Slither

I was initially attracted to Slither because it didn't fall into the current Hollywood horror trend in which bolt cutters and such are inflicted upon innocent bystanders. Not that I have anything against Saw, Hostel, The Hills Have Eyes, and their ilk, but this film gets points for blazing its own trail.

That trail, however, isn't an entirely fresh one. Many elements here will seem familiar, as Slither is a loving homage to the horror films of the 80's, with particular emphasis on Night of the Creeps and The Thing, with a dash of The Blob. Even some of the special effects seem reminiscent of the period, though they are augmented with CGI. There is a handful of clever inside references to 80's horror which you can read about at the IMDB.

The setting is a small southern town in the process of celebrating the opening of deer season. Following a disagreement with his wife Starla (Elizabeth Banks), Grant Grant (Michael Rooker) finds himself flirting with a young woman in a bar. The two go off into the woods together, but Grant sobers up enough to remember he's married. Before they can head back, though, Grant is attacked and infected by a meteor-borne parasite that burrows into his brain. He finds himself with a fierce craving for meat, and he begins undergoing some disturbing physical changes.

Soon animals of all kinds are disappearing, and Starla can no longer accept that her husband's physical transformation is the result of a bee sting as he claims. Police Chief Bill Pardy (Nathan Fillion of Serenity and Firefly fame) who has been carrying a torch for Starla since childhood, leads an armed posse into the woods in hopes of capturing Grant. When the police find him, Grant has morphed into a form that can only be described as Lovecraftian, and the alien parasite that inhabits him has sinister plans for the other denizens of this sleepy little hamlet.

This is a just plain fun horror flick. The horror/humor hybrid is rarely done well, but Writer/Director James Gunn succeeds admirably. Gunn previously penned the screenplay to the 2004 Dawn of the Dead remake, a film that doesn't quite measure up to the original Dawn, but manages to be a pretty decent horror flick in its own right. He also wrote and starred in the highly underrated The Specials (2000), a low budget comedy about a third string team of super heroes. If the similarly themed but less entertaining Mystery Men hadn't been released around the same time, The Specials might have gotten the attention it deserved. With Slither, his feature directorial debut, Gunn is hitting his stride and I for one can now forgive him for his work on Scooby Doo (2002).

Speaking of Eerie Publications

Speaking of Eerie Publications, as I was in my previous post, there's some cool stuff related to that infamous line of comics over at Datajunkie. I also recommend The Eerie Publications Archive, and The Claw's Eerie Publications Archive. For the particulary devoted, may I suggest the Eerie Publications screensaver for Windows, designed by yours truly. Just click on the "Screensavers" link once you get there.

I credit my interest in horror to a copy of Tales From the Tomb I saw at the age of 7 or so. I managed to pick up a copy of that same issue on Ebay a few years ago. As you might expect, it wasn't nearly as scary all these years later, but it was still pretty gross. Dislocated eyeballs were a specialty for the folks over at Eerie Pubs. Ocular orbs flew like infield flies at spring training. Apparently, in the Eerie Universe, all you had to do was nudge someone just right and their baby blues would end up dangling from their optic nerves.

Tales of Voodoo, Vol. 4

This was my WTF purchase of the month. I’ve been curious about this line of DVD’s for awhile. The case sports the logos and cover art from the Tales of Voodoo comic book, published by Eerie Publications in the 60’s and 70’s. Eerie Publications (not to be confused with Warren Publishing’s Eerie magazine from the same period) put out an especially gruesome line of horror comics known for their brutal violence and over the top art. The back cover of the DVD carries artwork from a “Monster Club” ad that ran in comic books in the early 70’s.

When I first saw these DVD’s I didn’t know what to think. Presumably this material has fallen into the public domain and the enterprising folks at Videoasia thought those lurid gross-out comic covers from yesteryear would make dandy promotional art for a line of obscure international horror flicks. The films themselves have been slightly retitled for this collection, presumably to make them more palatable to horror fans, though neither film actually fits comfortably into that genre, and despite the Tales of Voodoo title, there’s no voodoo to be had here.

Temple of Hell: Ark of the Sun God (onscreen title: Ark of the Sun God) (1983)
This Italian/Turkish co-production is directed by Anthony M. Dawson, a.k.a. Antonio Margheriti, maker of such films as the excellent and eerie Barbara Steele film Castle of Blood (1964), and the Pasta Land Chunkblower classic Cannibal Apocalypse (1980), among many others.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that the film stars Italian horror film legend David Warbeck. Not all of his movies are classics--I recently watched Warbeck’s Panic (1976), which totally bites--but his presence in Lucio Fulci’s The Beyond has earned him many cool points. Also noteworthy is the appearance of character actor Luciano Pigozzi, who appeared in several other Margheriti flicks, as well as the Mario Bava films Baron Blood and Blood and Black Lace.

Warbeck plays Rick Spear, a cat burglar of some repute who has business in Istanbul. While attempting to steal a rare artifact, Spear is caught and recruited by Lord Dean. The plan is for Spear to locate the Temple of the Sun God, the presumed resting place of Gilgamesh, a king who was half man and half demon. Dean wants Spear to enter the temple using the aforementioned artifact as a key and steal a jeweled scepter. The Brits are concerned about the political implications of the scepter falling into the wrong hands. Unbeknownst to anyone, though, the room is bugged, and the exchange is overheard by an Arab prince and his henchmen, members of the Demons of Gilgamesh who want the scepter for their own purposes.

What follows is kidnapping, murder, gun play, car chases, Indiana Jones-style archeology (particularly in a very Raiders-esque snake pit sequence, and a rather modest tarantula attack), and various other acts of daring do on the part of our hero. The action scenes are fun, though sometimes they seem randomly placed, and their order in the film could probably be rearranged without much trouble.

Little attempt is made to disguise the James Bond connection. While wearing his black cat burglar clothes, Spear very much resembles Sean Connery. He comments to Lord Dean, “Why didn’t you tell me this job called for Roger Moore?” Even Spear’s girlfriend Carol is more often than not referred to as “Pussycat,” possibly a reference to Honor Blackman’s Pussy Galore character from Goldfinger. The entire third act just screams Indiana Jones, right down to the snake pit scene and the Arab sidekick who resembles John Rhys-Davies’ character from Raiders.

Not a masterpiece, but a fun little bit of hokum. The picture is grainy, but watchable, though a few night scenes are hard to make out. The image is letterboxed, but info seems to be lost on the left and right sides of the screen.

Cannibal Curse (onscreen title: Curse)(1987)
Yikes! Tales of Voodoo? More like Tower of Babel. This one has some serious issues. First, the English subtitles of this Hong Kong-made film are cropped off the bottom of the screen, leaving subtitles in an Asian language which I can’t identify (Mandarin? Cantonese?). Periodically, the English subtitles shift back into frame, only to have them drop out again moments later. Perhaps even more inexplicable though, is the audio. At first I thought the left and right channels were out of synch with each other, but it appears each channel carries a separate translation in a different Asian language.

Obviously, following the plot was challenging. What we have here (I think) is a tale of love and reincarnation. Maria’s lover Roberto is murdered by Maria’s abusive husband. The star-crossed lovers meet again forty years later. Roberto appears to be reincarnated. Maria is either reincarnated or immortal. Who can tell? It’s such a mess. I can’t even nail down a genre for this one. There’s some kung fu, gratuitous nudity, a battle between good and evil sorcerers, and that holy grail of exploitation film features: crazed dwarves in loincloths. Despite the title, though, there is no cannibalism.

A movie that should only be attempted by the heartiest of film buffs.

The Ghastly Ones/Seeds of Sin

For those of us who enjoy wading through the sewage of grindhouse/drive-in cinema, the films of Andy Milligan are like a bright shiny rat carcass floating in the sludge. They’re just as slimy as everything else around, but they stand out and, when poked with a stick, can be quite entertaining. Something Weird Video has done Milligan proud with this ultra-sleazy double feature.

First up is the 1967 opus, The Ghastly Ones, the first of Milligan’s films to be shot in color. It’s a period piece taking place in the nineteenth century—an odd choice considering the obviously impoverished budget. Not being one for subtlety, Milligan jumpstarts the story by having a young couple attacked and brutally murdered just minutes into the film. The gore is low-tech, a hardboiled egg subbing for an extracted eyeball, and an obviously contemporary New York skyline can be glimpsed in a few shots. At the 3:22 mark you can actually hear someone (presumably Milligan) giving direction to the actors.

We soon meet the three Crenshaw sisters: Vicky, Elizabeth, and Veronica, all bedecked in period costumes reportedly of Milligan’s own design. They, along with their respective spouses are summoned to the office of H.H. Dobbs, a nearly fossilized attorney sporting a horrific quantity of nostril hair. Dobbs reads Old Man Crenshaw’s will, which stipulates that his three daughters and their respective husbands must spend three nights in “sexual harmony” in the family estate on the remote Crenshaw Island before the estate can be divvied up between them. They are met on the island by the Trasks, a colorful trio of caretakers, consisting of two spinster sisters and their deranged, rabbit-mauling, hunchbacked brother Colin. In classic Old Dark House tradition, the boat won’t be back for days, cutting off our characters from the mainland.

What follows is a drawing room mystery with a sexploitation era sensibility, and a post-Blood Feast helping of gore. There is ample nudity, often featuring performers both male and female who really ought to know better. The number of unsightly moles on display might lead one to think the cast had rolled in a pile of Milk Duds prior to the sex scenes.

From the film’s opening with one of those great 60’s title cards with drippy lettering unapologetically proclaiming that this is a horror movie, and a pretty trashy one at that, all the way through to the jarringly abrupt climax, Milligan keeps things flowing nicely. Plot elements are introduced and never resolved, but the pace never falters.

The story is peppered with all manner of depravities. Vicky and Richard bankroll their trip to the family estate by borrowing money from Richard’s brother, a flamboyantly gay clergyman who appears to have had an incestuous homosexual relationship with Richard. Elizabeth’s husband Donald enjoys rough sex and doesn’t care who hears. The Trask sisters keep their mentally challenged brother in line by flogging him at the drop of a hat.

Offensive? Gleefully so. Boring? Never.

The low rent look and feel are a big part of the film’s charm. Shots like those in the restaurant scene in which two characters in the foreground are cut off just above the chin, with most of the frame filled with superfluous background make one wonder if there was actually anyone behind the camera. The musical score is obviously culled from the cheapest library tracks Milligan could get his hands on. In fact, the music playing during film’s climactic scenes will be familiar to anyone who has seen The Beast That Killed Women, or the animated Spider-man series from the 60’s. The scratchy print only adds to that grungy feeling, fostering the sense that you’ve unearthed a film that hasn’t seen the light of a projector bulb in decades.

Seeds of Sin is a perfect co-feature as it not only stars some of the same cast as The Ghastly Ones, but was also shot in the same house with same retched checkerboard wallpaper. Sporting a 1968 copyright that places this film a year after The Ghastly Ones, it was back to black and white for Milligan.
Again, the viewer’s attention is grabbed right away, this time with a pre-credits orgy. Anything to keep asses in seats would appear to be the Milligan philosophy, although The Ghastly Ones’ audio commentary suggests that the orgy may not even have been filmed by Milligan, but added perhaps at the insistence of others.
The Manning family is as dysfunctional as they come. Family matriarch Claris, something of a modern day Elizabeth Bathory, is a bitter old wheelchair-bound alcoholic, surviving only on the constant blood transfusions provided by slime bag family physician Dr. Kram. Claris is mortified to learn that daughter Carol has invited her siblings home for Christmas.

Each of the Manning children suffers from one classic form of Milligan deviance or another. Carol, in addition to her passions for bodybuilding magazines and masturbation, has a sexual history with her brother Michael that she seems keen on rekindling. Drew bungles his girlfriend’s abortion, and Buster has discovered, blackmail, attempted suicide, and pyromania at military school. Meanwhile, Peter and Jessica the two servants are plotting to do away with Claris and make off with her money. Soon someone is bumping off family members, and the plot, such as it is, is off and running.

As always, Something Weird has loaded up the disk with some choice extras. There’s the aforementioned audio commentary for The Ghastly Ones featuring filmmaker and trash movie historian Frank Henenlotter, and cast member Hal Borske who played the dimwitted Colin. The banter is brisk and informative, with Borske providing some fascinating tales from his years as a part of Milligan’s troupe. There’s also a Gallery of Andy Milligan Exploitation Art and trailers for five Milligan films. The highlights, however, are the unfinished trailer and workprint of Seeds of Sin, both of which contain footage excised from the theatrical print.

New Frontiers

All right! A brave new frontier! At least for me, that is. If you glance at my profile you'll see that I've done movie reviews for magazines, but the Blog format allows me to publish far more frequently. Join me, won't you?