gothicy kind of film that will let folks get their creep on. There's a photo gallery at the IMDB and here's a link to the official site.
I'm still not sure what to make of this new Samuel L. Jackson film Snakes on a Plane. Love the title. Sounds like a late seventies made for TV movie starring Christopher George and a handful of actors whose careers are on the downslide. DVD Trash has a great example of what the poster should--but sadly won't--look like. You can also link to the trailer from there. Here's the official site.
There's still time to enter our Masters of Horror DVD Giveaway for a chance to win a copy of John Carpenter's Cigarette Burns. We'll be taking entries until midnight on 5/3/06. Click here for details.
“Send more security guards.”
I was getting a little concerned. Most of the reviews I've posted so far have been positive, and the last thing I want is to get a reputation as a quote whore. “I laughed! I cried! It pushed all the right buttons!” Barf.
Fortunately, Return of the Living Dead: Necropolis—a steaming dog turd of a film if there ever was one—has broken that cycle. The box cover and title card don't use the number “4,” presumably in the hope that no one will notice this is the forth installment in a series that tanked with part 2. Someone must have thought removing the “4” would make the movie prettier, but everyone knows that even if you put a dead woodchuck in a satin dress and tiara, no one is going to take it to the prom.
Charles Garrison (Peter Coyote) is an employee of Hybra Tech corporation, a conglomerate that manufactures everything from napalm to salsa chips. They're also responsible for the cleanup of every zombie infestation in the ROTLD universe. Garrison is conducting some company business in the irradiated remains of the Chernobyl nuclear facility, where he purchases several barrels of Tri-Oxin which, as we know from the previous films, is a reanimation chemical. After an unfortunate mishap that leads to some brain munching, Garrison somehow gets the cannisters back to the United States and sets about reanimating the dead in his laboratory.
Garrison's nephews, a moody teenager named Julian and his kid brother Pyro, are all crabby and angsty in the wake of their parents' deaths the year before. Julian spends much of his time with his friends, a mind boggling circle of teen stereotypes including the hot headed-Latino, the pretty nerd girl, the blonde sexpot, and the token African-American. Director Ellory Elkayem has obviously seen Not Another Teen Movie, but sadly he didn't get the joke.
While showing off on his dirt bike, Julian's best friend Zeke knocks himself cold. Julian is told at the hospital that Zeke died tragically from a reaction to pain killers, but Zeke's ex-girlfriend Katy has just seen Zeke being wheeled into Hybra Tech where she works. Our teen heroes deduce that Hybra Tech is up to no good, and they hatch an elaborate and convoluted plot to spring their friend. In the process, though, several of Garrison's experiments are released, and the guttural cry of “BRAAAAAAAAIIIIIINS,” is once again heard across the land.
This movie left me with many questions, but the biggest of them is what the hell is wrong with Peter Coyote's mouth? He has this weird lip-over-the-gum grimace throughout, as if he's having trouble keeping his dentures in place. On the other hand, John Keefe who plays Julian often tries to look intense but comes off as constipated. I suggest dental checkups and bran muffins for the entire cast.
Why are there no security guards to stop the teens from entering this top secret facility? When they suspect their friend has been kidnapped, why doesn't anyone just call the police? It is established early on that the zombies can be killed by a gunshot to the head (contrary to previous entries in the series), why then do we see zombies dropping over from being shot in the chest? Finally, one member of the cast wears his status as cannon fodder so obviously that I have to ask why isn't he wearing a red Starfleet uniform?
The previous films in this series were never any great shakes in the originality department (For a rundown of the original Return of the Living Dead's convoluted origin and tenuous connection to George Romero's Dead films, see my review.), but this installment has resorted to blatant thievery. Anyone who has seen the Resident Evil movies will recognize Hybra Tech as a thinly disguised version of the Umbrella Corporation. The souped up cyborg zombies are obviously inspired by RE's Nemesis character, but look like The Borg from Star Trek: The Next Generation.
According to the IMDB, most of the surviving characters will be back for Return of the Living Dead 5: Rave to the Grave. I, however, will not.
"But where does imagination end and reality begin? What is this twilight, this half world of the mind that you profess to know so much about?"
For as long as there have been horror movies the question has been asked: should the terror be merely suggested or should filmmakers “go for the grossout,” as Stephen King has been known to put it? While there is certainly room at the table for both quiet and extreme horror, this 1957 film makes a valid argument for the former.
The opening shots set the mood beautifully. We see a car hurtling down a lonely stretch of road in the middle of the night, trees forming eerie silhouettes in the headlights. The driver, a tense, nervous looking man, is Professor Henry Harrington and he’s on his way to see Dr. Julian Karswell (Niall MacGinnis), the leader of a demonic cult. Though details are left delightfully vague, Harrington begs Karswell to stop what he has put into motion.
Some things are easier to start than stop, as Karswell points out, and before the night is out Harrington is slaughtered by a gigantic, spike-headed, bat-winged demon that could easily have sprung from the pen of H.P. Lovecraft. Soon our hero enters the fray in the form of Dr. John Holden (Dana Andrews). Holden arrives in England where he is to take part in a seminar debunking allegedly supernatural phenomena. Chief on his schedule is an expose of Karswell’s demonic cult, a project he had been working on with Harrington.
Holden meets, and begins falling for, Harrington’s niece Joanna (Peggy Cummins). Joanna insists Karswell has somehow caused her uncle’s death. Holden scoffs. In fact, he does a lot of scoffing in this movie. He is a scientist and believes there is a rational explanation for everything.
While doing some research at a London museum, Holden is visited by Karswell. Despite Karswell’s request, Holden refuses to call off his expose. Karswell slips Holden a parchment bearing runic symbols, and the plot is off and running. Holden refuses to believe that the parchment has marked him for death at the hands of the same creature that killed Harrington, but evidence to the contrary begins to mount, and we’re soon on our way to a confrontation between the worlds of logic and the supernatural.
A lot of what happens in this movie happens below the surface, and not just the supernatural elements. The verbal sparring between Holden and Karswell works particularly well. For the most part they maintain a believable façade of cordiality to one another, despite the fact that we know--as do they--that they will soon be at one another’s throat. Only at the points where one of the characters has angered the other to the point of an outburst do we see the true nature of their relationship.
Tourneur’s use of subtlety is masterful. One of the film’s highlights is Holden’s journey through the woods at night near Karswell’s estate. As the date of Holden’s predicted death approaches the demon comes closer and closer to manifesting. We don’t see the creature yet, but a hovering cloud of angry smoke follows Holden, and we see the footprints of some monstrously huge creature forming in the ground.
Tourneur never intended to show the demon, and the slimy beastie we see in the movie was added at the studio’s insistence. A lot has been said over the years about how the inclusion of a visible, tangible creature ruined Tourneur’s original idea, which was to leave the viewer with a sense of uncertainty as to whether anything supernatural had actually occurred. The last 45 years, however, has seen more graphic depictions of cinematic horror than you can shake a gratuitously severed limb at. The demon that was foisted upon Tourneur’s film is shown sparingly, leaving far more to the imagination than would a film made today. In light of this, Night/Curse of the Demon is in some ways truer to Tourneur’s vision today than it was when it was originally released.
Not only does Curse of the Demon bear up well 49 years after its initial arrival in theatres, but it has never looked as good on the small screen. Columbia Tri-Star’s DVD presentation presents a crisp picture with only minor specs and scratches. Unfortunately, the film is so sharp looking that the wire dragging the rune parchment that is supposedly trying to escape on its own is painfully clear.
The film is presented in two versions. Night of the Demon is the original British version, and runs 95 minutes, while Curse of the Demon, the American release version, was trimmed to 82 minutes. The only extras are trailers for The Bride and Fright Night.
